Strangers in a Strange Land

Surfers Paradise, Postmodernism and Material Culture

Gordon Fletcher
A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours
Faculty of Humanities, Griffith University
3 June 1994

Chapter One — Introduction
- A Strange Utopia
Chapter Two — Postmodernism, “Reality” and Material Culture
- Interpreting Things
- “Finding Reality.”
- Societies of Others
- Encountering the Boundaries of Social Life
Chapter Three — Representations of Surfers Paradise
- This is the “Real” City! Is this the “Real” City?
- Trophies for the Gazing Consumer
- Imagining Difference, Seeing Difference
Chapter Four — Other Elements and Different Representations
- Japanese and Ethnographic Others
- The Residents — the Unrepresented Others
- The Researcher — the Theoried Other
Chapter Five — Conclusions
- There Are Eight Million Stories in the Naked City…
Figures
Endnotes
Bibliography of References Cited