Historical Analysis through a Lefebvrian Perspective: The Spatial Production of Malaysia’s Trade Union Movement

Abstract

The historical trajectory of trade unionism in Malaysia indicates a long-standing struggle in which state power and capital accumulation systematically generates spatial arrangements to disaggregate worker solidarity which has been largely disregarded in the traditional institutionalist analyses. In order to fill this theoretical gap, the current article discusses the development of the Malaysian worker movement by using the theory of the production of space proposed by Henri Lefebvre, with an emphasis on the application of the conceptual triad of conceived, perceived, and lived space. Using a qualitative historical institutional analysis informed by documentary and archival materials, the paper finds important spatial path dependencies at important historical intersections. Results indicate that since the colonial strategies of divide and rule and the New Villages of the Briggs Plan, states and capitalism, since the New Economic Policy and the modern-day restructuring of neoliberalism, have remained busy using conceived spaces to subject labour to discipline. On the other hand, laborers have continued to create other lived spaces of resistance, such as plantation societies and factory strikes to online communities. The paper reveals that spatial dynamics are crucial to modern trade union renewal and proposes the idea that unions need to navigate the conditions of precarious work by using new legislative possibilities to navigate physical and virtual landscapes of struggle.