ABSTRACT
In 1988, UNESCO declared Galle Fort in southern Sri Lanka a World Heritage site (Figure 4.1). The fort then had 449 buildings and 2,128 inhabitants (Department of Census and Statistics, Sri Lanka 2001).1 Liyana_Arachchi (2009) of the Galle Heritage Foundation (GHF ) claims this is the largest preserved historic, walled, living settlement in Southeast Asia. World Heritage, in this sense, is a physicality that represents universal (abstract) human history, not belonging to any time or place. During fieldwork, the built environment was made up of some houses with European-looking verandahs and columns and others without roofs (Figures 4.2, 4.4, 4.5). This chapter focuses on the people who live in this monument, particularly their predicaments and responses to the same and the environment. Galle Fort has been integral to Sanjeewani Habarakada’s life and identity: She not only attended 13 years of school in it, but she also studied the fort for her undergraduate capstone project. During the early years, the fort was an everyday space where she attended school, hung out, and played with friends and family. She never felt the aura of a World Heritage site. Undergraduate research exposed Habarakada to the outside-in viewpoint of the World Heritage committee and to the local operations of this abstract reality. She observed how the Planning Committee of the Foundation made decisions and implemented them. However, the meeting she attended confused her: She was unable to fathom the connections
between committee decisions and the idea of World Heritage designation. She also sensed a gap between heritage conservation efforts and the aspirations of the inhabitants for their neighborhood. As the objective of this study is to learn about people’s spaces, an exhaustive discussion of the fort, the World Heritage designation, and all gaps in the World Heritage project would be superfluous. Yet it is important to note that the idea of the World Heritage site, particularly whose idea, for whom, and the significance of the designation are hardly questioned by practitioners or scholars. The phrase “living
settlement” is mentioned in the GHF (1994) documents, but the focus of preservation regulations and project implementation is on the physical environment, especially the outward appearance and form of the houses rather than the life in Galle Fort. It became a struggle for the inhabitants to conduct their daily activities and socio-cultural practices within the constraints imposed by the World Heritage designation. This chapter focuses on people’s struggle to survive and familiarize the strange environment of the World Heritage designation and the spaces produced in the process. It will first map out the abstract space of the Galle Fort World Heritage site and then examine the inhabitants’ spatial practices in relation to it. The study focuses on what the fort used to be, how the inhabitants contest the space of the World Heritage site, and how they are re-familiarizing the neighborhood.
