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From: "Frank Conlon" <
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To: <
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Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2011 2:04 AM
Subject: H-ASIA: REVIEW H-Net Review Publication: 'Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya,
and CyberJaya: Malaysian Cities and Societies in Transition' (fwd)
> H-ASIA
> May 25, 2011
>
> Book Revierw (orig. pub. H-Urban) by Frank Chua on Richard Baxstrom.
> _Houses in Motion: the Experience of Place and the Problem of Belief in
> Urban Malaysia_ and Ross King. _ Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya: Negotiating
> Urban Space in Malaysia_.
>
> (x-post H-Review)
> ************************************************************************
> From: H-Net Staff <revhelp@mail.h-net.msu.edu>
>
> Richard Baxstrom. Houses in Motion: the Experience of Place and the
> Problem of Belief in Urban Malaysia. Stanford Stanford University
> Press, 2008. ix + 283 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-5891-8.
>
> Ross King. Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya: Negotiating Urban Space in
> Malaysia. Honolulu Asian Studies Association of Australia in
> association with University of Hawaii Press, 2008. xxviii + 321 pp.
> $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8248-3318-3.
>
> Reviewed by Frank Chua (Mansfield University)
> Published on H-Urban (May, 2011)
> Commissioned by Alexander Vari
>
> Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, and CyberJaya: Malaysian Cities and
> Societies in Transition
>
> The urban arena of Kuala Lumpur, like many contemporary Asian urban
> spaces, is a mixture of new clean lines of skyscraper modernity with
> its highly ordered spaces and the haphazard chaotic sprawl of less
> developed and older communal sections. The latter are continuously
> being redeveloped to renegotiate them into the larger vision and
> trajectory of city planners. The political and religious ethos of the
> country may sometimes test the geographical and cultural limits of
> the historic city, and a resulting development would be the creation
> of another completely new urban space; in this context, Putrajaya,
> which is an indigenous and Islamic urban identity. Even so, such
> expansions may not be adequate or congruent with other simultaneous
> conceptual directions and further developments typically followed; in
> another particular instance, Cyberjaya, which is the physical
> manifestation of Malaysia's conceptualized frame of techno-media
> imagined space, the Multimedia Super Corridor.
>
> Typical of newly industrialized economies, the pace of such urban
> renewal and development often exceeds the capacities of local
> communities to accommodate such rapid changes within their cultural
> memory, and sweeping physical and material changes of the landscape
> are often more jarring and dislocating rather than being simply
> inconvenient. The Indian neighborhood of Kuala Lumpur's suburban
> Brickfields is a prime example, as residents responded in a variety
> of ways to accept, accommodate, negotiate, reform, or even reject
> outright the morphological changes and physical disruption to their
> everyday experiences. These intrusions were often viewed as an
> assault on their past collective memories of their conceptual
> identities of home and place. _Houses in Motion _records these
> challenges and the humanistic responses to such encroachments within
> the historical and multicultural interstices of Brickfields's
> populace. Likewise, _Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, _albeit through an
> architectural and urban studies perspective, sieves the dynamics of
> history, politics, race, and religion in the growth and design of
> Malaysia's most vibrant urban centers. Both works establish the
> connection between societies and their places of work, home, and
> everyday living, and provide the reader with a better understanding
> of the residents' adaptation to their changing domains as well as a
> conceptual framework of spatial and architectural evolution of
> Malaysia's urban landscapes.
>
> In _Houses in Motion,_ the bulk and core of Baxstrom's study focuses
> on the ethnographic fieldwork among Brickfield's residents over a
> spread of fourteen months which was done over two periods of
> residencies. His findings were not only culled from ninety
> ethnographic interviews with fifty-three people ranging from one to
> nine hours, but also from less formal participation in public
> activities and frequent casual conversations. These nonetheless
> provided localized access to often sensitive but yet open discussions
> that gave a more intimate connection to his subjects. Despite the
> general view that Brickfields is an Indian enclave, the population
> pool is less homogeneous and more diverse, and the author's
> interviewees included Chinese, Malays, and even Pakistanis from
> wide-ranging socioeconomic backgrounds. The book itself is divided
> into two broad areas covering the history of Brickfields and the
> daily living experiences of its residents. The first half of chapter
> 1, "The Founding of Brickfields," and chapter 2, "The Malayan
> Emergency," explain the historical context and the origins of
> Brickfields. In the second half of chapter 3, "Law, Justice,
> Disappearance," chapter 4, "Strangers, Counterfeiters, and
> Gangsters," and chapter 5, "Ambivalent Encounters in the City," the
> focus is on the legal process, concepts of justice, and everyday
> experiences in Brickfields between 2000-02. As the author notes, the
> purpose of the book is to study how the residents engaged and defined
> themselves even though many were excluded from the processes of the
> policies that governed their neighborhood.
>
> King's _Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya _also involves groundwork which
> literally led him to the streets but this is a smaller contribution
> to his study. Having access to interviews with city planners,
> academics, architects (the author's profession), and corporate
> executives contributed to a more sweeping vista of the changing and
> transitory nature of urban landscapes. The author's analysis and
> interpretation of historical forces as well as more recent political
> and religious/ethnic development amongst the _bumiputras _(sons of
> the soil) or indigenous Malays, provides an awareness of the tensions
> and angst that still pervade the cities' atmospheres today,
> especially on issues of race. These together with his trained
> observations of the designs and architecture of the grandiose public
> monuments plus the spatial layout of the land and cityscapes, tease
> multiple themes and symbolisms of various cultural forces that have
> shaped the evolution of these two cities.
>
> The book is divided into five parts: chapter 1, "The Phenomenal
> City," reflects on the diversity and fluidity of Kuala Lumpur where
> multiple meanings and tensions could be read in its architecture and
> urban spaces; chapter 2, "The Contested City," discusses in greater
> detail the politics of race relations in the social production of
> urban space where the hegemony of Chinese capitalism in Kuala Lumpur
> is a constant concern to the indigenous but less urbanized Malays;
> chapter 3, "The Imagined City," sees the creation of a unique Malay
> urban sphere, Putrajaya, and the participation of Malaysia in
> techno-media industries in the development of Cyberjaya and the
> Multimedia Super Corridor; chapter 4, "The Forgotten City," debates
> the preference toward a Middle East orientation in Putrajaya's
> creation at the expense of earlier and more localized Malay culture;
> and chapter 5, "The Metamorphic City," witnesses the ongoing
> evolution of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya and the different forces that
> are still contesting for influence and space. As the author notes,
> their final products are incomplete and it remains to be seen whether
> pluralistic Kuala Lumpur or Malay-Islamic Putrajaya will represent
> the future of Malaysia.
>
> A common theme in both works is the pivotal role of Islam in shaping
> the identity of the emerging modern Malay state. Noting of its urban
> origins, Baxstrom refers to the _dakwah_ movement as "an assemblage
> of ideas, trends, activities, and organization that seek to promote
> Islam" (p. 73). Heralding a return to the golden age of Islam, this
> renaissance movement adhered to the Arab model of Islam over local
> religious institutions and _adat _(customs). However, then Prime
> Minister Mohammad Mahathir also played an increasingly active role in
> Malay-Muslim identity by announcing the historical legacy of Islam in
> Malaysia and its relevancy to not just matters of faith, but also in
> areas of science, economy, and technology. Citing his 1986 discourse
> on Islam, _The Challenge _and the earlier 1970 _The Malay Dilemma_,
> Mahathir asserted that true Islamic observances should preside over
> indigenous _adat_ of polytheistic origins. The government's active
> debate and focus on Islam's role in Malaysian society nonetheless
> made non-Muslim and non-Malay communities like Brickfields more wary
> of articulating a substantial stake in local governance.
>
> King's interpretation of the role of Islam centers more on historical
> forces of race, particularly on what is seen as the invasive threat
> of the Chinese immigrants and their economic domination. Also citing
> heavily from Mahathir's _The Malay Dilemma, _and the implications of
> a racially divided society, King observes that the economic clout of
> the Chinese and their historical and current dominion over Kuala
> Lumpur are challenged and countered in the spatial development of the
> new urbanscapes. The Chinese capital accumulation and entrenched
> positions as captains of industry have financially enabled them to
> claim Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, as a predominantly Chinese
> hold. This spatial control prompted the Malays to assert themselves
> as a unifying _bangsa Melayu _(Malay race) that is synonymous with
> the _negara _(nation).
>
> A point worth noting is that this assertion of Malay identity and
> race is fundamentally flawed. As argued in Benedict Anderson's and
> Edward Said's works, "imagined communities" of nations and races are
> constructions of European cultural imaginations in the nineteenth
> century.[1] Historical sources point otherwise that the Malay
> Peninsula people are actually made up of Minangkabaus, Bugis,
> Achehnese, Banjarese, and others. In the aftermath of the 1969 racial
> riots, public monuments symbolizing Malay nationalism became urgent
> and, inspired by the earlier Muzium Negara (National Museum), more
> modernist but Malay-influenced architecture took root; the Dayabumi
> Complex and Menara Maybank were exemplary. This Malayanization of
> public monuments was further expanded to sprawling Shah Alam which
> was seen as an idyllic escape from the more congested
> Chinese-dominated Kuala Lumpur. There, the ornamental lake and the
> Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Mosque would demonstrate how not
> just public monuments but urban space themselves could be claimed by
> the Malay Muslims.
>
> However as the author notes, Kuala Lumpur itself is not strictly
> Chinese as contrasted with Putrajaya which has defined itself as
> Malay-Islamic. Kuala Lumpur is more open in bringing the races
> together, especially in her shopping malls. There are churches,
> mosques, and Chinese and Indian temples scattered throughout the
> city. Such inclusiveness could also be seen in Brickfields. The large
> Chinese communities which have established themselves since colonial
> times, albeit in their ethnic quarters, have a common identity
> problem with the Indians as they are also viewed for their
> "otherness" as non-_bumiputras. _This persistent "otherness"
> typically views the Malay-controlled authorities such as Dewan
> Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL) or City Hall and Public Works
> Department (PWD) as intrusive and not serving the overall interest of
> the predominantly non-Malay residents of Brickfields.
>
> In the "The Imagined City" (chapter 3), King notes that the vision
> for the future of Malaysia's cities broaches both the pragmatic and
> the ideal. Mahathir's and Anwar's insistence on Malaysia being a
> major player in the Information Age saw the creation of the
> Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), a Silicon Valley-type business
> region, and its urban center Cyberjaya. At the same time, an
> increased awareness of Malay-Muslim identity both politicizes and
> imagines Putrajaya toward a Middle East identification. This Islamic
> bent, as the author points, is sadly nothing Malayan in origin, but a
> result of religious identification with the Arab world. Even then,
> the Islamic geometries found in the buildings can also be partly
> traced to the American Art Deco revival of the 1980s.
>
> In the next chapter "The Forgotten City," King explains how the
> selective process of Malaysia's reinterpretation of the past serves
> only to mesh with Mahathir's own interpretation of history which
> focuses heavily on Malay identification with Islamic culture.
> Pre-Islamic indigenous practices such as animistic worship or even
> Hindu rituals are conveniently excluded in the architecture and
> landscaping of Putrajaya. Unlike Kuala Lumpur's edifices, earlier
> non-Islamic or non-Malay influences such as Victorian, Buddhist,
> Indian, or Chinese historical roles would also not be retained or
> remembered. This is not true however of the more recent Western
> influences. Putrajaya's architecture renders a confluence of Islamic
> origins as well as Western modernism. It is both Middle Eastern and
> Western in conceptualization and this is reflective of the nation's
> institutional insecurity of its own origins.
>
> Despite the efforts of the authorities to control and frame religious
> practices and daily living as desired by the Islamic-leaning
> authorities, the urban spaces are frequently appropriated by the
> local communities to represent their own daily needs and aspirations.
> In Brickfields, Baxstrom notes the Hindu community's reform efforts
> that replicate many of the state ideals of correct citizenship, even
> if they are not Islamic. The Sri Murugan's Centre combines _bhakti
> _(worship) practice with secular educational activities (chapter 5).
> These tutorial programs reinforce the notion that the Hindu community
> is not simply an "other" to Malaysian citizenry, and also assert the
> more pluralistic outlook that the educated Malaysian subject is also
> a spiritual subject.
>
> Even then, the divine and the supernatural of temple deities cannot
> be ignored when even the state's Kuala Lumpur Monorail agency had to
> confer with the local religious authorities over a reported accident
> involving ghostly forces! Such non-legal engagement reflects the
> gravity in which the state views the role of spiritual intervention
> in modern urban planning. Such engagement often works in favor of the
> temples to select a more auspicious time for relocation as well as
> extract a substantial compensatory settlement. However in Baxtrom's
> study, belief itself is not limited to the divine sphere or religious
> institutions. Belief is more a conviction of one's rightful place and
> relationship to the immediate world. Brickfield's residents may have
> little influence in the formal legal process of municipal planning,
> but their grassroots engagements suggest that they invariably define
> and create a world they can live and believe in.
>
> In the "The Metamorphic City" (chapter 5), King points that the daily
> economics of living transforms Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya into a more
> diverse reality of multiple worlds than the ordered spaces envisioned
> by the government. Even then, conflict among the authorities could be
> seen in the perpetual rivalry for Islamic legitimacy between the
> United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and Parti Islam
> SeMalaysia_ _(PAS). Both parties champion and constantly clash over
> their projected views of Islamic identity. However, larger
> international forces are at play, and Islamic revivalism from the
> Middle East to Indonesia is redefining Islamic discourse in Malaysia.
> Everyday life in the real spaces of Kuala Lumpur, diverse street
> cultures still operate and challenge the notion of a perfect Islamic
> world. The bars and night clubs of Jalan P. Ramlee, Bukit Bintang,
> and Chinatown are spreading and even Malay Muslim women are observed
> to have consumed alcoholic beverages. The wide availability of
> pirated DVDs and VCDs of pornographic and other dubious content are
> easily found in the back alley stalls. As King points out, such
> spaces are more Chinese-controlled and also venues for global market
> commodities rather than Malay Muslim-inspired. Such diversity is
> further asserted by carnivals and other religious festivals. The
> annual Hindu Thaipusam festival and the spectacle of the _kavadi_
> carriers fascinate the public imagination. The raucous cacophony of
> Chinese New Year celebrations and the Formula-1 Grand Prix, plus the
> inclusive Malay Muslim Hari Raya festivities suggest the
> appropriation of public space by other forces than the state.
>
> However, it is the spaces of the shopping malls that point to the
> power of modern consumption in shaping the future of Malaysian
> society. The ephemeral and fluid nature of globalist trends from
> afar, and also demand for the newest and perpetual changes, create an
> amorphous space that transcends race and religion. Suria-Kuala Lumpur
> City Centre (KLCC), the Mines, and Mid-Valley Megamall are cases in
> point. The communities have been brought together to these and other
> shopping malls in an environment of modern consumption. King refers
> to such markets of global commodities as "postmodern hypespace" where
> the superficial simulation of places from afar creates a sense of
> disconnectedness with no anchor to an actual place or home.
>
> Such placelessness is further exacerbated by the promotion of
> Cyberjaya and the cyberspace world where even whole temples have been
> demolished and recreated in virtual forms. In conjunction with the
> MSC discourse, there has been a proliferation of private colleges and
> schools in both information and creative technologies using shopping
> malls as premises. This, plus the relocation of leading multicommunal
> institutes such as Limkokwing University College of Creative
> Technology (LCIT) to Cyberjaya, will likely change the more ordered
> Muslim landscape of Cyberjaya-Putrajaya. Despite this potential, it
> is the city of Kuala Lumpur on which the author pins his hopes for
> the discourse of a new Malaysian society that has divided itself
> since independence. Largely because of her history and inherently
> transgressive representations of space and practices, rather than the
> imagined spaces of Putrajaya and Cyberjaya, Kuala Lumpur may provide
> the antidote to the repressed discourse of ethnic minorities and
> ultimately unite the country.
>
> Baxstrom's _Houses in Motion _is a revised version of his
> dissertation in which his field research is the core foundation of
> the study. The narrow geographical focus of the research belies the
> origins of the project but the broader ethnographic study of culture
> and politics in urban redevelopment is its main contribution. Readers
> interested in issues of race, governance, and the transformation of
> Malaysia's urban landscapes will find Baxstrom's work relevant to the
> growing body of Malaysian urban studies. Similarly, King's _Kuala
> Lumpur and Putrajaya_ falls within the same scholarly field, and
> draws partially from his earlier article "Re-writing the City:
> Putrajaya as Representation" (2007), with a critical analysis of
> recent political and social developments. Despite its juxtaposition
> to Putrajaya, Cyberjaya is minimally covered in a dozen pages or less
> that seem inadequate to the larger role that Cyberjaya and the MSC
> plays in Malaysia's quest for modernity.[2] There is also the
> architectural critique of the cities' more significant edifices and
> landscapes where there is an element of subjectivity in the aesthetic
> interpretation of some of the buildings. However, such subjectivity
> is intrinsic in such aesthetic perception and it does not take away
> the impressive scope of this work and the author's apparent feel for
> the pulse of the Malaysian people. In the larger picture, both works
> draw from critical historical studies and social theories and provide
> an invaluable contribution to the field of Malaysian urban studies,
> politics, and society.[3]
>
> Notes
>
> [1]. See Benedict Anderson,_ Imagined Communities _(New York: Verso,
> 1991); and Edward Said, _Orientalism _(New York: Vintage, 1994).
>
> [2]. For a more comprehensive study of Cyberjaya and the MSC, readers
> may want to check Tim Bunnell's _Malaysia,_ _Modernity and the
> Multimedia Corridor _(London: Routledge, 2004).
>
> [3]. Readers may also want to check Goh Beng Lan's _Modern Dreams: An
> Inquiry into Power, Cultural Production and the Cityscape in
> Contemporary Urban Penang, Malaysia _(Ithaca: Cornell University
> Southeast Asia Program, 2002) for a similar study on another Malaysia
> city with a large Chinese population.
>
> Citation: Frank Chua. Review of Baxstrom, Richard, _Houses in Motion:
> the Experience of Place and the Problem of Belief in Urban Malaysia_
> and
> King, Ross, _Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya: Negotiating Urban Space in
> Malaysia_. H-Urban, H-Net Reviews. May, 2011.
> URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30525
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
> Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
> ****License.
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