World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia

Reviewed by: World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia: A Cityscape below the Winds by Pierpaolo De Giosa Jerry Dennerline World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia: A Cityscape below the Winds, by Pierpaolo De Giosa. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021, 306 pp. ISBN 946-372-502-4; eISBN 978-904-855-050-0 Pierpaolo De Giosa’s study is an ethnography in the field of heritage politics. As such, it should appeal to two sorts of readers, broadly defined. Readers who follow the saga of UNESCO World Heritage listings will find valuable comparative references to other case studies world-wide. Readers who follow the unfolding narrative of Malaysian political culture will find insightful description and analysis of the history and the continuing entanglement of the politics of heritage, tourism, and racial discourse in the vibrant setting of Malaysia’s oldest city. The author’s approach is to explore the issues from the ground up. He has combined considerable skill at sifting and analyzing documents with a remarkable talent, and sensitivity, for locating and interviewing a diverse array of people who are impacted by or actively engaged in the events. The result is a valuable contribution to the ethnography and the continuously unfolding history of Melaka. After an initial chapter introducing the local setting, the field of urban heritage politics, and the nature of the fieldwork, the book offers five chapters focused on the political dynamics in question—heritage affairs in Malaysia; UNESCO and its impact on conservation and development; the impact on residential houses, shophouses, and private interests ‘from the ground up’; public space, politics, and tourism in the politicization of heritage; and a microstudy of a gazetted ‘heritage village’ (kampung warisan)—Kampung Chetti—beyond the threshold of the World Heritage site. A final chapter, ‘Epilogue of a Blessing and a Curse’, considers the legacy for urban politics going forward. The ‘ground up’ approach makes the study immediately accessible for any reader with an interest in political culture or cultural history, beginning with conversations, continuing with description and analysis of spatial and temporal context, rising to comparative analysis with other studies of world heritage politics, and sailing back to ground level with relevant illustrations in a new local time and space. Malaysian students, scholars, and intellectuals will immediately understand what is meant when the concepts of ‘authoritarian democracy’ or ‘semi-democracy’ come into play. They will not be surprised when local interlocutors are not so clear on the political and institutional boundaries involved in their city. While readers in the field of world heritage politics may need to learn the personalities and the structural issues in the Malaysian case, names like Badawi and Najib, Lim Guan Eng and Ali Rustam, will immediately inform the Malaysian reader of when and where the political dynamic is spinning. Names like Gan Tian [End Page 153] Loo and Sim Tong Him will be familiar to Melaka readers but may be less so to others. Finally, the names of local heritage ‘expert’, bureaucrat, and ‘aficionado’ informants are intentionally replaced by pseudonyms, precisely because they would be familiar to anyone—local, non-local, or foreign—who is interested or involved in heritage politics ‘on the ground’ in Melaka itself. The circumstances of Malaysia’s version of ‘semi-democracy’ make it clear why this unfortunate obscuring of names is applied. Key moments include the implementation of the Antiquities Act of 1976, the lifting of rent control on protected row houses and subsequent gentrification, the new National Heritage Act in 2006, the expansion of Badan Warisan Malaysia, the inscription of Penang and Melaka by UNESCO in 2008, and the politicization of heritage with the tourism boom. Across this temporal context, the author explores the issues of development vs preservation, built heritage vs living heritage, the views of heritage experts vs local heritage aficionados, ‘façadomy’ vs the interior design and function of private properties, and the political legacy of Barisan Nasional dominance on the racially defined ‘divide and brand’ zoning policies of the tourism industry. These issues are compared to other cases of ‘urban spatial permissiveness, absence and tardiness of bureaucratic engagement, and conflict resolution’ elsewhere in the world. Voices include scholars in the field

Archaeology · Art · Cityscape · Cultural heritage · Cultural heritage management · Ethnography · Ethnology · Heritage tourism · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Tourism · Urban politics · Visual arts · Asian Studies and History · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies