Between Belonging and Difference: Cultural Negotiation in Changing Indonesian and Malaysian Communities

Abstract

Studies of changing urban communities often emphasize displacement, redevelopment, heritage, and participation, yet they rarely explain how these processes reorder belonging and unequal membership within the community itself. This study examines how spatial change and urban development reshape belonging, internal difference, and everyday cultural negotiation in Kampung Akuarium, Jakarta, and Kampong Bharu, Kuala Lumpur. It employs a literature study with a comparative approach which were analyzed thematically across the two cases. The findings reveal two distinct but overlapping sources of legitimacy. In Kampung Akuarium, belonging gained political force through displacement, collective organization, and participation in rebuilding, whereas in Kampong Bharu it rested more strongly on inherited land, family history, and intergenerational responsibility. Neither pathway produced equal authority among community members. Administrative verification, organizational participation, legal ownership, and heir consent shaped who could return, speak, decide, or benefit, producing stratified belonging. Cultural continuity was therefore not secured by preserving old forms alone. It depended on residents’ ability to sustain livelihoods, use shared space, and influence how change was interpreted and managed. The comparison develops everyday cultural negotiation as a process of selective continuity and identifies relational displacement as a possible condition in which physical presence remains while social ties, livelihood security, or local authority gradually weaken.