Monsoon Marketplace: Inscriptions and Trajectories of Consumer Capitalism and Urban Modernity in Singapore and Manila
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Monsoon Marketplace: Inscriptions and Trajectories of Consumer Capitalism and Urban Modernity in Singapore and Manila By Fernando Piccio Gonzaga IV A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Trinh T. Minh-ha, Chair Professor Samera Esmeir Professor Jeffrey Hadler Spring 2014 ©2014 Fernando Piccio Gonzaga IV All Rights Reserved Abstract Monsoon Marketplace: Inscriptions and Trajectories of Consumer Capitalism and Urban Modernity in Singapore and Manila by Fernando Piccio Gonzaga IV Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric University of California, Berkeley Professor Trinh T. Minh-ha, Chair This study aims to trace the genealogy of consumer capitalism, public life, and urban modernity in Singapore and Manila. It examines their convergence in public spaces of commerce and leisure, such as commercial streets, department stores, amusement parks, coffee shops, night markets, movie theaters, supermarkets, and shopping malls, which have captivated the residents of these cities at important historical moments during the 1930s, 1960s, and 2000s. Instead of treating capitalism and modernity as overarching and immutable, I inquire into how their configuration and experience are contingent on the historical period and geographical location. My starting point is the shopping mall, which, differing from its suburban isolation in North America and Western Europe, dominates the burgeoning urban centers of Southeast Asia. Contrary to critical and cultural theories of commerce and consumption, consumer spaces like the mall have served as bustling hubs of everyday life in the city, shaping the parameters and possibilities of identity, collectivity, and agency without inducing reverie or docility. Focusing on logics, functions, and processes that are said to be characteristic of the mall, such as monumentality, enclosure, prestige, modernity, and spectacle, I uncover their emergence and variation in prior consumer spaces across different periods and locations. Delving into the archive, I analyze the spatial, literary, and visual cultures of these milieus. I highlight changes in the form, meaning, and usage of significant words, images, ideas, narratives, objects, practices, and spaces commonly associated with the realities of consumer capitalism, public life, leisure time, and urban modernity. Across the various chapters, I pursue several threads: Firstly, I explore different forms of modernity, particularly sanitary modernity, a regime of health, morality, beauty, and order, which the government applies to the cityscape and its population. As discernible in its temporality and influence, I trace how its character shifts from evangelical religion in the 1930s, to national development in the 1960s, to neoliberal cosmopolitanism in the 2000s. Secondly, I discuss the passage from a bazaar economy to a formal system, with its corresponding changes to the norms of commercial arrangement, consumer behavior, and visual perception. Thirdly, I look at shifts in the dominant basis of social value in the city from the display of material wealth, to the emulation of movie stardom, to the pursuit of an excessive lifestyle. Lastly, I examine different modes of spectacle, which commercial and leisure spaces have deployed in order to attract consumers, including those that produce absorption and immersion in spectators. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Background and Significance – 1 Scope and Methodology – 5 Definition of Terms – 9 Outline – 13 Part I – 1930s Manila Chapter 1 – Calle Escolta: Walled Street of Modernity – 17 The Divine Intervention of Sanitary Modernity – 18 Public Figures of Transition – 25 Symbolic Enclosure – 32 Exceptionality and Exemplarity in the Commercial Street – 37 Chapter 2 – The Eyes of the Consumer: Spectatorship and Consumption in the Commercial Street – 41 From Theatrical to Cinematic Spectatorship – 42 Consuming Window Displays – 47 The Aura of Social Prestige – 52 Part II – 1930s Singapore Chapter 3 – Between Spaces of Repose: The Production of Public Life – 59 The Landscape of an Entrepôt – 61 Languid Modernity – 69 Circulatory Labor and Physical Culture – 75 Imperial Monumentality – 78 Chapter 4 – From Spectacle to Spectacle: Leisure and Mobility in the Department Store and the Amusement Park – 82 Worlds of Commodities – 82 The Rise of Modern Commercial Enclosures – 85 Worlds of Spectacles – 90 The Experience of the Spectacle – 95 Carnival Spirit and Modern Life – 100 Part III – 1960s Singapore Chapter 5 – Temporalities of Development: Sanitary Modernity and Emergent Nationhood – 107 The Gaze of Pragmatic Governmentality – 108 The Insurgency of Crowds and Orators – 112 The Discipline of Public Housing – 117 Coffee-Shop Time – 121 Chapter 6 – The Logic of the Bazaar: The Itinerant Commerce of Night Markets – 126 The Rise of the Pasar Malam – 126 The Image of the Bazaar – 130 The Heart of the Entrepôt – 132 Operation Hawker Control – 136 i Part IV – 1960s Manila Chapter 7 – Panoramic Popularity in the New Commercial Street: The Everyday Prestige of Movie Stardom – 142 The Panorama of Downtown – 142 Everyday Spectacle – 148 Movie Stardom – 152 Part V – Millennial Southeast Asia Chapter 8 – Zoning the Megacity: The Cosmopolitan Modernity of Supermalls – 159 Megacity Manila – 160 The Neoliberal Enclosure of Zoning – 163 One-Stop Shopping – 167 The Social Value of Millennial Heroism – 174 Outsourced Cosmopolitanism – 178 Chapter 9 – The Influx of Innovation and Buzz: Upgrading the Commercial Street in the Time of Neoliberal Capitalism – 182 Innovation in the Tourism Capital – 182 The Buzz of the Global Commercial Street – 189 The Social Segmentations of Neoliberal Enclosures – 195 Asymmetry and Mobility in the Millennial Shopping Mall – 197 Works Cited – 203 ii INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE Our present historical period is marked by massive urbanization. Around the world, tens of thousands of people are gradually migrating to expanding cities, the largest of which will located in the Asian region.1 The current period is likewise characterized by the shift in the global economy towards the Eastern hemisphere. Over the next century, economic growth will be driven by Asian nations.2 These social and economic transformations have coincided with the passage to a regime of neoliberal capitalism, which is defined by its industries of consumption, financialization, and consumerism. To stimulate business and attract investment, national governments have been compelled to lessen their regulation of market forces, which have become more powerful and more volatile. The offshore outsourcing of factories and services to emerging economies has resulted in a wider range of individuals gaining sufficient purchasing power. Approximately 1.8 billion more people are predicted to join the transnational class of consumers by 2025.3 The significant increase in the wealth of the members of the social and economic elite has led to enormous income disparities, which have corresponded with changes in the terms of social identity and the sources of social value. The ascendancy of consumer economies and culture industries during this period has coincided with shifts in the dominant forms of cultural entertainment and modes of visual perception. I aim to study these entangled transformations by tracing changes to the configurations of consumer capitalism, public life, and urban modernity in Southeast Asian cities. Instead of simply focusing on monolithic systems and processes such as capitalism and modernization, I would like to examine how their variable forms are encountered and negotiated by urban residents, as articulated through the public culture. I am particularly interested in Southeast Asian cities, which first emerged in the world market as trading ports but have long had a peripheral relation to the more economically prosperous cities of North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. Even though recent scholarship in the humanities and social sciences is affording greater attention to Asian realities, I believe that the emphasis should not be skewed towards East Asia or South Asia but should include Southeast Asia. This region is an increasingly vital component of the global economy, especially with the further integration of its nations into the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015.4 In this study, I attempt to uncover the entangled genealogies of consumer capitalism, public life, and urban modernity in Southeast Asia by examining the spatial and visual imagination and experience of commercial and leisure spaces, such as night markets, commercial streets, department stores, amusement parks, coffee shops, self-service supermarkets, movie theaters, and shopping malls, which have captivated the populaces of Manila and Singapore at important historical moments during the 1930s, 1960s, and 2000s. My starting point is the shopping mall, which, I 1 Richard Dobbs, et al., Urban World: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities (McKinsey Global Institute, 2011). 2 Richard Dobbs, et al., Urban World: Cities and the Rise of the Consuming Class (McKinsey Global Institute: 2012). 3 Dobbs, Consuming Class, 23. 4 Riding the ASEAN Elephant: How Business is Responding to the Unusual Animal (The Economist Corporate Network, 2013). 1 believe, contrary to its suburban isolation in North America and Western Europe, occupies a central position in the swelling metropolitan areas and burgeoning global