ABSTRACT
The contemporary use of the word and concept “multiculturalism” might soon pass. Indeed, it is the subject of an intense revision by some conservative politicians. The issues to which it refers, however, will not soon fade away, for these issues are manifestations of a much more complicated process: the deconstruction of our human global cultures. The implication of this is just beginning to be comprehended. The multiplicity of cultures that now contribute to the identity of a large city like Sydney means that uncertainty will continually disturb the social-ecological order. This chapter has been informed by fieldwork research carried out in the Sydney suburb of Auburn, the demographic of which comprises a large and diverse immigrant population.
Large dynamic systems with many degrees of freedom, like a society, are continually self-organising. This means that social systems are complex and function as non-equal phenomena whereby the system itself is embedded within a multiplicity of ideas, policies, activities, values and beliefs, and these all operate relatively separately. These emerging interactive dynamics are not predictable. Scientific and experimental modelling cannot easily understand their nature. A contemporary multicultural community is so heterogeneous that the pathways of connection between communities are weakly determined. Nonetheless, there remains a mutual process of symbiotic exchange that involves complex connections between people and their environments. It works by way of a cultural poeisis generating a creative exchange involving improvisations of contact between people from different language and heritage communities. This interaction dissolves away and, at the same time, adds to the complex social situations.
Our modern Australian community has always been in the process of an unfolding multicultural complexity. Our private and public/communal intentions are as various as is our human mix, and therefore this social ecological building process will never be straightforward.
