Brickfields is unbelievable. According to Houses in Motion, the Tamil-Malaysian inhabitants of the Brickfields area of Kuala Lumpur are unable to ‘believe’ their place in the world and therefore lack a basis for action in the face of rapid and overbearing development in the first years of the twenty-first century. The book frames this problem by drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deluze and, to a lesser extent, other – primarily French – contemporary theorists (such as Henri Lefebvre). The author emphasises the shock and disillusionment of Brickfields residents as their neighbourhood is redeveloped. Their helplessness is due to their social, cultural and religious marginalisation within a Malay-Muslim-dominated nation and an aggressive modernist Islamic developmentalist state. Unfortunately, neither the ‘Malaysian case’ nor Deluzean theory are deeply illuminated or transformed by their engagement in this text.
Chapters 1 and 2 present a traditional historical narrative that does not directly address the book's framing analytic of place and belief; there is no attention paid, for example, to how Brickfields might have been made ‘believable’ or not to its inhabitants historically. Some passages contain jarring inaccuracies. Kuala Lumpur was founded in the 1850s, not the 1870s (p. 26), unless by ‘founded’ one means the date at which the British made it their administrative centre, rather than the date at which it was first settled by Chinese tin miners. Reference to ‘the enactment of the New Development Policy (NDP) in 1971’ (p. 62) is likewise inaccurate. In Malaysia, the NDP refers to the framework established in 1991 replacing the New Economic Policy (generally dated c. 1971–90). I do not mean to nit-pick on errata, but these are extremely significant dates and events in the history of Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia respectively — errors which reflect the book's generally thin engagement with the broader urban, national or for that matter, regional socio-cultural and historical contexts within which Brickfields is embedded.
Chapters 3–5 present contemporary ethnographic material. Chapter 3 is the strongest, most interesting section of the book. The ethnographic accounts provide interesting windows on relations to ‘the state’ (especially, p. 96–108). Chapter 4 also contains interesting ethnographic bits — particularly in a section on ‘gangsters’, which provides nuanced insights into the relationship of the ‘community’ to criminal gangs, how these have transformed over time and how they are mediated. However, the other two archetype-like ‘figures’ (strangers and counterfeiters, in addition to gangsters) are not well conceived. The category of ‘strangers’ conflates a wide variety of recognisable, not truly ‘strange’ categories of people such as ‘tourists’. Likewise, the concept of ‘counterfeiters’ is an awkward import from James Siegel's work on Java to cover a variety of activities generally thought of and referred to as ‘corruption’.
In Chapter 5, the book shifts from ‘belief in general terms’ to ‘belief’ in a more religious register (pp. 177–9). The promising idea is proposed, but not substantively carried through, that understanding Tamil Hindu experience in Brickfields should frame their concerns not as part of a diaspora whose point of reference is Tamil Nadu or Hinduism in India, but rather in terms of the ways in which their point of reference is constructing a life as Malaysians (p. 181). The substance of the chapter is on the organisation of religious practices and in particular negotiations over the relocation of temple sites in the context of rapid development (especially of the KL Monorail project). In so doing, the book universalises ‘belief’ following Deluze translated into English in a post-Christian, post-Enlightenment tradition and applies it to Tamil Hindu experience in Malaysia without engaging theoretically with either local configurations of religiosity or, more broadly, Tamil-Hindu culture, cosmology and practice.
For example, a long passage provides a promising set of events for interpretive purposes and understanding of complex social relations, in which the KL Monorail developers consult with local temples in order to appease supernatural forces thought to be responsible for accidents and delays (pp. 194–205). Ultimately, these are portrayed as negotiation between the ‘local’ community and ‘the state’ (conflating corporate and state initiatives). Much hints to a more complex and interesting situation. ‘Ong’ as the pseudonym of the woman interviewed from the KL Monorail implies that she is Chinese. If that is the case, far from being an encounter or negotiation between the exclusivist, monotheistic Islamic state and the subaltern Hindu community in a clash over ‘belief’, the exchange is perhaps between religious pluralists in search of an efficacious (practical rather than ‘belief’-based) solution. However, such interpretations are left dangling, as the book does not provide enough information about Ong and others involved: for example, are they Christian, Buddhist or practitioners of what is called ‘Chinese religion’ in Malaysia, the latter often having close, positive associations with Hindu polytheism in Malaysia and Singapore?
This book may be of interest to Deluze scholars and followers of the Stanford University Press Cultural Memories series, as an example of how their general theories can be applied indiscriminately to (but in no way challenged or changed by) cultural others around the world. It certainly is a good example within contemporary American anthropology of the triumph of trendy theory over detailed ethnography (with such passé concerns as local linguistic competence). Scholars interested in and knowledgeable about the latter are likely to find the depth of descriptive material, presentation and interpretation disappointing.
