Monsoon Marketplace

Abstract

Monsoon Marketplace uncovers the entangled vernacular cultures of capitalist modernity, mass consumption, and media spectatorship in two understudied postcolonial Asian cities across three important historical moments. Juxtaposing Manila and Singapore, it analyzes print and audiovisual representations of popular commercial and leisure spaces including night markets, amusement parks, main streets and high streets, department stores, supermarkets, bungalows, coffee shops, movie theaters, and shopping malls during colonial occupation in the 1930s, national development in the 1960s, and neoliberal globalization in the 2000s. Instead of treating capitalism, media, and modernity as overarching systems or processes, it examines how their configurations and experiences are contingent, variable, pluralistic, and archipelagic. In these disparate sites, modernity is revealed to unfold as divergent, overlapping forms of air-conditioned, sanitary modernity, languid modernity, and delinquent, fugitive modernity. Departing from critical theories and cultural studies that see consumerism and spectatorship as sources of alienation, docility, and fantasy, the book explores how they create new possibilities for agency, collectivity, and resistance.