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Thursday, 24 March 2011

What is it that makes a community?

Urban historian and sociologist Jaroslav Miller came to Australia from the Czech Republic to help him find out.

"There is a rich tradition of debate on the sociology of community in Australia," said Dr Miller, who has been a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies since October last year. His research is funded with a Group of Eight European Fellowship.

"One of the most commonly-used words in Australian newspapers is community and yet there is no consensus among historians and sociologists on what community actually is," he said.

At UWA Dr Miller is comparing the ‘new' with the ‘old'.

"I am interested in the complex process by which a medieval community has transformed itself into a modern society. Most medieval cities defined themselves with harmony and unity, but since the 16th century, most European urban settlements have been confronted with agents of change: with an influx of people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, reformation and/or significant shifts in the European economy.

"It was a gradual process that lasted several hundred years but I think it contributed to many cities in Europe losing the attributes of a community.

"Since the 19th century the European society has been increasingly based on industrialism and rationalism."

Is the sense of community stronger in Australia because it is a relatively new and young society, compared with society in European cities?

"Perhaps so," Dr Miller said. "A lot of literature on Australian communities is related to migration. So how do we form a community, a neighbourhood, with so many different people? How do we make unity out of diversity?"

He said these were especially important questions in Australia with its multicultural society and that he hoped to find some answers here.

"A significant sideline of my research here has been an approach from Czech communities in Perth and in other parts of Australia. Most of them fled from the old Czechoslovakia in the 1940s or in the 1960s. There were two waves of political refugees.

"They would like me to do some work on the communities of Czech exiles in Australia. So I might be back," he said.

Dr Miller will return to Palacky University in Olomouc, the capital of Moravia, later this month.

The Group of Eight offers eight annual fellowships to early career researchers in Europe to work in Go8 universities for up to six months. Each Fellowship is worth AUD 20,000.

The Fellowships are open to eligible researchers in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia.

Published in UWA News , 21 March 2011

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