The City, Heritage, and Gentrification in Southeast Asia 3102-FCHG
The course will explore the issue of material heritage and gentrification in Southeast Asia, focusing its attention on the city. We will look closely at how the different regimes of preservation, conservation, development and modernization work on the ground, and what this implies for the past and future of the city. We will focus on the concepts of heritage and gentrification and its local meanings, and discuss these through various case studies, mainly from Southeast Asia. Ample space will be given to the ways local communities claim their right to live in or alongside heritage structures. We will also discuss the role of activism in fighting against gentrification, as well as the possible engagement of the anthropologist in such conflicts.
Students attending the course will learn about Southeast Asia and the current politics of urban development, heritagization, touristification, and gentrification. Attendees are expected to learn to identify and analyze such processes, as well as find methods which are suitable for researching these.
The classes will be divided into the following themes:
- Heritage and monuments (what is considered heritage and why, the UNESCO heritage charter)
- Gentrification (the changes within cities – demolition, modernization, changing population)
- Activism (against demolition and relocation)
- The past and the future (relationship with the past and with materiality)
- The city and how it functions (overpopulation, mobility, class relations)
- Tourism (the impact of tourism on the city)
Type of course
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Having completed the course:
- the student can define phenomena such as gentrification and heritagization
- the student has knowledge about the processes of gentrification and heritagization in Southeast Asia
- the student can analyze city space, using the notions of heritage and gentrification
- the student has a basic knowledge of urban studies, especially studies of heritage spaces and of gentrifying neighborhoods
- the student can identify the main actors of gentrification and heritagization
Assessment criteria
- Group project – analysis of a case of gentrification/heritagization in Southeast Asia (oral and written part)
- Activity in class
- As this is an intense course – only 7 meetings - I accept only 1 absence.
Any other absence will have to be made up for in oral or written form.
No more than 2 absences will be accepted.
Bibliography
"The Future in the Past: Colonial modernity as urban heritage in contemporary Indonesia." South East Asia Research, vol. 28, no. 2, 2020, pp. 178-198.
"To ‘help’ or ‘make chaos’? An ethnography of Dutch expertise in postcolonial Indonesia." Heritage as Aid and Diplomacy in Asia, edited by Philippe Peycam, Shu-Li Wang, Hui Yew-Foong, and Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao, IIAS, 2020, pp. 143-166.
Atkinson, R. (2003). Introduction: Misunderstood Saviour or Vengeful Wrecker? The Many Meanings and Problems of Gentrification. Urban Studies, 40(12), 2343-2350.
Atkinson, R., & Bridge, G. (Eds.). (2005). Gentrification in a Global Context: the New Urban Colonialism. Routledge.
Brumann, Christoph and Aurélie Élisa Gfeller. 2021. Cultural landscapes and the UNESCO World Heritage List: perpetuating European dominance. International Journal of Heritage Studies 28(2): 147–162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2021.1941197.
Goh DPS. Between History and Heritage: Post-Colonialism, Globalisation, and the Remaking of Malacca, Penang, and Singapore. TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia. 2014;2(1):79-101. doi:10.1017/trn.2013.17
Henderson, Joan. (2015). Conserving Heritage in South East Asia: Cases from Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. Tourism Recreation Research. 37. 47-55. 10.1080/02508281.2012.11081687.
Herzfeld, M. (2010). Engagement, Gentrification, and the Neoliberal Hijacking of History. Current Anthropology, 51(S2), 259-267.
Herzfeld, M. (2017). The blight of beautification: Bangkok and the pursuit of class-based urban purity. Journal of Urban Design, 22(3), 291–307.
Hung, Pham. (2024). Gentrification in a World Heritage Site: The Strategy for Preserving the Hue Citadel in Vietnam. ASR: Chiang Mai University Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities. 11. 10.12982/CMUJASR.2024.010. https://cmuj.cmu.ac.th/asr/journal_de.php?id=270
Moore, Russell. (2013). Understanding 'Gentrification' in Southeast and East Asia.
Pante, M.D. (2020), Settlements and the Heritage Dilemma in Manila. City & Society, 32: 408-420. https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12292
Raja Othman, Raja. (2017). The impact of gentrification on local urban heritage identity in old quarter, Melaka Heritage City. PLANNING MALAYSIA JOURNAL. 16. 10.21837/pmjournal.v16.i6.272. https://planningmalaysia.org/index.php/pmj/article/view/272/245
Sand, J.A. Pandemic resilience and the heritage of Asian urban communities. Built Heritage 7, 20 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43238-023-00104-1
Widodo, J. (2023). UNESCO world heritage branding: learning from some cases in Asia. Journal of City: Branding and Authenticity, 1(1), 12-23. https://doi.org/10.61511/jcbau.v1i1.2023.21
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: