‘Bangsa Malaysia’: global sport, the city and the mediated refurbishment of local identities

Abstract

The article addresses the processes involved in the international restructuration of the spatial economy and of spaces of identity. Specifically, the focus is on the ways in which powerful groups used a sporting event - the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games (Kuala Lumpur 98) - as part of an initiative to reshape and refurbish the ethnic core of Malaysian people in an attempt to attract a more mobile global capital. The paper draws from an ethnographic study of the conditions of practice at Kuala Lumpur 98. Analysis focuses on how political, economic, commercial and symbolic conditions shaped the media reproduction of the Games. Conclusions centre on the particularizing place commodification of Kuala Lumpur and the aesthetic illusion conjured up by cultural producers to mask the class, racialized, ethnic and gendered polarizations that characterize Malaysian culture.