Chin, Kar Yern 2018 History Thesis Title
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Chin, Kar Yern 2018 History Thesis Title: We Are What We Makan: Conceptions of Malaysian Food Practices, 1950s - 1970s Advisor: Professor Eiko Maruko Siniawer Advisor is Co-author: None of the above Second Advisor: Released: release now Contains Copyrighted Material: No We Are What We Makan: Conceptions of Malaysian Food Practices, 1950s - 1970s by KAR YERN CHIN Professor Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Advisor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in History WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts APRIL 16, 2018 Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Introduction 1 Chapter 1 16 - Uncovering Roots of Malay Dishes 18 - Community Beyond Malays 25 - Framing through Food 33 Chapter 2 42 - Roots of Modernity in the 1900s 44 - As Told by Ratnamala 47 - Economical Cooking Competitions 50 - A National Fruit Campaign 58 Chapter 3 73 - Malaysia as a Cosmopolitan Paradise 76 - Backgrounds of Domestic Culinary Experts and Her World 81 - Examining Food Categories 86 - Socioeconomic Disparities 96 Conclusion 104 Bibliography 110 Acknowledgements I am tremendously grateful to Professor Eiko Maruko Siniawer for her diligent assistance as my thesis advisor throughout the duration of the historical project. Had she not convinced me of the feasibility of the project, this thesis would not even have existed in the first place, and I would not be writing this acknowledgement right now. Having the opportunity to make sense of my often ambitious and wacky ideas by talking to her, and being able to share my concerns, doubts, and excitement with her has made the year much more meaningful and enjoyable. I’d also like to thank Professor Aparna Kapadia and Professor Anne Reinhardt for their helpful recommendations, particularly in research about food and cuisine. I also really appreciate being able to talk to them about my project and historical interests. A big thank you to Simon from the Malaysian Design Archive for providing me with important know-hows in navigating the archives in Malaysia, and for directing me to the online newspaper archive run by the National Library Board of Singapore, from which a lot of my primary sources were retrieved. A shout out to my friends Eleasha and Hannah, my favorite food buddies from Malaysia, without whom I would not have made it to Williams in the first place. Always grateful for your support and kindness. And a big thanks to Stephen and Tiffany, my new food buddies, to whom I owe my development in my culinary interests and skills. It’s been a pleasure cooking/eating with/for you; thanks to Angela for being my thesis buddy and a wonderful friend in general; thanks to Benjamin Drews cause, you know. Lastly, I’d like to thank my parents for being who they are, and for always being there for me when I needed it the most. They were also crucially helpful in finding places for my research in the urban sprawl that is Kuala Lumpur. In particular, I’d like to also thank my mother for being an inspiration for this project, as writing a history of women as passionate about cooking as her has always been something that I wanted to do. i ii Introduction A Brief Overview of Malaysia’s Independent Past—1950s to 1960s “At the stroke of midnight, a great roar tells the world: We are now a nation!” The Straits Times, August 31, 1957 As then Prime Minister-designate Tunku Abdul Rahman chanted “Merdeka!” seven times during Hari Merdeka (Independence Day), he was replied in a collective fervor by thousands gathered on the Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur. The Union Jack was lowered seven minutes after midnight, heralding the end of British colonialism. The birth of the Federation of Malaya was then witnessed by the crowd, as the Flag of Malaya was raised and “stirring notes” of the new national anthem, “Negaraku” (“My Country”), were played out to the optimistic and hopeful Malayans.1 Malayan independence was achieved by the Alliance Party headed by Tunku Abdul Rahman. The party consisted of a political union between the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), and Malayan Indian Congress (MIC), and was favored to win the Malayan electorate votes. Malaya then merged with former British colonies Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore to become the Federation of Malaysia on September 16, 1963, ending British colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The late 1950s to early 1970s were a tumultuous time for Malaysia. The country just survived Japanese occupation during World War II, communist insurgencies led by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), and the British colonial government’s administration, which controlled and subjugated Malayan dissidents. The British government’s policies, among other things, displaced Malay subsistence farmers to improve rice agriculture and relocated Chinese diasporic 1 “Merdeka!” The Straits Times, August 31, 1957. 1 communities to mitigate the powers of the MCP, which resulted in segregated communities. On August 9 1965, Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman expelled Singapore from Malaysia, as the People’s Action Party (PAP), the Singaporean party led by Lee Kuan Yew, was seen as a threat by UMNO when it decided to participate in Malaysia’s general election in 1964. Racial riots between Chinese and Malays then broke out on May 13, 1969, which led to the declaration of emergency and the dissolving of the Malaysian government. At 1970, the percentage of households in poverty in Peninsular Malaysia had been depressingly high—49.3 percent for the whole population, and 65 percent for bumiputera (a Malay term that referred to Malays and other native communities inhabiting Malaysia).2 Citizens were concerned with livelihood, malnutrition, and child welfare. In response, the Malaysian government launched a series of economic policies between the 1960s and 1970s aimed at eradicating poverty and developing an economy that was not dependent on past British foreign investments. The new government had to recover Malaysia from its upheavals and took on the task to rebuild the nation. As the founding of Malaysia led to the manifestation of a new national identity, it also complicated ethnic identities of Malays, Chinese, and Indians living in the region. It became an important juncture for these communities to think about and re-constitute themselves in the wake of the destructive and displacing events that happened not too long ago. Following the interethnic narrative of the Alliance party, the three groups (and the government) framed Malaysia as an interethnic union between them. Meanwhile, Malay writers continued to explore Malay identity, a complicated term adopted as an ethno-national one during the early twentieth century Malay nationalist movements, and their connections to the new nation-state. Chinese and 2 John H. Drabble, An Economic History of Malaysia: c. 1800-1990: the Transition to Modern Economic Growth (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 278; bumiputera translates to “sons of the soil.” 2 Indian immigrants who were brought in by the British to run their colonial economies before World War II also had to consider the ways in which national identity complicated their ties to their respective homelands.3 The new Malaysian citizens grappled with the constructed ethnic relations between the three communities that framed the narrative of independence as well as their own ethnic identities. The Central Question While research on Malaysian national history is abundant, often neglected is the role of food in the constitution of national and ethnic identities during the independence period. And studies on Malaysian food often focused on present-day Malaysia and do not explore how conceptions of Malaysian food came to be. Thus, I traced the roots of Malaysian food all the way back to the decades that marked the beginning of independent statehood in Malaysia. During this period, multiple strands and conceptions of domestic food practices by women went beyond the notion of a central, homogenous Malaysian cuisine. How did various kinds of Malaysian domestic food practices develop in the country during the late 1950s to early 1970s, the period during and after Malaysia’s independence from the British Empire? Domestic food practices in the context of this question mean cultural, social, and economic practices that relate to the production and consumption of food, often grouped according to ethnic communities in Malaysia, and conducted for personal and household meal preparations. Domestic cooking practices of women in Malaysian ethnic communities mixed with each other in processes of hybridity which made up and were central to a fluid understanding of Malaysian cuisine at that time. From these processes, such women, and even 3 Drabble, An Economic History, 33. 3 the Malaysian government, developed their own conceptions of Malaysian food. Together, they comprised a hybrid Malaysian cuisine that not only reflected the identities of the ethnic communities but a new national identity that united these communities. Central to my argument about Malaysian food is the notion of food hybridity, the mixing and blending that happened between domestic food practices, which is an extension and application of cultural hybridity by Homi Bhabha in response to Edward Said. Edward Said’s situating of Europe as the imaginary center and construction of the Orient as a fixed other in Orientalism develops a binary epistemology that “necessitates a sharp distinction between colonizers and the colonized.”4 Homi Bhabha critiques this approach, as to him, Said’s framework suggests “that colonial power and discourse is possessed entirely by the coloniser.”5 Bhabha conceives then of different ways that discourse, knowledge and identity of the colonized are not controlled by their colonizers, and creates his own theoretical position called “hybridity.” I look at prominent British postcolonial theorist Robert Young to help me better unpack Bhabha’s complicated idea of cultural hybridity.