“We are Heritage!”: exclaving and self-heritagization along reclaimed land in Penang, Malaysia

Source abstract

Coastal land reclamation is transforming many land-sea interfaces across Southeast Asia. Large-scale real estate development projects along the littoral result in the widespread displacement of fishing and coastal communities and severe environmental impacts. Situated at the intersection of urban anthropology and critical heritage studies, this paper explores the impact of land reclamation and urban transformation on the self-proclaimed Tanjung Tokong heritage fishing village in Penang, Malaysia. Ethnographic insights from this tiny community shed light on two underexplored themes in research on speculative cities along the littoral, especially for fishers’ socionatural connections to the sea: exclaving and self-heritagization. Scholars approach the act of reclaiming land from the sea for high-end real estate development as an enclave-making process. Yet, based on emic and more intimate articulations of the self and the sea, this paper considers the exclaving effects that land reclamation plays both landward and seaward. Then, by exploring the ways fishers and other coastal residents employ heritage discourses to reclaim a future along a littoral where there seem to be no place for them, the paper reveals their attempts at self-heritagization and its limits.