Urban annexation of the rural: kebun culture in Malaysia

‘ Kebun culture’ is a distinctive, emergent form of rural sensibility and social‐economic relations in Malaysia. As a contribution to theories of ‘planetary’ or thoroughgoing urbanization, the ethnographic evidence presented in the article illustrate a case of urban annexation of rurality, in which kebun (orchards) are detached from the social organization of rural villages and incorporated into urban‐centered Malay society. Kebun , as productive land with non‐rice crops, have traditionally been associated with rural kampung (village). In the late twentieth century, thoroughgoing urbanization, driven by both rural‐to‐urban migration and in situ urbanization of rural kampung, simultaneously produced a social disintegration of Malay kampung and increasingly urban‐oriented Malay society. The kebun , which previously was an ancillary part of kampung social ecology has become dissociated from kampung and instead operates as an annex of urban‐centered social lives. Kebun are also distinctively individuated rather than communal socio‐economic projects. In both reserve lands and kampung areas, urban‐based Malays and rural‐to‐urban return migrants are involved in kebun projects, through which they engage with nostalgic notions of rurality, but without the social entanglements of kampung social relations. At the same time, through kebun projects, urban Malay subjects enter into new social relations, albeit ones marked by commodification.