Beware the Pink Houses: Post Disaster Assimilation

“Orang Asli have begun to be the target of internal colonialism. This is a state in which the Orang Asli are subjected to administrative control, dispossession of lands and resources, and forced or induced assimilation (Berman 1993: 314). The reasons for the propagation of internal colonialism are varied, but are usually related to areas of control.”

“Today, as it was in the past, the Orang Asli are locked in a dynamic struggle with the wider society – and with themselves – over the control of resources they declare as their own, over attempts
at denying and redefining their cultural identity, and over concerns of political access and economic
distribution.” (Nicholas 2003). In housing there is a clear dichotomy between an autonomous and reflexive capacity for change that is reliant on;
• access to resources
• inherited knowledge regarding material manipulation
• an informal spatial organization or spatial capacity which allows for change to happen
as opposed to a resilience based on rigid materials and systems which resist natural forces through
surplus capacity and resistance to change and reliant on access to power.



“In post-disaster situations, intense periods of social rearrangement can occur, and legitimacy, authority, and rules are much more fluid and open than perhaps at other times.” - Land and Natural Disaster Guidance Following the most violent flooding for 30 years in the Kelantan region in 2015 the scale of devastation of Orang Asli settlements means that any significant shift in material terms, i.e. away from building materials sourced from the natural environment to industrial materials would constitute a major cultural encroachment. It is essential therefore that if capacity is identified as the end goal - the means are carefully
considered. The observation that identification of self with a specific locality is contrary to the
logic of modern political economies and is pertinent as it highlights the commodification of space as a shift away from any qualitative material or emotional attachment that one might associate with a place or the notion of “home”.
The reduction of space to a quantitative commodity and an individually owned asset enables the state to reign in the lands traditionally occupied by the Orang Asli. To enshrine that commodification in bricks and mortar must be identified as a political act – whether or not this is done in the name of material security or capacity building or ‘modernisation’.
There is then an identifiable political agenda to the “type” of capacity one prioritizes, whether it is one of flexible spatial arrangements i.e. harvesting of building materials and freedom of spatial movement- to less exposed areas such as the Orang Asli have traditionally employed – we can term this a soft material approach; or whether it is a strategy of material resilience , permanence and security through individual ownership - or a hard material approach.