ABSTRACT

The locale or places associated with traditional working-class community studies have largely rested on the nature of the industrial settings in which these communities existed and the corresponding occupational activities of those studied. As such the settings of these studies have tended to be taken for granted. Similarly, the suburban context of many middle-class community studies have not seen the construction of ‘place’ as an important factor in the study of these communities. Rather the places have acted as the backdrop in which social life has been ‘played out’. This lack of reflection can be associated with the historical emergence of such communities in the developing geography of the village, town, city and suburb, broadly understood as a passage through modernisation and industrialisation, a pattern of development primarily associated with industrial or ‘production-oriented’ change (Thrift and Williams, 1987; Lash and Urry, 1987).