A Kampung Corner: Infrastructure, Affect, Informality

The author explores how the kampung (village) is a form of infrastructure at once material and immaterial that draws on affective histories of community solidarity, even as it has been shaped by and continues to shape modes of governmentality that serve the interests of capital and the state. This article includes three aspects of this infrastructural support. First, the idea of the spectacular city has proven a productive one for urban studies, but lower-class enclaves like kampung would not typically qualify. Yet, the material form of the kampung is part of the spectacle of daily life for these urban neighbors. The role of kampung as key infrastructure for informality is the second aspect considered here. The forms of organization that are used to organize informal labor and kampung community are the products of years of state-inflected governmentality, from colonial to democratic regimes. In the third section, the reproduction of this organizational infrastructure and its relationship to the reproduction of the kampung as a social form is contemplated. These three threads are brought together in a conclusion that explores how these forms of kampung infrastructure are being called upon again in recent plans for playgrounds, for example.