Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Starter: Into a World Heritage City
- 1 A Cityscape below the Winds
- 2 Heritage Affairs: Mouse-Deer, White Elephants, and Watchdogs
- 3 UNESCO and the City
- 4 Melakan Row Houses from the Ground Up
- 5 Divide and Brand: Public Space, Politics, and Tourism
- 6 A Melakan Ancestral Village Beyond World Heritage
- 7 Epilogue of a Blessing and a Curse
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Epilogue of a Blessing and a Curse
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Starter: Into a World Heritage City
- 1 A Cityscape below the Winds
- 2 Heritage Affairs: Mouse-Deer, White Elephants, and Watchdogs
- 3 UNESCO and the City
- 4 Melakan Row Houses from the Ground Up
- 5 Divide and Brand: Public Space, Politics, and Tourism
- 6 A Melakan Ancestral Village Beyond World Heritage
- 7 Epilogue of a Blessing and a Curse
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Chapter 7 considers the potential of ethnographies of World Heritage cities by retracing the experience of Melaka in juxtaposition with a number of other studies of Asian World Heritage cities, especially those located in East and Southeast Asia. A further analysis on urban transformation around other heritage villages expands the previous reflection on patrimonial hierarchies, inequality, and World Heritage exclusions. The chapter ends with a postscript, which introduces queries for future research. Substantial questions stem from the unprecedented, if brief, power shift from Barisan Nasional to Pakatan Harapan.
Keywords: ethnographies of World Heritage cities, Asia, World Heritage exclusions, politics
This is the epilogue, but Melaka goes on. As I have suggested in the title of this book, Melaka is a cityscape below the winds, but not just geographically as the old toponym for the region reminds us. Global and local forces blow, like winds, over the cityscape. Flows of ideas circulate and intermingle in this specific locale. My driving purpose throughout this book has been to show how global scientific conservation principles meet local heritage perspectives, and the complex ways they unfold on the ground, but without falling too easily into either ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ narratives and conclusions. While you are reading, conservation policies are implemented – perhaps some of them circumvented – and new urban development projects are approved.
I am hesitant to make cy-oriented recommendations in relation to heritage conservation, although some of my own interlocutors would expect me to embark on such a mission. When I presented myself as an anthropologist working on heritage, people often expected me to write a book on how to preserve buildings or about their cultures, but this was not the trajectory of my research. I leave the task of heritage management exercise – with regard to technical matters – to the numerous gifted conservationists, architects, planners, archaeologists, and heritage aficionados I had the opportunity to meet. But perhaps I have a wish, rather than recommendations, which is linked to another purpose at the heart of this book. My goal has been to create space for different perspectives, including the most silent ones. I hope there will be more space for those unheard voices in the future everyday life of heritage management and urban planning.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, MalaysiaA Cityscape below the Winds, pp. 267 - 288Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021