Introduction
Heritage conservation has recently emerged to shape Malaysia's political economy, assuming an agenda of which the state and voluntary sector nominally approve. On 8 July 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) listed Melaka and George Town,Footnote 1 Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca, as a World Heritage Site. Following the listing of two national parks in Malaysian Borneo, this listing adds a third World Heritage Site to Malaysia and is the first to be listed under the category of cultural heritage. UNESCO praised the site as ‘a living testimony of over 500 years of trading and cultural exchanges between East and West in the Straits of Malacca’, in which Dutch, Portuguese and British colonial influences, and Malay, Indian and Chinese communal practices have been cultivated. The site's tangible and intangible heritages are considered to have ‘outstanding universal values’ and the local conservation efforts are expected to sustain ‘committed heritage management’.Footnote 2
The living testimony of the site refers not only to the properties but also to people's interactions with the properties. This reflects UNESCO's more extensive and contemporary definition of cultural heritage following the passage of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. The two historic cities, developed in contrasting socio-political structures, have reflected the understanding of cultural heritage by UNESCO in two generations.Footnote 3 Melaka, dominated by federal and state apparatuses, is devoted to a museum-type conservation that aims to preserve orthodox history and built heritage.Footnote 4 In contrast, George Town, with its vibrant voluntary sector, has nurtured a heritage discourse in which the people, the buildings, and the space they have created, are deemed to be targets for conservation.
Indeed, if state initiative had prevailed, the World Heritage Site listing would not have been a joint site. The federal government's attempts to nominate Melaka in the late 1980s and 1990s were respectively rejected on the grounds that the state government had destroyed the original waterfront and excluded the Chinese community.Footnote 5 In contrast, the voluntary sector of Penang, which emphasized the harmonious co-existence of different cultures in the inner city of George Town, received several international heritage awards during the same period. In the 1999 Nomination Seminar, a regional advisor of UNESCO further commented that George Town's heritage zone was huge but lacked legislative and political commitments, whereas that of Melaka enjoyed state support but that the zone was too small.Footnote 6 Only at this point were the state apparatuses convinced that a joint nomination would be mutually beneficial, and to which the nomination dossier was submitted in 2005.Footnote 7
This contrasting phenomenon in one regime reflects the distinguished capacity of Penang's voluntary sector in narrating and enabling heritage provision. Heritage conservation—a form of public good—is not easily available through the market because its benefit is available to all members of the society (i.e., non-excludable), and consumption of such benefit by one does not reduce its availability to another (i.e., non-rival). Due to such characteristics, once provided, public goods are available to both payers and non-payers. This generates an incentive for the latter to free-ride on the former. Rational individuals will therefore tend not to contribute to the provision of public goods, even if they have a genuine desire for these goods. Specifically, heritage conservation is an intergenerational public good, meaning that it benefits both present and future generations. This characteristic increases the group size and is expected to produce more free-riders. Special incentive, such as tourist income, is thus required if heritage conservation is to be provided by the market. This, however, quite often results in distortion of the cultural value of heritages when driven by commercial motivations.
In view of this, heritage conservation is usually classified, preserved and managed by the state at the taxpayers’ expense. The market may also consider conserving heritage if the spread of cultural tourism made such projects economically viable. Lastly, the voluntary sector often plays a key role in heritage conservation in certain localities. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as The National Trust in the United Kingdom and the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, are pioneers in establishing the social and intangible values of heritage in view of development pressures in the modern world. However, these phenomena are mainly restricted to developed countries. Heritage conservation remains predominately selected, funded, and managed by public bodies, even in the most advanced developing areas such as Singapore and Hong Kong.Footnote 8 Despite the fact that Penang is economically less developed than these two city-states, Penang's voluntary sector has been relatively committed to and effective in heritage conservation.
Furthermore, the socio-political context of Malaysia is considered adverse to the development of the voluntary sector. The divide-and-rule strategy of the British regime in Malaya created conflicts and distrust among ethnic groups. Due to the concerns over the trade route and the security of naval bases, the public sector in major port-cities has nonetheless been relatively huge.Footnote 9 Moreover, Malaysia's regime is labelled as a pseudo-democracy or electoral authoritarianism, in which the growth and independence of civil society have been severely controlled.Footnote 10 Recent studies also concur that its NGOs, though not insignificant, are either collaborators or vehicles of the state, which have counted on the funding, cooperation or sanction of the state to function.Footnote 11 The realms of the state and voluntary sector in developing countries have been contested as an exchange of professionals and is commonly observed between the sectors, also the manipulation of NGOs is found to be particularly extensive in conservation projects.Footnote 12
Although this general assessment of Malaysia's polity explains the state domination in Malacca, it can hardly explain the vibrant civil society network in Penang, as it overlooks the diversity and complexity of British Malaya, officially known as the British Straits Settlements. Penang's distinct ethno-economic composition has indeed continued to induce political activism and sustain localism since independence. Thus, this paper intends to outline the ways in which Penang's voluntary sector is nurtured. It correlates Penang's marginalized trajectory in the British and Malay regimes with the making of its civic realm, social cohesion and local identity, which lay down the foundations of Penang's voluntarism in the contemporary era. It then analyses the engagement pattern of an NGO, the Penang Heritage Trust, which has mounted resistance to the official criteria and modes of heritage conservation. This bottom-up approach to preserving Penang's cultural heritage and associated identity therefore demonstrates the nature and capacity of its voluntary sector.
Formation of state-society relations in colonial Penang
When Francis Light of the British East India Company took over Penang, or Prince of Wales Island, from the Malay sultan of Kedah in 1786, the island was largely uninhabited. Light, whose primary concern was commerce, made Penang a free port.Footnote 13 Thousands of merchants and workers from India, China and Dutch Malacca were attracted to trade and became settlers, although the size of the establishment was curbed by the tight budget set by the British East India Company.Footnote 14 There were five covenant officials during Light's tenure and the number reached not more than 30 in 1805.Footnote 15 The functions of the state, or more precisely the company, were restricted to law and order, water supply, and street lighting. Successive administrations tried to introduce new taxes to provide other public amenities, such as roads, a health service and drainage systems. However, most of these attempts were restricted or annexed by two socio-political institutions of the regime.Footnote 16
One such institution was the Committee of Assessors, an advisory body responsible for addressing pressing issues such as police magistrate, trade regulation and land use. Each committee consisted of the governor as chair, and several eminent native chiefs and wealthy European merchants as members.Footnote 17 Commercial interests always prevailed to limit public spending, forcing the state either to rely on the less-costly Indian convicts to conduct public works, or to count on opium and gambling taxes as sources of revenue.Footnote 18 The other institution was the ‘Kaptain System’, in which a captain delegated with judicial and coercive power in his community was appointed from each Asian ethnic group, including the Chinese, Malay and Chulia. Their judicial power was abolished in 1808 but their de facto rule persisted. Blending institutional recognition and communal authority, the captains tried cases, recorded births, arrivals and marriages, and liaised with the state on behalf of its subjects.Footnote 19
A minimalist and proxy rule that depended on laissez-faire policies and communal authority had thus been installed. Penang had, at one point, deviated from this model. In 1805, based on an optimistic trade forecast and a plan to construct a naval base, the British East India Company made Penang the Fourth Presidency of India, the highest governing body in its possession. Government, council and bureaucracy began to develop, and infrastructure such as a town hall, churches, roads and fortifications were built. Singapore and Malacca were incorporated as dependencies of Penang, thereby assuring its prominence in Southeast Asia.Footnote 20
Yet the growth of Penang's public sector was as short-lived as its golden year, as its harbour was considered unsuitable in which to build a dockyard, and the trees of the island were not suitable as raw materials for shipbuilding.Footnote 21 Although Penang's absolute trade volume increased, its relative position was surpassed by Singapore, whose international trade mushroomed with the extensive use of steamships in the 1850s and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.Footnote 22 The decline in its trading position created a financial blow to Penang, which had previously derived 45 per cent of revenue from commercial tariffs. Correspondingly, the British East India Company reduced Penang to a residency in 1830, disbanded its council and moved the administrative centre to Singapore.Footnote 23 Penang nevertheless endured as a secondary entrepôt in Southeast Asia, focusing on the regional trade of tin and rubber in Burma, Siam and Sumatra. It continued to be more populous and urbanized than Singapore until the turn of the twentieth century. Moreover, Penang had emerged as a regional education centre as early as the twentieth century. Leading English, Chinese and Islamic schools attracted students from all over Southeast Asia and also India. The Chinese schools brought together children from different clans and kinships; the English schools produced a multi-ethnic elite status; and the Islamic schools preached for a united Muslim identity.Footnote 24
In this regard, the rise and fall of Penang was distinct in the sense that its course of descent was controlled by a steady socioeconomic growth, which sustained a critical mass of professional and business communities. Moreover, distance from the state apparatuses and resentment against the British East India Company's decision had turned its public arena into an outlet for public opinion and social mobilization. For instance, James Richardson Logan and his English readers were aligned through The Pinang Gazette and the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia. These publications served as a civic platform to expose the British East India Company's corruption, malpractice, and incapacity to handle communal riots in the 1850s, reveal the cultural complexity of Nusantara and Malaya, and advocate petitions against the Indian regime. These actions in part contributed to the eventual transfer of the Straits Settlements towards a crown colony in 1867, of which Singapore endured as the capital.Footnote 25 Thus socioeconomic capacity and geo-political identity formed the foundations of Penang's civil society, which aimed to presere its autonomy through covert resistance against colonial rule in Singapore, whose interests had consistently been in conflict with those of Penang since the formation of the Straits Settlements.Footnote 26
Captivated by Penang's civic realm, various revolutionaries arrived in Penang to crowd political participation. A noted example was Sun Yat-sen, leader of the Chinese revolution, who moved the Revolutionary Alliance's headquarters from Singapore to Penang in 1910. Sun gave public speeches, recruited comrades, published newspapers and secured funds from overseas Chinese, raising at least 15,000 straits dollars from them. Sun was only expelled from Penang when his attack on imperialism antagonized the Governor of the Straits Settlements in Singapore.Footnote 27 By the time the Qing Court was overthrown, more than 1,000 Chinese attended a public meeting to celebrate and send remittances to the new China.Footnote 28 Malay nationalists also thrived. Syed Sheikh Al-Hadi, one of the three founders of the United Malays National Organization, moved to Penang from Singapore in 1906 to spread the ideas of Islamic education and Malay nationalism. Encouraged by Al-Hadi's efforts, eleven Malay vernacular newspapers started publishing in Penang in the 1920s, preaching to audiences across the Malaya Archipelago.Footnote 29
The civic realm per se was insufficient to provide the collective and public goods renounced by the colonial state. Despite their vibrant exercising of civil liberties and their attacks on despotism and imperialism, the Chinese and Malay revolutionaries would never be in a position to replace the state. The real counterparts to British authority were the Asian communal associations rooted in Penang society. Generally speaking, Chinese and Indians resided in the inner city of George Town, Malays dwelled in southern Penang adjacent to the mainland, and Europeans occupied the northern part of George Town near the fort.Footnote 30 Chinese clan organizations are chosen as examples to illustrate the dynamics of Penang's communal cohesion because, unlike in most other states of Malaysia, Chinese have always been the largest ethnic group in the state of Penang. The Chinese made up 67.4 per cent, 56.3 per cent, and 45.6 per cent of the state population in 1957, 1970 and 2010, respectively.Footnote 31 Their socioeconomic domination made the Chinese clans principal actors in Penang's state-society relations, consolidating through extensive and durable institutional structures.
With the benefit of commercial domination and kinship ties, the Chinese clans were highly autonomous and cohesive in pursuing organized interests.Footnote 32 Yet due to differences in their native origins and family ties, they formed into several clans instead of a united community.Footnote 33 Community areas established by early arrivals in George Town always absorbed migrants from a similar lineage or family. For example, Pitt, China, Armenian and Acheen Streets were considered Hokkien areas, whereas Bishop, Church, Penang and Chulia Streets were Cantonese. Residing in shop-houses in which the ground floor was reserved for commerce and the upper storey for residence, immigrants were accustomed to communal interaction.Footnote 34 Each community would also set up a temple or ancestral hall for public space and worship, and an association to manage business and bonds.
Kongsi or Huikuan literally means a company or association. Operating as trustees, these clans became hybrid institutions that slammed into British law and Chinese customs.Footnote 35 On the one hand, although many clans and associations were not certified as perpetuities by the British court, they acted as such to preserve organizational stability.Footnote 36 Property rent, investment dividends and bequests were transferred and retained by these communal institutions, leading to an accumulation of wealth for collective and intergenerational disposal. On the other hand, each clan was a mixture of family and firm through the possession of rites, rituals, capital, management skills and trade networks. They exchanged members’ labour for communal entitlements in education, marriage, childbirth or funeral expenses.Footnote 37 As cohesive brotherhoods and partnerships, these communal institutions were particularly attentive to educational investments. Not only did they jointly establish the first Chinese school in Southeast Asia to endorse Sinification, but the rich and the talented of each clan were also sponsored to study in overseas universities. One of the earliest graduates came from Khoo Kongsi and returned in 1914 with a law degree from the University of London. The name of each graduate was carved inside the clan temple, which bridged individuals’ achievements into collective glories.Footnote 38 The provision of mutual welfare or, more precisely, collective goods for the diaspora enabled the development of trust and reciprocal norms between clan members. The ritual obligations and monitoring by institutionalized organizations also deterred defectors and free-riders.
Nonetheless, conflicts were not uncommon between the Chinese clans as loyalty towards associations working in collaboration served as a catalyst to vie for external concessions. This dilemma was not resolved until various clan leaders acknowledged the costs of fighting and experienced the mutual benefits of cooperation through charities and communal works. In 1881, they joined together to construct the Penang Chinese Town Hall, in which two dominant Chinese clans, Cantonese and Hokkien were given equal representation on the board of trustees and the clans’ illegal arms were banned from participating.Footnote 39 In recognition of the collaborative attempt to end the inter-clan disputes, the British Colonial Office sponsored one-third of the budget to construct the Town Hall. Henceforth, the Town Hall, Kongsis and Huikuans formed an imperium in imperio, substituting the functions of the state and representing the state's authority in the community, enabling the provision of public goods such as communal peace, social order and charity services to the population of Penang.Footnote 40
In summary, colonial Penang was constructed as a hub for trade, immigration and settlement, in which foreign ideas and new actors have consistently defined the political space, and migrants of different kinship or ethnicity have formed self-help associations to provide collective and public goods. Social entitlements were thus largely arranged by this voluntary sector in recognition of community ties, instead of coming from the state in accordance with common citizenship. This form of state-society relations is often categorized as co-option.Footnote 41 But such co-option is bilateral, of which the lax state and the communal institutions rely upon each another, and from which the distance from, and resentment of, colonial rule created manifested political activism and communal cohesion in the civic realm. Meanwhile, this historic pattern has made urban Penang predominately an enclave of Chinese culture.
The flux of civil society in peripheral Penang
Penang was further marginalized from Malaysia's political centre during post-war decolonization. Entirely made up of migrants who came together to build the city from scratch, and dominated by ethnic Chinese who collaborated with the British, Penang contributed little to the new nation-state. In comparison, Melaka, the capital of the indigenous Malacca Sultanate that had ruled over Malaya before British rule but had since been economically left behind, had flourished from this nationalist agenda.Footnote 42 Being on the periphery is different from being secondary that losing to Singapore was largely an economic issue determined by competition, but in this post-war period, Penang's ethno-cultural identity was primarily a political issue dominated by the interplay of intervention and resistance.
The central-local contentions between Penang and Kuala Lumpur and the empowerment of the civil society network in Penang are related to two political incidents and the federal settings. First of all, civil and business associations such as the Penang Chamber of Commerce, Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and Penang Eurasian Association launched the Penang Secession Movement in 1948. These associations, which had close ties with the colonial authority and were mainly composed of Europeans or Chinese, were afraid of the unequal citizenship and unbalanced development agenda in a Malay nation. Although the movement died down in 1951, it reinforced the resistance tradition against an alien regime as it had similarly in the 1850s and 1860s. It also reflected the nostalgia of the ‘good old days’ and the distrust towards the new polity among Penang's non-official elites.Footnote 43 This unique political orientation has persisted, contributing to the continued Chinese monopoly of the chief ministership of Penang, including the elections of two opposition leaders in 1969 and 2008. Parliamentary seats were also strongly contested, enabling the opposition parties to challenge sporadically the domination of the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional, which has ruled Malaysia since its independence.Footnote 44
Second, Penang was one of the few regions that experienced serious racial riots in 1969, in which hundreds were injured and a state emergency was declared. The riots led to the state's decision to emphasize the priority of the bumiputera—sons of the soil or mostly referred to as indigenous Malays. In light of this, Penang's free-port status was withdrawn in 1969 to centralize tariffs, leading to its historic economic setback with the unemployment rate rising to 15 per cent in 1970.Footnote 45 The New Economic Policy was launched in 1971 to reduce the socioeconomic disparities between the Chinese and the Malays. Communal considerations resulted in fiscal adjustments and redistributions to benefit poor states with a high Malay concentration. Penang thus received the lowest level of central grants and allocations per capita among the 13 states from 1958–1975, and ranked tenth and eleventh in the development fund in the Third and Fourth Malaysia Plans from 1976–1985.Footnote 46 The conservation grant of RM50 million reserved for the World Heritage Site remained asymmetrically distributed in 2009. Whereas the Malacca state government was given RM30 million for direct disposal, the RM20 million for Penang was subject to the control of a federal quango.Footnote 47
Third, as the federal government controls most of the tax revenue and state governments are prohibited from borrowing, this fiscal pattern has profoundly constrained Penang's state capacity. The provision of specific public goods, such as heritage conservation and environmental protection, are thus the least important state priority. These fiscal discriminations have also provoked ‘a sense of belonging among Penangites’, which has prompted many social activists to look to themselves to ‘fight for the collective benefits of Penang’, or to explore the possibility of ‘sustainable localism’ to preserve the cultural and social fabric of Penang.Footnote 48 More specifically, the Chinese population, once again aligned through the Public Chinese Town Hall, has been active and cohesive in reviving the common cultural heritage, such as art forms and traditional festivals, to enhance a sense of solidarity among major dialect groups in Penang.Footnote 49 The reassertion of their cultural identity can be seen as a form of passive resistance to the discrimination against non-bumiputera.Footnote 50
This collective identity and proactive localism are reflected in the burgeoning number of modern voluntary associations in contemporary Penang. In the immediate post-colonial era, Penang already ranked second in terms of concentration of voluntary associations among the states of West Malaysia.Footnote 51 Specifically, the Consumer Association of Penang, founded in 1969, was considered the leading consumer association in the developing countries.Footnote 52 The Association's former President, Anwar Fazal, recalls that its founders, though they diverged in ethnicity and profession, were united under ‘the desire of civic empowerment’ and rights-based actions. This conviction was in part a response to the racial tension after the 1969 riots.Footnote 53 Its objective is to stimulate people's awareness of post-industrial development, which destroys the environment or produces goods that harm public health. Economic justice and social reform are exercised through consumer protection and civic engagement.Footnote 54 Its publication, Utusan Konsumer, which reached a quarter of the circulation of Malaysia's largest newspaper in 1981, illustrates its capacity for engagement.Footnote 55
Campaigning for freedom, justice and solidarity, the National Consciousness Movement (Aliran) symbolizes the radical side of political activism. Its monthly magazine, Aliran Monthly, is considered to be the most established alternative voice in Malaysia. It offered vocal and critical commentaries on the dismissal and trial of Anwar Ibrahim, at a time when the entire national media remained silent.Footnote 56 Although it has suffered from repeated crackdowns and censorship from the regime, the organization has survived and thrived in Penang to illustrate the feasibility of struggle.Footnote 57 Environmentalism has also proliferated, with renowned international NGOs such as Friends of the Earth and the Third World Network constituting their national branch and international secretariat respectively in Penang. Aligned with local NGOs such as the Malaysia Nature Society, they espouse the concepts of sustainable development, natural conservation and direct action.
In short, despite the state encroachment on civil society, many modern NGOs that aimed to transcend the ethnic cleavage and establish a new form of civil society activism, emerged and proliferated in Penang during the 1970s and 1980s. This is partly as a result of the resistance from local Chinese and Indians, who were frustrated by the partisan and ethnic politics. Their proliferation also reflected the genuine ability of NGOs to accommodate the societal transformations and unique identity of Penang.Footnote 58 The intention to include people of all ethnicities notwithstanding, most modern NGOs were not widely supported by the Malays who have access to the party machines. This in turn shapes the non-Malay characteristics of NGOs.
The presence of this variety of NGOs in Penang does not necessarily imply the creation of an independent voluntary sector. However, the nature of this associational life indicates the existence of new actors in the Penang polity that are rights-based and inclusive. These new actors are transforming the largely ethnicity-based communal cohesion into a more citizenship-based, social cohesion. They differ from their communal predecessors in that they are less likely to be co-opted but are more likely to resist or confront the state, especially the federal one. This feature fits with Sheila's observation that some NGOs engage in ‘forms of resistance to a dominant ideological discourse centred around official constructions’, and deviates from her conclusion that Malaysian civil society is primarily ‘consensual and collaborative’.Footnote 59 It also reflects Hilton's claim that Penang's NGOs have been nurtured from a vibrant and radical tradition that carved out a political position from government inactivity.Footnote 60 It is in this context that heritage conservation as an issue has emerged and thrived in Penang.
Heritage non-conservation by a pro-development state
A total of 4,665 properties dating from the eighteenth century have been preserved by the World Heritage Site in George Town.Footnote 61 Considering the steady growth of Penang's economy and population in the post-war era, it is logical to assume that market forces would have demolished these old shop-houses, most of them two or three storeys high, in order to capture the redevelopment potential from modern high-rises. Development pressures and technological innovations have transformed the urban landscape of many Asian cities.Footnote 62 Why is Penang an exception?
State legislation has been widely cited as the main cause.Footnote 63 According to the Rent Control Act (1966), all structures built before 1948 were subject to rent control, meaning that rent could not be increased without the consent of the tenants. This clause may have increased the costs of repossession and constrained redevelopment,Footnote 64 but why, despite the universal practice of rent control in Malaysia, has Penang preserved the largest number of pre-war buildings?Footnote 65 Indeed, whereas rent control was repealed in 1997, the World Heritage Site and its associated protection schemes did not materialize until 2005. What factors constrained urban redevelopment or heritage demolition in this period? Moreover, leaving old buildings untouched must be distinguished from enabling heritage conservation. The former is the result of state legislation that leaves shop-houses to deteriorate and tenants to move out, whereas the latter involves the appreciation and preservation of cultural heritages in the community. From this perspective, heritage conservation in Penang is exercised through the retreat of the state and substitution from the voluntary sector.
Penang's post-1969 economic downturn and embedded fiscal weakness have forced the state government actively to pursue economic restructuring. Lim Chong Eu, Chief Minister of Penang in 1969–1990 and leader of the ruling party, Gerakan, instigated huge development initiatives. The Penang Development Corporation was formed in 1969 to construct a free-trade zone and industrial estates in the southeast corner of the island, where land supply was abundant.Footnote 66 The 13.5 kilometre-long Penang Bridge connecting the island to the mainland followed. The Manufacturing industry, especially high-tech electronics plants, were attracted to settle, bringing enormous foreign direct investments and high-paid jobs.Footnote 67 Demands from the emerging middle class and foreign workers have since encouraged developers to build modern industrial complexes in this designated zone.Footnote 68 In other words, development incentives in the suburbs represent a trade-off to alleviate development pressure in the inner city.
Nevertheless, the inner city was not entirely exempt from the threat of development, as is evident in the construction of the Penang New Urban Centre (‘The Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak’, hereafter KOMTAR) and the development agenda set out in Vision 2020. KOMTAR was reputed to be the ‘only one of its kind in Southeast Asia’ that would transform the urban landscape of George Town. Started in 1974 with an initial budget of 20 million Malaysian Ringgit (RM), KOMTAR consisted of a 65-storey office tower and four-storey podium shopping mall, constructed on 11 hectares of newly acquired land at a point where four main arterial roads converge. The land was mainly acquired from private landlords, leading to an overall displacement of 3,175 residents and hundreds of small businesses from a familiar community into alien blocks.Footnote 69 Moreover, Vision 2020 was proposed by the federal government in 1991, with the aim to make Malaysia an industrialized country by 2020 and to encourage the development of the construction sector.Footnote 70 This national agenda has provided incentives to the private sector, especially investors from Taiwan and Singapore. Development applications in Penang peaked in the mid-1990s, which made George Town's heritage susceptible to demolition.Footnote 71
Furthermore, Penang's institutional framework was unfriendly towards conservation. Senior civil servants have only been accountable to the Chief Minister since the abolition of elected local councils in the 1970s. Although the Municipal Council of Penang Island was restored, the chief minister has reserved the right to appoint councillors. This hierarchy integrated the pro-development agenda into state apparatuses, as reflected by the delayed adoption of the Town and Country Planning Act (1976) until 1986, which requires all developments to obtain prior approval from the local planning authority. Thus, only eight monuments covered in the Antiquities Act (1976) were in statutory protection in Penang prior to 1985. The Act is considered insufficient as it only covers government properties, such as the City Hall and Supreme Court Building, which were saved from the occupation of state apparatuses. Malaysia's Nomination Dossier has conceded that state conservation only began in 1993 with the conservation of the mansion of Syed Al-Attas,Footnote 72 a Muslim spice trader of Aceh decent who supported the Acehnese battle against Dutch imperialism in the late nineteenth century. However, even this initiative was ad hoc as funding was derived from the federal government that aimed to promote Muslim culture, and restoration was devolved to a Penang Heritage Trust project coordinator.Footnote 73 The renovated mansion was eventually turned into an Islamic Museum.
Of course, commercial incentives also drive the state to consider the adaptation of a more conservation-friendly policy. Since the 1980s, Penang has been losing its comparative advantage to attract foreign investment due to the keen competitions from newly industrializing countries in East Asia. Its traditional emphasis on resort tourism has also been proved to be unmatchable to the resorts developed by its neighbouring areas such as Thailand, Sabah and Sarawak. Thus, in 1992 the Penang government asked the Penang Development Corporation to work out strategies to transform Penang's economy, in which heritage tourism and hi-tech technology were considered to be the alternatives.Footnote 74 The former required the conservation of cultural heritages for tourist consumption, whilst the latter also inferred the making of Penang a place livable and culturally attractive to the talented.
In other words, the emerging concern for heritage conservation in George Town is in part stimulated by the need for economic diversification of Penang. Yet after the repeal of Rent Control Act (1966) in 1997, it was doubtful whether such economically-driven policy was sufficient for the thorough protection of the city's cultural heritage. This is because the inner city was once again exposed to the threat of redevelopment, and state-led heritage tourism has been highly selective and often compromised the cause of heritage conservation, leading to the gentrification of historic buildings with the original community uprooted. In contrast, the civil society activisms to preserve the city's heritages are relatively robust and sustainable, which emphasize on preserving the original facade of the built heritages along with their associated communal life.
Bottom-up resistance and engagement
Concern for the viability of the state's monopoly of heritage non-provision has thus sparked ‘a series of social movements’,Footnote 75 each escalating towards a radical agenda. Founded in 1986 by a group of architects, communal landlords, environmentalists and historians, the Penang Heritage Trust has emerged and shaped this bottom-up voluntarism.Footnote 76 Its founding President, Lim Chong Keat, proclaimed the objective of simulating:
greater civic concern in the heritage of Penang—not only in buildings and places but also our landscape and natural features, in arts and crafts and aspects of social life and history.Footnote 77
Its longest serving President, Choong Sim Poey and current President, Khoo Salma, respectively recognized the linkage between tangible and intangible heritages in advocating:
We have to keep society and communities intact. With the end of rent controls, it is particularly important that along with retaining the rich cultural heritage, the people are allowed to live in the inner city.
We want to protect the cultural diversity. Everybody has a place here, and there is a unique interface between the various communities.Footnote 78
To fulfil this broad spectrum of concern, the Penang Heritage Trust aims to:
(1) establish the historic facts and features to increase public awareness and appreciation of Penang's legacy;
(2) raise funds and support from sympathetic associations and members;
(3) set guidelines for the professional and sustained conservation of heritages;
(4) persuade the government to allocate incentives for the assessment and preservation of the built heritage.Footnote 79
Therefore the Trust aims to make heritage conservation a public discourse and policy agenda. Its former newsletter editor, Loh-Lim Lin Lee, frames this as ‘the interplay of fight and talk’, and its present treasurer, Lim Gaik Siang, considers it to reflect ‘the hate-like relationship between the state and civil society’.Footnote 80
Direct actions by Penang's voluntary sector have constructed a piecemeal heritage discourse. The early conservation agenda appealed for ad hoc intervention from the state, emerging in 1981 in response to the redevelopment of College General, a Catholic seminary that trained priests for Penang and Malaya for 176 years. A small group of urban middle class citizens conducted signature campaigns and sent letters to the press to highlight the charity works and socio-cultural impacts of this missionary establishment. However, this gentle and loosely organized protest failed to draw the attention of the state. Insisting that the government had no grounds to intervene in a legal deal between private entities, the college was relocated and the seminary demolished.Footnote 81 The outcome convinced the social activists of the desirability of organized struggles, and some of them subsequently joined the Penang Heritage Trust.
Contestation then evolved into a dispute against the government's development policy. When Lim Chong Eu proposed that Penang Hill become a tourist resort in 1990, voluntary associations such as the Penang Heritage Trust, the Consumer Association of Penang and environmental NGOs soon joined in alliance as the Friends of Penang Hill. They examined and publicized the proposal's environmental and cultural hazards at sit-ins and press conferences. More than 3,000 independent letters of complaint were also sent to the Environment Department. The public outcry was unprecedented as the Hill was considered to capture the ambience of Penang's unique colonial inheritance.Footnote 82 Preserving the Hill further shaped the 1990 elections as the government refused to back down. That decision cost the ruling party dearly, forcing Lim to resign and ending his 21-year tenure as Chief Minister of Penang.Footnote 83 The fact that the Penangites were prepared to tumble the architect of contemporary Penang in their efforts to preserve the Hill revealed their keen attachment to the historic and natural landscape of Penang.
The heritage discourse at last denounced the trustworthiness of the state with regard to conservation. For instance, protests were made against the private demolition of the Metropole Hotel which was carried out on Christmas Day 1993. Formally known as Asdang House, the hotel was built by Kham Sim Bee, one of the most successful Chinese tycoons who was made governor of Phuket in the 1890s. Siamese royalty is recorded to have lived there when visiting Penang, making the hotel a symbol of the Sino-Thai relationship and of Penang's trading position in the Straits of Malacca.Footnote 84 The Penang Heritage Trust revealed that the demolition, done without planning approval which the Municipal Council of Penang Island had designated one of the Twenty Millionaire's Row heritage sites, was destroyed.Footnote 85 It was then revealed that the developer had acquired the hotel from the President of the Council and leaders of Gerakan, who were major stockholders.Footnote 86 Although there was no direct proof of misconduct, the integrity of the state and those working for it was at stake. The President of the Council was forced to resign and the state ostensibly pushed to sue the developer in question, and also established a committee to review conservation policy.Footnote 87 This outcome suggests that the state was forced to act once public outcry reached a certain level, but it was too entrenched in the development regime to engage proactively in conservation.
These social contestations have been mounted and corresponded with institutional and policy changes in Penang's conservation agenda, with the Penang Heritage Trust performing an indispensable role. Undoubtedly, the elite background of the Trust's founding members has enabled access to a political society, but different generations of Trust members have proven to the state their expertise and capacity to mobilize resources.Footnote 88 Since 1986, members have occupied positions on the State Planning Committee and in the Municipal Planning Department.Footnote 89 These apparatuses commissioned the Draft Design Guidelines for Conservation Areas in the Inner City Areas of George Town and Draft Structure Plan, which outlined potential conservation zones and proposed a historical and cultural enclave in the city.Footnote 90 In addition, the State Heritage Committee, comprising 16 NGOs and professional bodies including the Penang Heritage Trust, was formed as a result of the Metropole Incident. Two reports were tabled by the Trust on behalf of the committee in which procedures to identify and list built heritage sites and incentives to conduct land exchanges and property assessments were proposed.Footnote 91Although the government initially rejected these recommendations as impractical, most of the recommendations had been gazetted and were considered to be pillars of Penang's conservation framework.Footnote 92
These attempts to mediate the state may have created the impression that the Penang voluntary sector is nothing but a collaborator. However, engaging in deliberation is different from compromising on ideals. By accepting the appointments, Penang Heritage Trust members are obviously subject to certain procedures and norms inside institutions. This is the price to be paid in order to bring the perspective of the NGO to the state apparatus and ensure that spontaneous direct action is channelled towards effecting policy change. Different Trust members are eager to address and reflect on this dilemma, both during personal interviews by the present authors, and in public. However, there is no evidence that Trust activists have been awarded with honours in exchange for their silence. On the contrary, their civil society actions have remained active. It was by the Trust's efforts that George Town was listed under the 2000 Watch List of the World's 100 Most Endangered Sites.Footnote 93 This advocacy programme is directed by the World Monuments Fund, which welcomes nominations from state and voluntary sectors, and also aims to promote the preservation of cultural heritage. Moreover, the Trust's standing was evident in an open letter from Malaysia's Commissioner of Heritage to the New Straits Times, entitled, ‘Talk to us, don't shout to the press’. The commissioner acknowledged the Trust's contribution during the World Heritage Site nomination, but attacked its vocal critics in public, revealing that it had not been successfully co-opted.Footnote 94
Nature and capacity of Penang's voluntary sector
By criticizing the government's actions, or inactions, social contestation has constructed a heritage discourse. By provoking policy changes and the World Heritage Site nomination, institutional deliberation has created a conservation agenda. The heritage agenda has since encompassed built heritages, the natural landscape and intangible cultures. In this regard, Penang's bottom-up voluntarism has contested the viability of state-led conservation and has resisted the state's definition of monument. The engagement pattern of the Penang Heritage Trust thus reflects the distinct nature and capacity of Penang's voluntary sector as compared with its Malaysian counterparts.
First, theTrust is a vibrant and enduring organization. Its membership has increased from 17 in 1986, to 398 in 2010, each of whom pays an annual subscription of RM60.Footnote 95 Its quarterly newsletter, published since 1986, reached issue 100 in June 2011, with each issue containing 12 to 36 pages of thorough reports on associational activities, heritage policies and conservation news. Moreover, site visits, book fares, workshops and seminars are organized on a regular basis. Anywhere between several dozen and hundreds of participants partake in the monthly site visit.Footnote 96 Apart from site visits, which are an exclusive collective benefit for members, other events are free and welcome public participation. These well-attended events have served as a platform for nurturing a shared identity for Penang's heritage.
Second, the Trust has delivered inclusive targets and sustainable models of conservation. A series of programmes was initiated to record, archive and exhibit Penang's intangible cultures. This began with a living treasures award to honour those practising traditional and endangered cultures. Each awardee is entitled to an annual honorarium of RM1,000 and, by 2009, the ten awardees were spread across major ethnic groups, with the youngest aged 58 years and the oldest 94 years.Footnote 97 An apprenticeship scheme was piloted to recruit practitioners to revive their skills and trades.Footnote 98 In addition, Trust members have led built-heritage conservation projects that provide a narrative on Penang's history and identity. Three cases are particularly revealing: the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion that was built by a philanthropist dubbed the ‘Rockefeller of the East’ by The New York Times in 1905; the Suffolk House that was the residence of Francis Light who founded Penang; and the Han Jian Ancestral Hall, which has provided religious and social amenities to the Teochew community for centuries.Footnote 99 Not only did the conserved Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion become ‘the model for restoration projects throughout the city of George Town and the broader region’,Footnote 100 but the Mansion, Suffolk House and Ancestral Hall also won the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Excellence, Distinction and Merit, respectively.Footnote 101 These awards are highly competitive and Malaysia has so far received four awards, three of which were secured by Penang's voluntary sector.Footnote 102
Third, the Penang Heritage Trust has relied on a moderate income from the voluntary and private sectors. Its annual reports indicate that project income and donations stood at RM213,521 in 2006 and RM235,554 in 2007, accounting for over 75 per cent of its annual income. Project income is principally derived from international bodies such as UNESCO and World Monuments Fund, and is occasionally drawn from government bodies such as the Ministry of Tourism and the Penang Tourism Action Council. Donations, in contrast, mainly come from the private sector. The HSBC once donated RM 52,360, and donations from individuals range from tens to thousands of RM.Footnote 103 The budget seems small, as it merely accounts for direct income, but does not include the separate funding for specific built-heritage projects, which have received contributions from RM2 million to RM6.7 million. Nonetheless, this implies that the Penang voluntary sector has been constrained to provide public goods directly. Despite its fame and vibrancy, the Trust remains a facilitator in heritage conservation.
Fourth, the Penang Heritage Trust has been exercising and cultivating external alignments. For example, internationally it has served as Malaysia's representative in the International National Trusts Organization, where associations exchange technical conservation details and hasten heritage law enforcement.Footnote 104 This kind of exposure familiarizes members with conservation tactics and guidelines, which have contributed to the series of World Monuments Fund recognitions and the UNESCO awards. Locally, the Trust's engagement with catchall and rights-based NGOs has been thoroughly documented in the preceding discussion. However, the capacity of ethnic-based and communal institutions must not be overlooked. Not only have kinship ties turned out to be critical in raising millions for conservation, the communal trustees have shown considerable interest in preserving their history through modern means.Footnote 105 Since the mid-1990s, many of them have sought expert advice and requested site evaluations from the Trust to conserve temples and mosques. Whether they are motivated by communal obligation or tourist potential is difficult to tell, but either way they have amplified the heritage discourse and conservation agenda.
Finally, the Penang Heritage Trust has been autonomous from and continues to resist the state. On the one hand, despite receiving certain government funding, it has not been co-opted as a vehicle of the state. Instead, the state has at times been manipulated. For example, the Trust has obtained grants from Penang's tourism council to install historic street-plaques, which was justified on the grounds of providing a guide for tourists. However, the project actually focused on archive research and oral history documentation of George Town. Each of the 113 plaques contains four languages to help feature and preserve local pronunciation and specialization.Footnote 106 Hence, although funded by the state, this third-sector initiative has implicitly challenged the state's efforts to standardize the road names of Penang into lanes, streets or avenues. On the other hand, civil society actions have been mobilized to monitor the state. Along with concerned NGOs, the Trust has organized protests, raised public concern and has eventually blocked the Penang Global City Centre mega-project initiated by the former Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawai, which was expected to demolish 100 hectares of land and thousands of buildings right outside the World Heritage Site zones.Footnote 107 Moreover, it did not hesitate to request a UNESCO inspection to invalidate four extensive hotel constructions in the post-World Heritage Site era, despite these projects being approved by a state government that was regarded as friendly towards NGOs. These civic engagements have been institutionalized through the formation of the Penang Forum in 2008, comprising a coalition of concerned NGOs that aim to monitor the government and promote the idea of sustainable development.Footnote 108
Conclusion
Penang's sustained heritage conservation and World Heritage Site inauguration have revealed the role of the voluntary sector in public goods provision. This bottom-up approach has contested the development priority of the state and preserved the local identity which was snubbed by the ruling regime. By constructing a heritage discourse and conservation agenda, the voluntary sector aligns social actors, mediates the state, solicits funding and delivers conservation programmes. Rather than collaborating with the state and developers to demolish and renovate the inner city, the NGOs and social activists have worked in pairs and devoted themselves to defending and conserving the space and heritage they consider to be monuments. Some of them persisted for a decade or more and have continued after the World Heritage Site listing. This pattern of behaviour suggests that they are neither free-riders nor merely reputation seekers. This degree of political activism is related to Penang's marginalized trajectory in the colonial era and following independence, during which civil autonomy and cohesive property were produced and reinforced. Not only have the communal and associational groups been empowered in the process, they have nurtured the cause and earned trust to resist or even to confront the state. Thus, despite participating in state the apparatus, Penang's NGOs have been more independent and active than their Malaysian counterparts.
However, the theoretical generalization of this case is subject to two considerations. The first consideration concerns the enduring capacity of Penang's voluntary sector. Heritage conservation has developed into a salient issue and has proved to be effective as it directly deals with cultural legacy, which is indispensable to the local identity shared across the social fabric and ethnic groups. Therefore, it is uncertain whether a similar level of civil participation or sustained amount of private donations will be received when it comes to other issues. The second consideration refers to the nature of the partnership between the state and voluntary sectors. The notion that the voluntary sector should replace the state as the leading agent in cultural development could provide a pretext for the government to escape from the provision of certain residual public goods. The World Heritage Site listing was only made possible as it concurrently enabled the NGOs’ desire to preserve Penang's historic identity and the state to boost cultural tourism. With the completion of that common goal, the tension between the two sectors has intensified, and whether such a partnership is a viable option to address state and market failures is still unclear.
Despite these reservations, our study reveals that Penang's realm and the property of Penang's voluntary sector are comparable with those observed in developed countries and hence are unique among developing countries. As such, this sub-national case study also exhibits the specific socioeconomic contexts viable for civic engagement and resistance, which are too often neglected in comparative analyses.
