From World City to the World in One City: Liverpool Through Malay Lives

ISBN-13: 9781118827734 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 304 str.

Tim Bunnell

Opis

From World City to the World in One City examines changing geographies of Liverpool through and across the lives of Malay seamen who arrived in the city during its final years as a major imperial port.

• Draws upon life histories and memories of people who met at the Malay Club in Liverpool until its closure in 2007, to examine changing urban sites and landscapes as well as the city's historically shifting constitutive connections
• In considering the historical presence of Malay seamen in Liverpool, draws attention to a group which has previously received only passing mention in historical and geographical studies of both that city, and of multi-ethnic Britain more widely
• Demonstrates that Liverpool-based Malay men sustained social connections with Southeast Asia long before scholars began to use terms such as 'globalization' or 'transnationalism'
• Based on a diverse range of empirical data, including interviews with members of the Malay Club in Liverpool and interviews in Southeast Asia, as well as archival and secondary sources
• Accessibly-written for non-academic audiences interested in the history and urban social geography of Liverpool

From World City to the World in One City examines changing geographies of Liverpool through and across the lives of Malay seamen who arrived in the city during its final years as a major imperial port.

Recenzje

‘Bunnell’s book demonstrates the range of ways in which Liverpool was transformed through the presence in the city of those who had left the alam Melayu (Malay world). It is a study of “the lives of people in places” (p. 14) which takes seriously Massey’s (1994) work on a global sense of place. It makes a clear contribution to advancing the field of global urban studies and is a must read for those of us with an intellectual stake in the future of the field.’ – Kevin Ward, Urban Geography.

‘In situating Malay lives within broader political economic, cultural, and national histories – again, across times and spaces – Bunnell has created a text that will be useful for those interested in transnational phenomena that predate globalization as we know it today. His beautifully rendered moving ethnography will also be of interest to scholars concerned with the contemporary politics of ethnicity and multiculturalism, especially as they are marshaled in a capitalistic vein to create value for a city that once profoundly underestimated colored seamen’s worth.’ – Jacqueline Nassy Brown, Cultural Geographies.

 

Spis treści

Series Editors’ Preface vii

List of Figures viii

Abbreviations and Acronyms ix

Glossary of Non–English Terms xi

Acknowledgements xiv

Prologue 1

1 Introduction: Locating Malay Liverpool 5

Worlds of Connection, Worlds in Cities 10

Sites and Routes of Fieldwork 14

Organization of the Book 20

2 From the Malay World to the Malay Atlantic 27

World City Liverpool in the Alam Melayu 28

Malays in the ‘New York of Europe’ … and in New York 39

The Malay Atlantic 45

3 Home Port Liverpool and its Malay Places 56

Somewhere Worth Staying? 57

Remembering Cosmopolitanism and its Limits 62

Home and Away 68

Places to Be Malay 72

4 Merseyside Malaise and the Unmaking of British Malaya 83

Transnationalization and Malaysianization 84

Student Connections: From Kirkby to the Inner City 90

Urban Malaise 94

5 Diasporic (Re)connections 107

In Search of Lost Ancestors 108

Diaspora Envy and Worldly Malay]ness 114

Old Malays versus the Islamized New Malay 121

6 Relocating Expectations of Modernity 135

Kuala Lumpur: Journeys to the New Centre of the Malay World 136

Tandas]ization: Excremental Transition in Malacca 144

Returning to Singapore: From Third World to First 150

7 Community in the Capital of Culture 165

The Place of Community 166

Glasgowing and Beyond: Towards Multicultural Regeneration 172

Marking Malays(ia) on the Map of the World in One City 178

8 The Last Hurrah: From Independence Celebrations and Interculturalism to Club Closure 188

Merdeka on the Mersey 189

Performing Malay]ness on Jermyn Street 194

Community Conflict and Urban Interculturalism 198

Death in the Place of Community 202

9 Conclusion: Catching up with Kuala Lumpur? 211

Comparative, Conceptual and Methodological Returns 216

Key Lifepaths 227

Archival and Documentary Sources 231

References 233

Index 250

O autorze

Tim Bunnell is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor: A Critical Geography of Intelligent Landscapes (2004).

Blurb

From World City to the World in One City examines changing geographies of Liverpool through and across the lives of Malay seamen who arrived in the city during its final years as a major imperial port.

Tim Bunnell demonstrates how local and transitional Malay social networks were anchored in specific sites in Liverpool for more than half a century. The life histories and memories of the people who met at two successive Malay Club sites, initially in the south docks and subsequently in the Liverpool 8 area of the city, provide a novel window into Liverpool′s changing urban geography and long distance connections. Bunnell begins by tracing the seafaring lives and labour of young Malay men in the mid–twentieth century when the commercial reach of maritime world city Liverpool extended to the Malay World region. He then examines Liverpool′s post–imperial commercial demise and the intertwined economic "rise" of parts of Southeast Asia that Malay seamen had left behind. Finally, the book considers recent culture–led economic development strategies in Liverpool – particularly its branding as the "world in one city" – and their implications for Malay ex–seamen, their families and Malaysian citizens.

From World City to the World in One City draws upon interviews and participant observation in Liverpool, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as a range of archival, documentary, literary and popular cultural sources.