The business community in Taiping, Malaya : a study in social geography

Abstract

A few comments as to the broad implications of the thesis, that is, where this borderline study fits within the general framework of urban geography or urban sociology may be useful. The study as it stands is neither strictly urban geography nor urban sociology, the one for lack of areal patterns and spatial emphasis, the other from differences in approach and for lack of attention to the details which a sociologist, making a community study, would find of importance. When the project was first conceived, the interest was essentially a study in urban geography. However, interpretation of urban patterns, not necessarily all spatial, inevitably raises a number of questions which are both social and economic. As the search for causal factors to explain these patterns intensifies there comes a stage where the need to concentrate on processes tends increasingly to overshadow the importance of the actual patterns themselves. The geographer finds himself, temporarily at least, abandoning his own field for a kindred discipline, and the outcome is a geographical study coloured with a strong element of sociology. This seems symptomatic of the problems with which Geography is faced. D.B. Mather quotes Kirk, 'Modern geography was created by scholars trained in other disciplines asking themselves geographical questions and moving inwards in a community of problems; it could die by a reversal of this process whereby trained geographers move outwards in a fragmentation of interests seeking solutions to non-geographical problems. The present study finds its niche here. Extensions to the study could move either in the direction of urban sociology as the community is studied with greater depth and breadth and sociological techniques are sharpened, or towards urban geography with concentration on areal patterns and reduplications of such studies in other urban centres for comparative analysis. It would be interesting, from a geographical viewpoint, to see the extent to which ethnic distribution intra-urban residential movements, location of businesses, occupational patterns, family organisation, house - hold structure and so forth in other Malayan towns compare with those found in Taiping. This will also allow certain geographical phenomena to be mapped meaningfully. Whichever direction future studies take, such investigations are not only valuable contributions to academic knowledge because sociological data of Malaya are very scarce, but the findings are of direct use to those concerned with the urban planning of a fast developing country . Show more