'Asian Studies in Focus' Seminar Series - Makan: Reconsidering the History of Malaysian and Singaporean Hawkers

'Asian Studies in Focus' Seminar Series - Seminar # 3

Dr Bernard Keo – Lecturer in History, Department of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University

Street food is serious business in Malaysia and Singapore. Yet, few scholars have traced the histories of street food hawkers beyond cursory examinations that locate the origins of the phenomenon to the post-World War II period. This seminar outlines tentative findings of a new research project focussed on hawker culture in Malaysia and Singapore from the colonial period to the modern-day. In particular, I make the case that street food culture in both countries has a much longer trajectory and is more distinctly intertwined than contemporary national divisions in Malaysia and Singapore over ownership of particular types of hawker food suggests.