Spatialising the politics of coexistence: gui ju (规矩) in Singapore

Abstract

Geographers and other social scientists have developed ways to describe and analyse people's routine and fleeting encounters with others in cities experiencing migrant‐led diversification. Much of this work illuminates the significance of everyday rubbing along, but how diversity is lived and negotiated through specific principles of interaction and exchange has so far remained obscure. As such, the politics of fleeting encounters in public spaces have not been explained. Further, the overwhelming majority of conceptualisations of coexistence draw from European and North American contexts. Through an empirically grounded analysis of the principles of social organisation (known as gui ju in Singapore), I demonstrate that everyday norms of civility emerge as ways of boundary‐breaking and boundary‐making in shared spaces in Singapore's Jurong West. Addressing the potentials and limitations of coexisting with difference, I clarify how diversity is managed and negotiated in the everyday vis‐à‐vis uneven interconnections between people of different backgrounds. I discuss the prosaic and situated ways in which positive and strained relations can occur simultaneously and situate these in a wider structural context. I argue that the geography of coexistence is constituted through socio‐spatial processes where the politics of living with diversity are mediated through, although not limited to, fleeting encounters. Gui ju clarifies the messiness inherent in shared spaces and, effectively, filter and curtail diversity by perpetuating the normativities of acceptable behaviour in public.