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Kampung Rules: Landscape and the Contested Government of Urban(e) Malayness

Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570, geotgb{at}nus.edu.sg

Kampung ('village') habits and traits have been widely invoked in 'explanations' of inappropriate urban conduct among Malays in Malaysia. State-sponsored rural-urban migration for Malays from the 1970s was bound up with a conception of urbanisation as a remedy for the supposedly socioeconomically debilitating effects of kampung life. Yet many such migrants, especially in the national capital, Kuala Lumpur, came to live in squatter kampungs. A dominant Malay nationalist rationality of government has long understood squatter settlements as a failure of attempts to urbanise the Malay. Even when squatters are relocated to public flats, 'kampung values' have been invoked to account for inappropriate social conduct. However, kampung norms and forms are increasingly drawn upon in authoritative conceptions of Malay and even Malaysian urbanity. 'Kampung rules' for Kuala Lumpur's physical and moral landscape are shown to emerge from the contested government of urban(e) Malayness.

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