Heritage Kampong Dodol Peter Zabielskis in discussing Penang's Kampong Dodol argues that heritage conservation is a moral issue  Part 1

ABSTRACT Heritage conservation is not just about beautiful, historic buildings. It is a deeply moral issue that also concerns the education of youth, the expression of faith, and the ability to maintain and reinforce shared social values over time.  Based on conversations with forty residents of Kampung Dodol, this paper is about villagers' perceptions of the heritage values of their community and the ways in which these are tied to their built environment.  While not everyone claimed that the kampung or any house within it was "historical," most residents felt that both had significant "heritage" importance.  Valuing site and social setting over any specific structure or aesthetic form, villagers affirmed the importance of the social cohesion and a continuity with the past that their kampung represented.  Specific houses were considered significant as sites of family history, social action, or because people important to the community were remembered as living there.  These values may be "unseen" but they are still inextricably linked to the built environment.   Distinguishing between "history" and "heritage" in village perception, I discuss why residents felt that this heritage should be conserved, and why they saw the values it embodied as broadly relevant to meeting the challenges posed by rapid development and in increase in urban density, both in their own area and throughout Penang.

Introduction HOUSES -- AND THE NEIGHBOURHOODS in which they are located -- are particularly meaningful forms of material culture, loaded with symbolic content crucial to processes of cultural reproduction and socialization, to the development of personhood and ways of living, and to the continuity or evolution of world views.  Houses are more than the products of particular designs, materials, or construction methods.  Together with the spaces they create, the ways in which these spaces are used, and the ways in which these are furnished and decorated, houses are cultural constructs ripe with social meanings that both express and reinforce such social phenomena as class, status, gender relations, ethnicity, faith, and aspiration.  Dwelling itself is a historical process in and through which various social and material ideologies are played out.  Perhaps nowhere are these expressions more immediately apparent than in the houses of old Penang, where a roof line, a window, or a door can instantly convey whether the original builders were Hokkien, Cantonese, Baba, or Malay, or whether, perhaps by the addition of certain accessories, the current residents are Taoist, Hindu, Christian, or Muslim.  Such visual elements contribute to the vibrancy of experience in the city, and are important markers of both history and identity in Penang's culturally diverse, and competitive, urban environment.  But the heritage that houses embody is not just about what can be readily seen walking down the street.  It is also about that which is largely ‘unseen' by the casual passerby.  One of the things I learned during two years in Penang is that heritage preservation is not just about safeguarding physical structures that are beautiful, obviously old, or aesthetically pleasing -- although that is important.  It is also a deeply moral issue that concerns such things as the education of youth, the expression of faith, the memories of family and community, and the ability to maintain and reinforce shared social values over time.  All of these may be less publicly visible than a beautiful building, but they are still tied to the built environment.  These are the topics of this paper. In 1998 I had the privilege of visiting forty homes in a distinctive part of old Penang -- Kampung Dodol -- and talking with residents about where they lived, how they felt about it, and what they valued in their immediate environment.  These conversations were part of a larger anthropological research project that included a total of three different areas of George Town -- and before I go any further, I would like to acknowledge at the outset the assistance of Asyriah Ismail, who was then a graduate student in planning at Universiti Sains Malaysia.  I would also like to acknowledge the help of Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz and Alex Koenig who gave me permission to use some of the survey questions developed for the Housing in Historic City Centres of Southeast Asia project, of which they were a part.  Together, Asyriah and I asked each resident we spoke with over a hundred questions, covering basic things like socioeconomic information and household composition -- but most of our questions concerned the built environment:  How did residents perceive and appreciate the residential space in which they lived, including both their own houses and the neighbourhood as a whole?  What, if anything, did they feel was distinctive about either?  The goals of the survey were multiple: to elicit residents' understandings of the ways in which history, society, and cultural identity may or may not be expressed in the built environment, to ascertain their heritage awareness and what they felt was particularly meaningful in their surroundings, and to generate discussions about any assets and problems they saw in their housing situation -- their likes and dislikes -- along with their projections of what their neighbourhood might be like in the future.  Everyone we spoke to was very patient with us, as some conversations continued on for nearly an hour.

Kampung Dodol Kampung Dodol is one of the few remaining ‘urban villages' in George Town, still thriving just beyond, or between, a network of streets now busy with traffic.  In many ways it represents what parts of Penang might have been like in the not-so-distant past, even though most of the houses here no longer look like kampung houses did long ago.   Over the years almost every house has been more or less completely renovated and enlarged in ways that I would like to propose be considered as a ‘new vernacular.'  Similar additions are now seen in kampungs throughout Malaysia:  the stilts that once raised from the ground an entirely wood-frame house have now been enclosed, most often with concrete block.  Louvered glass windows have been added, and a concrete floor poured in an area that was once an open space beneath the house but is now a large new room.  These are substantial changes that, for some, could be considered to radically compromise the integrity of traditional kampung architecture.  For residents, however, these added features were not what was most significant to them about their houses, nor did it affect their perception of them as having heritage value.  Thinking about the process of perception itself, the French philosopher Henri Bergson noted that ‘there is no perception which is not full of memories.  With the immediate and present data of our senses, we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience.' (Bergson 1988 [1908]: 33).  For many of the residents of Kampung Dodol, what was significant about their houses was not any detail of their structure but the memories of people and events that they evoked.  Bergson went on to state that one's perception of any whole is limited ‘to the image of that which interests you.' (1988 [1908]: 40).  What interests the people of Kampung Dodol is a sense of community and continuity, tied both to their homes and to the sense of their kampung as a place -- the whole of their environment, built or unbuilt, natural and social - and not any particular building or detail within it.  Informed by memory and valuing site over structure, they appreciated the fact that generations of family had lived there before them, and they saw a certain continuity with the past as something generally relevant to the present.  Most said they would not prefer to live anywhere else. Just off a main road, Kampung Dodol is the site of two mosques and several historic keramat within a large Muslim burial ground -- but the kampung itself is easy to miss.  Speeding along Jalan Perak, which bisects the village, it is hard to see that just below the modern Hashim Yahya mosque, and largely hidden from the street, is a dense residential area - the location of my study.  Clusters of kampung houses -- some no more than ten or twenty feet apart -- are scattered randomly along an amorphous network of winding paths that are just wide enough, if you are careful, to allow the passage of a car.  Here the rumble of traffic is suddenly superseded by peace and relative quiet.  The sounds of birds chirping and children playing freely on the paths or at open doorways is interrupted only by the calls to prayer, the roar of a motorbike on one of the pathways, or the tinkle of a bicycle bell announcing the arrival of an itinerant ice cream seller pedalling his three-wheeled cart.  The heat of the day minimizes many other outdoor activities, but most houses are cooled, at least visually, by tall palm or mango trees and bright swaths of bougainvillea or bunga raya.  Gardens and paths flow easily into and through one another, creating a visual experience of the village as an organic whole largely free of boundaries with the mosque as a focal point on the highest ground.  This is wakaf --  Muslim endowment land -- which in this case means that most households are Muslim and most families had built their own houses here, often generations ago.  No individual, however, owns the land, which is held in trust for the benefit of the community and the mosque.  As most residents will tell you - or at least the Malay residents - this is a Malay kampung.  Twenty-eight of the forty residents we spoke to identified themselves as Malay.  Like many places in Penang, however, other groups were also represented.  Some said they were ‘Indian-Muslim' (three households), or ‘Malay and Indian-Muslim' (four households) -- the second largest group -- and others specified different origins for individual household members, with the following combinations: ‘Malay and Indonesian' (two); ‘Malay and Javanese' (one); ‘Malay, Indian-Muslim and Pakistani' (one); and ‘Arab Yemeni and Achenese'(one).  Several of the non-Malay residents preferred to refer to the kampung as ‘Muslim' rather than specifically ‘Malay' - the former a larger, more inclusive category.

The Malay House Unlike houses on more publicly accessible streets in Penang, where building codes regulated heights and setbacks and where series of similar structures often indicate construction by the same owner/developer, the self-built houses of Kampung Dodol are all unique and visually different.  In the absence of a grid or any clearly named streets, it is the distinctiveness and individuality of each house that provide - apart from the mosque and the burial ground -- the primary points of orientation for anyone walking along the paths.  At the same time each house's uniqueness appears to be more the product of the practical circumstances of its renovation and addition than any quest for individualized aesthetic expression.  Materials are serious and basic: cement blocks for the enclosed ground floor, original wood construction above it, and a pitched roof of corrugated metal or asbestos.  Occasionally, traces remain of open-work carving still framing an upper story window, but there are few exterior embellishments -- no decorative facades putting a public face on any distinction between front and back, public and private.  Likewise, most interiors were sparsely and practically furnished with only a few basic items.  The new ground-floor room -- that in many ways replicates the flexible-use functions of a traditional rumah ibu   -  is meant to be filled with people rather than collections of things.  Its open plan emphasizes sociability and simplicity. When asked what they liked about their houses most residents emphasized function over form.  What they appreciated most was the natural, social, and religious setting of their house -- and the people and activities associated with it -- rather than its structure.   ‘It's more comfortable living in a kampung because you can plant and raise chickens,' said a middle-aged taxi driver, ‘ unlike living in a flat where you can only stay in the house.'  ‘I like a kampung style house because I can do some gardening and plant my own vegetables to eat, so I save a little,' said a housewife in her twenties.  A retired clerk said she liked ‘the atmosphere of a kampung.  It's cool in the morning.'  For others, the advantages of setting were distinctly social.  A woman in her twenties said she liked it that ‘a lot of relatives live around this house.'  Another woman, also in her twenties, said, ‘I love it here because there are many children.'  Other women specifically valued the familiarity and social continuity of living in the same place for a long time -- and in the same house as previous generations:  ‘I've lived here since I was a child and I know all the villagers.  My father and mother lived here,' said one.  ‘This house was owned by my father; it's the place where I was born,' said another. Proximity to both the mosque and the cemetery were universally seen as distinct advantages.  ‘I like that the house is situated near the mosque and you can hear the calls for prayers,' said a widow living with her adult daughter.  An elderly retired muezzin, who lived alone despite the protestations of his children, who had moved out, said he liked his house ‘because my wife is here.  Every morning I go to the cemetery, to my wife's grave, and then I eat and come back at noon.  That is why I don't want to sell this house.'  Others, especially middle-aged housewives who may not be comfortable driving, were more inclusive about valuing proximity to other facilities:  ‘All facilities are close by - the hospital, the fire station, the mosque.  It's convenient;' said one woman.  The economic base of Kampung Dodol was never agricultural, and residents appreciated that they were part of the city but did not share in its congestion.  One resident summed it up by appreciating that her house was ‘near the main road, the mosque, and a lot of facilities nearby.'

Specifically Malay Many residents said they liked the fact that the kampung was specifically Malay -- and again, most cited reasons that referred to its social setting.  An eighty-year-old woman observed that ‘everyone here is Malay, so it is easy to talk to each other.'  Only a few residents initially offered statements referring to their house in any material sense when asked what they liked about it -- and most of these were men.  These responses included appreciations of both the fact of ownership and the desirability of certain features.  A factory and night market worker said what he liked was that ‘we own the house so we don't have to pay rent.'  A businessman likewise said that he liked his house ‘because it's my own house,' as did the wife of a municipal council employee.  Spaciousness was perhaps the most desirable material feature, and some residents made it clear that this was an advantage that most apartment dwellers do not enjoy: ‘This house has a large area, a place to rest, and more rooms compared to flats with just two rooms,' observed one man.  While the house as a material structure was not a primary concern, nevertheless, many residents were able to name a price for what they thought their house was currently worth.  My sense is that they did so only because they had prepared themselves to ask for compensation in the event they would have to leave to make way for ‘development.'  No one said they had plans to sell, and some, who had already purchased housing units elsewhere, were renting them out to others so they could stay in the village.  Given the hypothetical situation of having the financial resources to live in any kind of house anywhere, most said that their preferred house type was a kampung house, just like the one they already had, and located right where it already was - here.  Only one woman offered an overall negative evaluation of her house and again, her primary reason was its setting.  ‘I don't like this house,' she said, ‘it's in a flood area.' Despite Kampung Dodol having been an urban kampung for many decades, the ‘housing ideology,' if you will, expressed by its residents in many ways dovetails nicely with what Lim has outlined as the ‘philosophical base' of the Malay house, identified with more rural areas: "The philosophical base of the traditional Malay house is basically very different from that of the conventional westernized modern houses: the environmentally-respectful against the nature-conqueror; the conserver culture against the consumer culture; use-values against exchange values; decentralization against centralization; and basic needs against luxury needs" (Lim 1987: 10). This is not primarily a material ideology or an aesthetic issue  -- although it is about the built environment.  The residents of Kampung Dodol preferred not to think of housing as an exchangeable commodity.  Use values -- practicality, sociability, and a sense of the continuity of family and community through time -- always outweighed materialism as desired features.  It was the expression and reinforcement of these values in built form, together with the identification of certain features as ‘Malay' and ‘Muslim' that residents most valued.  A young woman summed it up when she said that what she liked about her house was that it was ‘spacious, clean, and decorated with joy to be very lively during the [Muslim] festive season.  My late father-in-law used to decorate the house with small gasoline lamps around the outside.'# (to be continued) from "At the Crossroads of History and Development: ‘Unseen' Heritage and The Built Environment in an Urban Kampung in Penang" A paper read at The Penang Story Conference 2002 by Peter Zabielskis Department of Anthropology, New York University Email ptz0637@home.nyu.edu

The Penang Story is a project organised by the Penang Heritage Trust in collaboration with Star Publications with the aim of assisting Penang and Malacca's joint listing in the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations's World Heritage list. The project is sponsored by the Japan Foundation, ABN-AMRO Bank and the Penang Government with the City Bayview as the official hotel.  The Penang Story tells of the peoples of  Penang and can be found at www.penangstory.net

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