Public pedagogies, place and identity: an ethnographic study of an emerging postmodern community

Community is one of those ‘slippery terms’, something that is ‘nice to have’ as Zygmunt Baumann (2001) notes, but something that we don’t often stop to think about- it is just there. The significance of community can’t be overstated however, and the ways that human interactions and connections to space are mediated have much to do with how we understand and interact with our communities. The project that underpinned this dissertation sought to explore how ideas of community were constructed, represented and consumed by residents of a new ‘edge city’ located in south- east Queensland, Australia. Applying a cultural studies approach and drawing on Anthony Cohen’s (2004) ideas of the boundary of community, this dissertation suggests that mediations of community in the late-capitalist, postmodern world have taken on new meanings resulting in a shift in the way that individuals experience each other and the places they inhabit. In particular, the operation of public pedagogies deployed in consumer oriented mass communication artefacts including billboards, sales brochures and magazines, carry significant influence in determining how community is expressed and lived. Following an exploration of how various image and text-rich public pedagogical artefacts deploy ideas of community and a survey of discussions with residents of this new urban space, ideas on what community means in the current era are proffered.