Kampong Glam: Appreciating the History Beyond the “Glam”

Abstract

By 2018, the heritage space of Kampong Glam seems to have found its place in Singapore’s tourist landscape as an attractive enough place for foreign tourists and Singaporeans to comingle with Singapore Malay-Muslim community visiting the area for spiritual and leisure purposes. The impact of conservation efforts since the 1990s had raised concerns on the economic viability of the area as being not “attractive” enough for the modern tourists. 2018 Kampong Glam, especially the main thoroughfare of Bussorah Street, has been transformed with its ethnic minority heritage touristified, commodified, exotified and “showcased” to achieve that right balance of “authenticity” amidst the usual activities that distinguish modern tourism. This is a contested evolution with significant repercussions on history, identity and memory. With Kampong Glam, pupils and students of Singapore history need to look beyond the comfortable descriptive narrative of textbook learning journeys or the triumphalism of heritage sustainability through tourist-centered conservation efforts. Undoubtedly, heritage conservation is a complex process but in appreciating Kampong Glam, there must be the effort to analyze the deep structures of these processes and the tangible and intangible negative outcomes not always included in official narratives or tourist brochures. Heritage management is about power dynamics of defining space and this ultimately resides with the state and state-defined interests. In appreciating Kampong Glam, as with any heritage spaces, pupils and students therefore should be introduced to the interdisciplinary framework of deconstructing conservation, heritage, and identity within competing power dynamics which can result in disempowerment for selected groups.