The second ‘register’ we concentrate on is that of the neighbourhood. For Appadurai
(1990) the anthropological terrain of the ‘neighbourhood’ – in which sedentary and
circulating populations co-exist, is held up as emblematic of translocality. The term
‘neighbourhood’ is used to make reference to situated communities which are not
only sites for the production of subjectivities but also for the initiation, enactment,
performance and reproduction of meaningful social actions and activities which
are informed by multiple places elsewhere (Appadurai 2005). Neighbourhoods
thus function as expressions of locality through their agency, sociality and
reproducibility, and which have ‘both “traditional” (place-based) and “virtual”
(based in communications technologies) aspects’ (McKay 2006b: 199). Indeed,
the significance of neighbourhoods, particular districts and suburbs has been
highlighted by a host of authors as smaller-scale differentiations of transnational
spaces (Ehrkamp 2006, Frieson et al. 2006). Neighbourhoods however are not just
localized receptors for transnational processes; they are substantive social forms in
which local subjects are produced. In Wise’s chapter on the diasporic place-making
activities of Chinese inhabitants living in an Australian suburban neighbourhood,
this is exemplified by studying the Chinese community’s cultural and material