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The Urban Middle-Class Consumer Identity in Malaysia’s Sociopolitical Coffee House Culture

ABSTRACT In the early 2010s, new independently owned artisanal cafés serving coffee along with Western-style meals and desserts emerged in Malaysia. These cafés flourished despite the presence of the nation’s traditional coffee shops (kopitiam) and international coffee chains like Starbucks Coffee. This paper aims to explicate the processes of identity- and place-making through consumption in traditional kopitiams in relation to modern café spaces by considering how varied consumption suggests an intrinsically sociopolitically charged habit of Malaysians. Extending Richard Peterson’s theory of cultural omnivorousness, this paper is framed by the fluidity in class identity formation of urban consumers, and argues that consumers are agents of change which is primarily self-fashioning. While Malaysian coffee house-goers appear to be culturally omnivorous, there is a deep sense of contention in preserving the kopitiam space as a non-halal eatery. This ethnographic study contributes to a deeper understanding of how Malaysia’s racialised politics has shaped the eating habits of its multiracial society.