Towards a Conceptual Framework for Analysing Social Cohesion Through Everyday Food Spaces:
Mamak Restaurants in Malaysia
Keywords:
Social cohesion, everyday practices, food spaces, Mamak restaurants, MalaysiaAbstract
This paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing how social cohesion in Malaysia is produced, negotiated, and experienced through everyday food spaces, using Mamak restaurants as an analytic lens. Malaysia’s colonial legacy of ethnicisation has long complicated the pursuit of national unity within its diverse society. Yet social cohesion has been sustained through bargaining, consensus-seeking, and accommodation among ethnic communities. Existing studies of social cohesion are often framed from macro, authority-defined perspective, overlooking how cohesion is enacted through everyday practices embedded in ordinary and informal spaces. Addressing this gap, the paper proposes an everyday-defined approach to social cohesion through three interrelated dimensions: (i) the spatial distribution and characteristics of Mamak restaurants; (ii) the cultural transformation of Mamak cuisine into a shared Malaysian symbol; and (iii) the spatial practices that position Mamak restaurants as representational spaces of Malaysian-ness. Drawing from ethnographic insights from Kuala Lumpur, this paper examines how everyday spatial and food practices produce and express social meanings. This paper contributes theoretically by advancing food space as an analytic lens for social cohesion and developing a conceptual framework of everyday cohesion; methodologically by integrating ethnography with spatial mapping; and practically by underscoring the value of accessible and inclusive everyday food spaces in sustaining cohesion within diverse societies.
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