2002b: Kampung rules: landscape and the contested government of urban(e) Malayness

Summary. 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 ats, ‘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