Contested Space Revisited: a review from’Fabrications’ October 7, 2021 – Posted in: Reviews – Tags: , , , , , , ,

Soon-Tzu Speechley, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

When Contested Space was first published by Lit Verlag in 2008, the book captured what felt like a triumphal moment in Penang’s history, coinciding with the city’s inscription (alongside Melaka) to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Jenkins’ book was the first substantial study of the process leading to George Town’s World Heritage Listing, and a valuable documentation of Penang’s rich heritage – both tangible and intangible. The book surveyed this multifaceted heritage, elucidating the qualities for which Penang was inscribed to the World Heritage List. Yet even then, it was apparent that this listing might become a mixed blessing. The final chapter of Contested Space posed the question of what the UNESCO listing would mean to the “fast-depleting communities whose ancestors created the early settlement, or to the newly-introduced ‘yuppy’ communities with no history of habitation within the site”.¹

In her expanded and updated monograph, Jenkins answers this question by looking back on a critical decade in Penang’s urban development. The new preface and additional three chapters in this updated edition serve as an epilogue of sorts, with a series of short but significant case studies offering a thematic survey of the state of Penang’s heritage between 2008 and 2018.

In the decade since UNESCO listing, the city has undergone rapid change – not all of it for the better in the eyes of heritage activists. The 2008 edition of Contested Space was a valuable and pioneering study on Penang’s urban heritage, but the new book’s additional chapters serve as a particularly compelling cultural survey of the aftermath of the city’s inscription to the World Heritage List. Jenkins argues that World Heritage Listing has protected aspects of the city’s urban heritage but also deepened social fault lines in this contested cultural space. In 2018, as in 2008, the question of ‘whose heritage” is worth preserving remains the key concern.

In Contested Space Revisited, Jenkins chronicles a number of challenges to Penang’s urban and cultural heritage. As Jenkins notes, there was a “steep learning curve” for local authorities and residents alike as many rushed to “cash in” on the UNESCO label (p. 320) through tourism-driven development. Some of these case studies are success stories, as seen in efforts to legislate against new high rise hotel developments and enforce building controls and height limits to protect the World Heritage Site. The restoration of the Malay Mosque on Acheen Street is cited as an example of heritage protection occurring on a “community scale”, with community members taking “ownership” of the site’s management (p. 377–9). In other flagship restoration projects, however, Jenkins remains ambivalent about the commercialisation of community spaces: “however well the built fabric is restored or conserved, it is the connection to the community that gives life . . . and meaning – and hence, a sense of history, heritage value and cultural significance” (p. 370–71).

For the field of heritage studies, perhaps the most interesting parts of Jenkin’s book concern the tensions which developed between the Penang state government and civil society groups following World Heritage Listing. This tension came to a head in 2016 over the controversial Penang Transport Masterplan (PTMP) and the redevelopment of the Prangin Canal (pp. 340–44), which led to a referendum of sorts over heritage management in the city more broadly. Debate over the state’s management of heritage played out in newspapers, in protracted arguments conducted in lively Facebook groups such as Penang Heritage Trust (PHT) Discussions, and eventually in an open letter sent by a consortium of NGOs to UNESCO airing concerns over the government’s management of the site.²

The tension between the state and civil society has long been an engine for change in both heritage policy and practice in Penang.³ This would have benefited from further discussion in Contested Space Revisited. As Jenkins notes, between “Facebook trolls and strategy gamers, two contesting visions of Penang’s future are being played out.” (p. 392). The recent digital turn in Penang’s heritage activism is an interesting, if understudied aspect of Malaysia’s heritage culture. A more sustained exposition of the key players in these debates, and of Penang’s long tradition of citizen-led heritage activism, would have provided readers with a richer understanding of this noteworthy aspect of heritage participation in the local context.

Some terminology has been updated in this revised edition, most notably in the naming of architectural styles, bringing the book in line with recent scholarship on Southeast Asian architecture. These changes are flagged in the footnotes. Jenkins’ work on George Town’s urban development in the early chapters of this book remains a useful source for scholars of Penang’s architectural heritage, particularly in drawing out how various influences from the city’s multicultural mercantile communities have shaped its characteristic urban form. The book is also generously illustrated with a substantial number of photographs and diagrams.

Contested Space Revisited is a timely intervention in the literature on Asian heritage, providing an in-depth look not only at the politics of heritage listings, but also the profound socio-cultural impacts that the resulting commodification of heritage can have. The detailed case study of Penang provided by this book adds to a growing body of scholarship on the mixed impacts of heritage-driven tourism in the region more broadly.⁴

Perhaps more significantly, however, the publication of Contested Space Revisited documents another moment in Penang’s history: a time of great transition. George Town has experienced momentous changes since its inscription to the World Heritage List in 2008, and Jenkins’ updated monograph surveys a critical decade in the city’s history. The book thus offers lessons for other heritage places. The book serves as a call to action, for the people in Penang, and for heritage practitioners more broadly. We would do well to listen to Jenkins, who maintains in her conclusion that if communities hosting World Heritage Listings are to be respected and retained, “then the current rhetoric of advancing ‘accessibility, participation and inclusion’” in the shaping of heritage values “must leave the printed page, and become effective reality.” (p. 361)

Notes

  1. Gwynn Jenkins, Contested Space: Heritage and Identity Reconstructions. An Inquiry into Conservation Strategies Within a Developing Asian City, George Town, Penang, Malaysia (Vienna: Lit Verlag, 2008), 250.
  2. See: “We need one but not this one. PTMP flawed from the word go”, PHT Newsletter, no. 109 (June 2016), p. 2; Opalyn Mok, “Penang Forum moots RM13.3b transport master plan alternative”, Malay Mail, 13 July 2016, https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2016/07/13/penang-forum-moots-rm13.3b-transport-masterplan-alternative/1160757; Christopher Tan, “Penang government feels betrayed over Unesco status issue”, The Star, 14 August 2016, https://www.thestar.com.my/ news/nation/2016/08/14/penang-government-feels-betrayed-over-unesco-statusissue.
  3. Edmund W. Cheng, Anthony H.F. Li and Shu-yun Ma, “Resistance, Engagement, and Heritage Conservation by Voluntary Sector: The Case of Penang in Malaysia”, Modern Asian Studies 48.3 (2014): 617–44; and Khoo Salma Nasution, “George Town: The discreet charm of rejuvenated heritage”, Historic Environment 26.3: Asian Cities: Heritage, Image-Making and Nation-Building (2014): 40–9.
  4. Rahil Ismail, Brian Shaw and Ooi Giok Ling, eds., Southeast Asian Culture and Heritage in a Globalising World: Diverging Identities in a Dynamic Region (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), Michael Hitchcock, Victor T. King and Michael Parnwell, eds., Heritage Tourism in Southeast Asia (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2010), and Victor T. King’s UNESCO in Southeast Asia: World Heritage Sites in Comparative Perspective (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2015).

This review was taken from Fabrications – The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand
https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2021.1930920

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