Italo-australian transnational houses: Built forms enhancing social capital

Abstract

The literature reveals that culture, as a way of life, is a factor determining the house's spatial form, which, in turn, can contribute to the construction and/or enhancement of social capital. Scholars also stress that in the past the study of the relationship between houses' spatial form and social capital has focused on physical spatial environments at macro scale, neglecting the investigation of micro-scale housing. Namely, regardless of the interest to this relationship, direct assessment of the extent to which the spatial form of transnational houses contributes to the formation and enhancement of social capital in a host built environment is still rare in the field. The specific objective of this paper is to explore how the spatial form of Italian transnational houses in Australia contributed to the formation of social capital. It is argued that the spatial form of houses built by Italian migrants in post WWII Brisbane was conceptualized as means of re-establishing and enhancing social activities and/or interactions, and therefore contributed to the formation and enhancement of social capital. In order to provide an answer to the main question, the system of social activities performed within the domestic setting was investigated. Data obtained from visual material and interviews with participants was analyzed in order to reveal how the spatial form of Italian transnational houses enhanced social capital.