CULTURAL HERITAGE AND IMAGES OF THE CITY: TRANSFORMATION OF SAWAHLUNTO IN INDONESIA

In order to be acknowledged as a World Heritage Centre by UNESCO in 2016, the city government transformed Sawahlunto, which used to be an old mining city, into what the government claimed as a culturally touristic mining city. The city had basically been declared as a dead city; however, the government has strategically increased its economics through tourism. This article focuses on the meaning-making process in the construction of the city image(s) basing the process in the discussion of the politics of collective memory and cultural heritage. Data, mainly findings from observations, interviews and textual analysis, were collected from two tourism sites namely Goedang Ransoem Museum and Lubang Tambang Mbah Soero. The aim of the research is to interpret how the people in Sawahlunto make sense of the image construction of the city or even contest it as the government conveyed particular meaning in redefining the city‟s identity. Abidin Kusno‟s conceptualization of collective memory in architecture is mainly used to analyze the architectural elements of the two tourism sites. Furthermore, the analysis also refers to Hobsbawn and Thompson‟s notion of cultural heritage and Leif Edvinson‟s images of the city. Research findings reveal that the city government constructs a dominant meaning of what they convey as cultural heritage by utilizing local laws and the authority from other regions which have more experiences in transforming their city into a city of cultural heritage. On the other hand, the people in Sawahlunto have their own understanding of what their city means for them in relation to their own cultural heritage. All in all, the complexity of the meaning-makitng process in the city‟s transformation between the government and the people could be read as a battleground of contesting discourses