BUKIT BROWN : Living Museum of History and Heritage

In Search of a Shared Heritage: Ishvinder Singh at TEDxYouth

Raymond Goh 0 TV Media Thursday, January 30, 2014

In Search of a Shared Heritage: Ishvinder Singh at TEDxYouth

Jan 30, 2014 In Search of a Shared Heritage: Ishvinder Singh at TEDxYouth Ishvinder Singh's talk will explore the concept of a ...

The power of local culture

Raymond Goh 0 Debate Saturday, January 25, 2014

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ST News 
Jan 25, 2014 
 
BY INVITATION 
The power of local culture 
 
A growing interest in heritage issues is a sign of local cultures responding to national and global forces 
 
By Wang Gungwu For The Straits Times 
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OVER the years, the Peranakan Museum, the Kampong Glam Heritage Centre, the Wan Qing Yuan (Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall), and many others, have pointed to the growing interest in heritage among the various communities in Singapore. The recent campaign to save the Bukit Brown cemetery marks yet another milestone. 
 
Many would have noted the rise in curiosity about family history and about idiosyncratic designs of a great variety of artefacts, notably dress, furniture, utensils and homes. These are all reminders of how the culture of old customs and practices have survived. 
 
What is striking is that this interest is less about heritage being national and more about it being local. The emphasis on the concrete and the specific is particularly suited to the descendants of immigrants who sense that their links with their ancestral homes have become precarious. 
 
But it is also more than that. 
 
The heritage phenomenon is a measure of cultural resilience, something that comes from living and caring for what is natural and familiar. This becomes important in a bewildering, fast-changing environment when larger, impersonal national and global forces press hard. 
 
What is the source of one’s culture? 
 
In the era of empires, the gap between what was local and what provided the glitter and glory of life among the elites was great. 
 
History records more about the latter than about the former. But the gap also protected local culture precisely because the latter was often ignored, being far from the centre of power. 
 
Culture and nation-states 
 
MODERN nation-states pose different problems. National cultures have been powerfully enabled by modern methods of communication that shape uniform ways of life. New elites also tend to use culture as one of the tests of their citizens’ patriotism and loyalty. 
 
This has been a successful means of producing political unity among so-called “native peoples” in the smaller states of Western and Central Europe. 
 
The strategy is less successful elsewhere, especially in larger states that contain several peoples who have strong indigenous cultures of their own. It is even more of a test for nation-states that consist of large numbers of immigrant peoples who brought their own cultures with them. 
 
In Asia, we have examples of large states such as China, India and Indonesia, each pondering the possibility of cultural conformity. Smaller states with a variety of native peoples are not exempt, notably Myanmar and the Philippines, not to mention the complexities of Afghanistan. 
 
And then there are the exceptional cases such as Malaysia and Singapore that share a similar colonial past. Both have large numbers of immigrants brought there to serve the needs of the British Empire. With empires, all that mattered was the metropolitan culture that provided the standards and ensured order and control. Local cultures were irrelevant as long as they did not stand in the way of civilisational progress. 
 
Local cultures therefore not only survived; they served as badges of pride. In both Malaysia and Singapore, there are numerous examples of Malay, Chinese, Indian and Arab communities that have successfully developed their cultures in response to the dominant West. To their credit, colonial authorities left them alone to do that. 
 
Post-colonial national projects offer a different set of challenges to these local cultures. 
 
At the core of nation-building is the ideal of a multicultural society in which a common value base might be found to reinforce national unity. This appears to be Malaysia’s goal. It wants all its peoples to accept Malay-Muslim ways as indigenous, and therefore the basis of a new national culture. 
 
Singapore, on the other hand, does not speak of an indigenous group. Its many local cultures are to be treated with equal respect, with the expectation that an enriched national culture will eventually emerge. However, since the nation’s dependence on the regional and global economy is absolute, its peoples also enjoy the embellishments of a range of cosmopolitan cultures. 
 
In both cases, there is room for local culture to play a role. 
 
In Malaysia, where cultures are being politicised, this role has always been difficult. Politicians seek ways to harness ethnic- based cultures in order to limit damage to the national fabric. But as different parties seek to unite and re-divide, the outcome is uncertain. 
 
In Singapore, there is more room for local culture to play new roles. 
 
Cultural retention and change 
 
BECAUSE the Chinese are the most numerous, how their various new groupings – such as different clubs, societies and religious organisations – experience cultural retention and change might be a measure of the role local culture can play. 
 
Here the awareness of heritage is an important step. 
 
First, there were the Chinese who lived for centuries in other peoples’ kingdoms and empires. More is now known about their story since the 17th century. 
 
Chinese living in the Malay world thrived by focusing on the local cultures that their ancestors brought from villages in Fujian and Guangdong. They used them as the basis for absorbing the cultures of those among whom they lived. There was no idea of national culture then, and imperial culture was remote and alien. 
 
Then came newcomers in large numbers during the 19th and early 20th centuries. These newcomers were part of a wave of migration that was a response to painful transitions in China. 
 
For them, the movement to new lands included the excitement of national self-discovery. These newcomers made strenuous efforts abroad to educate new generations to build a nation for modern China. 
 
That included the idea of liberating the common people in their newfound land from established elite structures, something that appealed to immigrants who were predominantly working-class. Thus were the hitherto successful Peranakan Chinese pressured by passionate nationalist aspirations that belittled their local cultural adaptations. 
 
A new phase began after the end of World War II. The localised Chinese who lived in the three new nations, of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, had to confront new changes. A few remained proud of their heritage, but many adjusted to nation- building requirements, or turned elsewhere for a new life. The choices that they all made provide fine examples of cultural adaptation. 
 
Modern Singapore 
 
IN SINGAPORE, local-born Singaporean Chinese are developing local culture that not only draws on ancestral cultures in China but also incorporates the national, cosmopolitan and other local cultures that attract them. 
 
They are experiencing the same challenges of their Peranakan predecessors, except that their encounters include a much wider range of national and global cultures. How they approach that mixed heritage is inspiring fresh interest. 
 
This takes me back to Bukit Brown, to the records of family origins, to the consciousness of the aesthetic and material elements that affect attitudes towards birth, life and death. These remind us that national efforts to create uniformity can be repressive and intolerant, and global attractions that shine briefly do not take root. 
 
It is what flourishes within one’s home and family and is celebrated in our neighbourhood that cuts deeper. For a community to thrive, it is vital for each to defend the right to preserve what its members want. 
 
It may be true that ultimately all politics is local. But it is even more important to recognise that the most resilient and meaningful cultures are also local: grown on one’s land and close to home. 
 
stopinion@sph.com.sg 
 
The writer is chairman of the East Asian Institute and university professor at the National University of Singapore. 
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The power of local culture

ST News Jan 25, 2014 BY INVITATION The power of local culture A growing interest in heritage issues is a sign of local cultures resp...

Cultural heritage and its Net value

Raymond Goh 0 News Tuesday, January 07, 2014

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ST News 
Jan 07, 2014 
 
Cultural heritage and its Net value 
 
HOW precious is the Taj Mahal? And is Bukit Brown as important as what its advocates say? 
 
A new software tool could soon tell you how valuable a building, site or structure's heritage is, by crunching data from the Internet. It can also assess other forms of heritage such as art, and intangibles like music, if they are described online. 
 
While the tool simply supplements other research and work that go into heritage assessment, researchers at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) hope it will take some of the subjectivity out of assessing a piece of cultural heritage, by injecting some "science" into it. 
 
Assistant Professor Andrea Nanetti of NTU's School of Art, Design and Media said the software can give policymakers more data to make decisions: "What we want to do is to support political decisions with science." 
 
The tool is expected to mine the Internet for digitised books and newspaper articles, images of paintings and sculptures, computerised models of architecture as well as video and audio clips on any particular target. 
 
It will gather comments and opinions about the primary sources, from social media for example, and assign a value to each piece of data, depending on the commenter's reliability and expertise. 
 
Assistant Professor Cheong Siew Ann of NTU's School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences said the tool could measure people's feelings towards heritage icons. "If we wanted to know what Singaporeans in the 1980s valued most, for example, we could look at what were the most-photographed places then." 
 
The researchers were speaking on the sidelines of NTU's inaugural two-day Singapore Heritage Science Conference, which started yesterday. 
 
FENG ZENGKUN 
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Cultural heritage and its Net value

ST News Jan 07, 2014 Cultural heritage and its Net value HOW precious is the Taj Mahal? And is Bukit Brown as important as what its ad...

Environmental group pushes for more nature parks

Raymond Goh 0 News Saturday, January 04, 2014

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TODAYonline 
04 January 2014 
 
Environmental group pushes for more nature parks 
By Kok Xing Hui - 
 
 
SINGAPORE — Conduct environmental impact assessment on development plans, designate more areas as nature parks and plant trees that could act as buffers between development sites and the nature parks that they are built close to. These were among the recommendations tabled by the Nature Society (Singapore) in response to the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s draft Master Plan released last November. 
 
Making public its 24-page report yesterday, the society said the Master Plan seems to involve more salvaging rather than conserving or preserving effort, with an emphasis on curbing the impact of urbanisation. A thrust towards sustainability should be employed instead, it said. 
 
The group submitted its recommendations on Dec 19 last year, saying environmental impact assessments should be conducted for development plans to assess their impact on the biodiversity as well as the culture, recreational, economy, air and water — depending on the size of the green area. It said residents and other stakeholders should also be consulted and that such assessments must be made before the development plans are finalised and put out for tender. 
 
While creating more public parks is laudable, the NSS felt the emphasis should be on designating wildlife-rich areas, such as the Kranji Marshes Park, as nature parks. This will help preserve the areas’ biodiversity, while making them accessible to the public for eco-friendly uses. Suggestions put forth include the “highly scenic and beautiful” Sungei Khatib Bongsu, the mudflats and mangroves of Sungei Mandai, Bukit Brown Cemetery and the secondary forest in Clementi, which has recorded 21 per cent of the total bird species in Singapore. 
 
The society said it was grossly deficient that out of the 29 per cent of land identified as Spontaneous Greenery (comprising secondary forest, scrubland and mangrove among others) by a research team from National University of Singapore, only 4.4 per cent of that are truly or permanently protected as Nature Reserves. 
 
Marine conservation is pretty deplorable, said the NSS, adding it had submitted proposals to the authorities requesting for four coral zones to be restored as nature areas, but only one has been designated as such so far. 
 
The status of parks classified as nature areas should also be clearer, the group said, pointing out that some are located within military zones and the NSS has “no clue” what the sizes and boundaries of these areas are. It cited the examples of Mandai Mangrove, Khatib Bongsu, Pulau Semakau and the four coral zones, which were nature areas in 1993 but “deleted as such in the 2012 revised SGP (Singapore Green Plan)”. Nature area Chek Jawa has also been planned for reclamation at its shoreline. 
 
The NSS also proposed that the percentage of secondary forests, which it said are extremely important and viable habitats for native fauna, under the SGP be increased from 6 to 12 per cent and that this should come from outside the nature reserves. 
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Environmental group pushes for more nature parks

TODAYonline 04 January 2014 Environmental group pushes for more nature parks By Kok Xing Hui - SINGAPORE — Conduct environmental im...

BUKIT BROWN : Living Museum of History and Heritage

In Search of a Shared Heritage: Ishvinder Singh at TEDxYouth

The power of local culture

Cultural heritage and its Net value

Environmental group pushes for more nature parks

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