Towards a moral ecology of the city: A new form of place-based identity and social action in Penang, Malaysia

Abstract

This article discusses a new form of identity and social action that is articulated by its proponents as specifically local and place-based, urban, regional and multi-ethnic, but also potentially global in relevance. Rapid development has fostered a growing awareness in Penang, Malaysia, that intensified urbanisation has created many problems – both material and social – that are truly shared across groups, and that addressing them requires an inclusive, holistic attention to urban space itself. In this view, everyone and everything in a particular place should properly be seen as linked: a moral ecology of the city. The analysis uses ethnographic data to show how members of a new social action group in Penang organised themselves around this principle and how they found in the 'power of place' a new tool with the potential to enhance civic consciousness, increase popular political participation, overcome an unresolved colonial legacy of ethnic divisiveness, and improve the quality of everyone's life in t...