No abstract

This paper argues that taking a short-term look at Malaysia's response to the financial crisis of 1997 -1998 does not adequately assess the socio-economic transformation that was propagated by the crisis. Most importantly, it falls short of accounting for the shift from a bank-based to a capital market-based financial system that occurred in post-crisis Malaysia and the ensuing increasing financialisation of Malaysian capitalism. This shift has significantly affected both corporate and individual financial cultures and led to the emergence of a new politics of debt. It coincides with rising levels of household indebtedness. Moreover, it has set in motion a metamorphosis of the institutions set up to govern Malaysian capitalism.Este artículo afirma que al observar a corto plazo la respuesta de Malasia a la crisis financiera de 1997 -1998, no se logra evaluar la transformación socioeconómica que generó la crisis. Aún más importante, no logra explicar el cambio de un sistema financiero con base en la banca a un sistema con base de mercado de capitales, cambio que se dio durante la post crisis en Malasia, generando un incremento de la financiación del capitalismo. Este cambio afectó significativamente tanto a la cultura financiera individual, como corporativa y condujo al surgimiento de nuevas políticas de endeudamiento. Coincidió con el incremento del nivel de endeudamiento de los hogares. Es más, condujo a la metamorfosis de las instituciones establecidas para regir el capitalismo de Malasia.

The aftermath of the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 witnessed a significant transformation of the financial systems of the Southeast Asia region. It saw the ascendance of capital markets in financial systems that had traditionally relied on bank loans and other sorts of so‐called relationship finance. This emergence of capital markets was by design rather than the spontaneous and natural result of their evolving market orders as policymakers shifted from planning for outcomes to planning for uncertainty. A financialized version of capital market development, conceptualized here as situated knowledge practice, has manifested itself in increasingly spectacular financial designs. The article explores two sites of the circulation of new financial knowledge: the dramatic performances of financial knowledge at (Islamic) capital market conferences and the new urban designs where financial knowledge is put to work. The analysis is informed by observations from Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore.

The dispossession of urban communities across class and racial lines is a global phenomenon linked to the expansion of international investment in the development of ‘exemplary’ city space. However, city evictions are also historically informed and gendered processes which are continuous with past colonial and postcolonial urban rationalisation projects. Drawing on testimonies of women evictees in Jakarta, as well as interviews with public housing managers, this article details the gendered nature of the rationalisation of urban life in the context of a contemporary evictions regime. We argue that the rationalisation of urban space serves to sharpen the gender order by placing material constraints on women's roles, limiting their economic activities and defining them as hygiene‐responsible housewives. Further, and in turn, the limited provision of ‘rusunawa’ public housing, which we show to be a gendered spatial and social transition informed by state doctrine on the family, provides the state with justification for dispossession itself. Finally, women's everyday acts of refusal and resistance show not only that kampung forms of social life continue to be preserved in Jakarta, but also that rationalisation itself is a negotiated and contingent process.

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