People's Spaces

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People's Spaces: Familiarization, Subject Formation and Emergent Spaces in Colombo Nihal Perera Planning Theory 2009; 8; 51 DOI: 10.1177/1473095208099298 The online version of this article can be found at: http://plt.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/8/1/51

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Special issue: Strangely familiar

Copyright © 2009 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) Vol 8(1): 51–75 DOI: 10.1177/1473095208099298 http://plt.sagepub.com

P E O P L E ’ S S PA C E S : FA M I L I A R I Z AT I O N , SUBJECT FORMATION AND EMERGENT S PA C E S I N C O L O M B O Nihal Perera Ball State University, USA

Abstract In between and besides official plan-making, ordinary people produce more quantity and variety of spaces than the authorities and professionals. They both adapt to and adjust extant spaces for their daily activities and cultural practices, thus producing lived spaces out of abstract space. Yet we know very little about these basic space-making processes. This article aims to acknowledge and ‘understand’ the processes of familiarizing space employed by ordinary people to create milieus that can support their everyday activities and cultural practices.

Relying on subjects’ vantage points of critique, it examines the spacemaking processes of four social actors in late 19th-century Colombo, then Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.

Keywords emergent spaces, familiarization, feminization, indigenization, ordinary spaces, subversive

Urban and regional planners organize space at neighborhood, urban, and regional scales. Yet they are not alone: the creation, restructuring, interpretation, and the social and cultural adaptation of space are carried out by almost everyone, but at different scales, for different purposes, and from different vantage points. In between and besides official plan-making, restructuring of space, and strategic projects, ordinary people both adapt to and adjust extant spaces for their daily activities and cultural practices. This process of familiarization of space directly affects and is affected by formal planning: planners 51 Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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react to the people’s use and change of space and the subjects familiarize the spaces provided by planners and authorities. In this, ordinary people produce more quantity and variety of spaces than the authorities and professionals; most crucially, they produce lived spaces out of abstract space. Yet we know very little about these basic space-making processes; they take place behind the scenes.

How do different people see their predicaments? How do they transform themselves to become subjects within assigned positions and given spaces?

How do they negotiate accommodation for their own perceptions of subjectivity? How do they adapt formal spaces for their everyday activities and cultural practices? What kind of spaces do they produce in the process?

This article aims to understand the process of familiarizing space by subordinate citizens by means of accommodation, adaption, redefinition, and negotiation of space. It focuses on how ordinary people transform extant space – especially the abstract spaces of the power-holders – into milieus that can accommodate and support their everyday activities and cultural practices.

Following the above questions, and relying on subjects’ vantage points of critique, I will examine the space-making processes of four ordinary social actors in late 19th-century Colombo, the former capital of Ceylon (Sri Lanka from 1972).1 The article will acknowledge and highlight the importance, richness, and complexity of everyday processes of space-making and the spaces and spatial structures so produced. I will then draw some conclusions about familiarizing space by ordinary people, the spaces that emerge out of this process, and their impact on the city. I will first develop my approach, a conceptual framework, and the intellectual context for the study.

The familiarization process In his brilliant study of Brasilia, James Holston (1989) makes an insightful discussion on familiarizing space; I build on this concept. He highlights how the ‘Brasilienses manifest their rejections of Brasilia’s utopian design by reasserting familiar values, conceptions and conventions of urban life’ (1989: 309).

Following the main theme, but sidestepping the idea of direct rejection of spaces provided by authorities, the article focuses on how subjects negotiate their own (third) spaces in more discreet ways. Instead of positioning spaces familiar to subjects and those provided by authorities in oppositional terms, I concentrate on the adjustments that subjects make in assigned social-positions and spaces for the accommodation of their own activities. Here I refer to both familiar activities that are adapted to new contexts and new ones developed within these. The focus is more on immediate tactics than well thought-out plans and strategies (see de Certeau, 1988). The below-highlighted spaces of weaker subjects produced in the margins, cracks, and interstices of the formal society do not replace but provincialize and contextualize hegemonic spatial narratives.

The room for familiarization is afforded by the incompleteness of formal urban systems. Modern social systems are never complete the way the authorities and prominent literature present; these have gaps, cracks, and Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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depend on exceptions. In regard to modern governments, Partha Chatterjee (2007) argues that exceptions are as important as rules for these to function: The reason why many of the forms of modern government actually manage to work is because they make adjustments and negotiate with many . . . contrary forms. They do so at the localized level, very often by recognizing themselves as merely exceptional cases. But, . . . exceptions pile up on exceptions and . . . there are localized norms which are often quite contrary to . . . the larger principles . . . Very often, at the local level, . . . [the norm that people understand is] quite different. It is only by recognizing that norm at the local level that in fact the larger structure will survive.

In addition, the absolute city and its images – the one that is ‘out there’ and the ones that authorities, planners, and citizens talk about and act upon – are not congruent; there are intellectual gaps between these. The city, particularly its social spaces, is known, managed, and transformed through images, statements, words, ideas, and practices which together create urban-spatial discourses. The correlations between the represented and its representations – created in giving presence to those who are spoken of in absentia – are socially constructed through interpretations (see Fabian, 1990). In Colonising Egypt, Timothy Mitchell (1991) demonstrates the ability of representation to set apart a realm of images and signs from the ‘real world’ they represent and to – in turn – condition the understanding of that ‘world’. Both these gaps – in regard to urban systems and their representations – leave room for intervention and interpretation.

The key variable that privileges certain spaces and perceptions over others is social power. Select perceptions are largely privileged through their ‘technical’ and ‘scientific’ orientation through the strategies of – among others – categorization, quantification, mapping, and the attribution of ‘objectivity’ to these social facts. In regard to the Aalborg project (Denmark), Bent Flyvbjerg (1998) highlights how power-holders rationalize their interpretations. The authorities, scholars, and the media order the city as an exhibit before it is viewed, experienced, and investigated, so pre-conditioning the intellectual frameworks of the observers. E. Barzacchi highlights the persistent mismatch between the knowledge so hegemonized and that of subordinates: ‘The answers [Israeli] town planners give to the Arab population [in Jerusalem] are technically “right” and interesting, but are absolutely irrelevant’ (in Bollens, 2005: 224). In this, the authorities create another gap – in de Certeau’s (1988) terms – between the language enunciated in daily activities by regular people and that of regulated operations.

Nevertheless, the social power of dominant practices is not absolute; nor does it go uncontested (see Kong and Law, 2002; Yeoh, 1996). At a more fundamental level, subjects from different cultural backgrounds are unable to fully occupy spaces in ways they have been configured by their creators. The ordered and totalized notions of space conceived by authorities are largely alien to the subjects. Chatterjee (2006) stresses that even industrial workers do not internalize the work-discipline of capitalism; even when they do, they do not do Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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so in the way anticipated by the authorities. Hence, there is a lack of knowledge – among regular people – where it is expected to be applied.

People, on the other hand, employ their own culture and worldview as a crucial interpretive lens to relate to their environment; they view spaces from their own backgrounds, including the community, history, and memory (see Umemoto, 2005). The quality and character of social spaces and cultural practices are developed within people’s own worldviews which provide them with a picture of the way things are and a concept of nature, self, and society (see Geertz, 1973). Hence, the act of occupation by the subordinates itself changes the (assigned) spaces and subject positions.

What urban studies and planning theories have largely failed to recognize is that people are never passive recipients of external initiatives. As Goh Beng-Lan (2002: 202) demonstrates, they ‘always struggle within their own immediate contexts of constraints and opportunities to produce a meaningful life with their own particular values and goals’. The intentions, values, and the purposefulness that condition their acts, the symbols, the norms, and the ideological forms they create constitute the indispensable background to this exercising of agency (see, for example, Hosagrahar, 2005; Kusno, 2000; Perera, 1999; Yeoh, 1996). Hence, the occupation of space, which goes beyond a mere behavioral response to the context, is simultaneously a form of adaptation, questioning, resistance, and transformation.

These everyday acts of space-making also expose the incompleteness of hegemony of dominant classes. James Scott (1990) stresses that there is compelling evidence to suggest that subordinate classes under feudalism and capitalism have not been ideologically incorporated to the extent claimed by the theory. His studies in Malaysia reveal that the subordinates in large structures of domination have a fairly extensive social existence outside the immediate control of the dominant: Those with power in the village are not . . . in total control of the stage. They may write the basic script for the play but, within its confines, truculent or disaffected actors find sufficient room for maneuver to suggest subtly their disdain for the proceedings. The necessary lines may be spoken, the gesture made, but it is clear that many of the actors are just going through the motions and do not have their hearts in the performance . . . [They convey] the impression of compliance without substance. (Scott, 1985: 26)

As de Certeau (1988) highlights, enunciatory operations allow for a broad diversity of expressions which cannot be limited to the graphic trail of the authorities.

The subject formation is a threshold which opens up a multitude of possibilities; imagination and creativity are central to the maximizing of this potential.

This resonates with Holston’s observation that ‘By putting shop entrances on the curb rather than on the proposed garden side of the buildings, Brasilienses attempted to reconstitute the life of the market street where it had been architecturally denied.’ However, instead on returning to an older stage or a predetermined order, this study focuses on the new (hybrid) spaces produced Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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through daily practices. Going far beyond mere problem-solving, the below actors have constructed complex identities and spaces for themselves. Instead of depending on hierarchical and bottom-up processes, they initiated ‘insideout’ transformations. Familiarization is guided by passions and aspirations, but not necessarily driven by larger goals in a formal sense. The types of spaces they produce are ‘quantum and emergent systems’ that, according to Jane Jacobs (1961), give cities their life and order.

Most crucial in this regard is the transformative capacity of the subjects, that is, their capacity to transform what is given, found, and the predicament into something that is useful in addressing both their needs and aspirations. Bill Ashcroft (2001: 225) stresses that – in regard to postcolonial literature – ‘resistance which always operates to contest and disturb the dominant is fully effective only when it utilizes the capacity of culture of change and adaptation, when it fulfills its own potential to transform’. Marginality thus became an enormous source of creative energy (see also Ashcroft et al., 2002). This is a process of empowering themselves on their own terms.

It is fair to say that much attention in scholarship that addresses issues of weaker subjects such as the poor and the minorities has been devoted to organized, large-scale protests, rights-based movements, and oppositional claims that appear to challenge the state and capital. While significant, this focus on the supremacy of the authorities not only misses out on the achievements of the subalterns, but occupies the ‘life-spaces’ of the very people and places it talks about, thus marginalizing and silencing resistant and subversive voices. What is overlooked in this perspective is that most subordinate classes throughout most history have not been afforded the luxury of open, organized political activity (Scott, 1985).

Unless organized, most of these classes are far less concerned about changing larger structures of the state and society, but in finding their way through, or in ‘working the system to their minimum disadvantage’ (Hobsbawm, 1973: 7, in Scott, 1985: 301). Rejection of elite values is seldom an across-the-board proposition. Rather than directly challenging the system or the power, they largely practise apathy or reluctant compliance, at the same time seeking to improve their livelihood within the context through the use of ordinary acts. In Weapons of the Weak, Scott (1985: xvi) stresses that: In place of land invasion, they prefer piecemeal squatting; in place of mutiny, they prefer desertion; in place of attacks on public or private grain stores, they prefer pilfering. When such stratagems are abandoned in favor of more quixotic action, it is usually a sign of great desperation.

Moreover, their resistance is not directed at the immediate source of appropriation; the victims may exploit small openings available elsewhere, perhaps more accessible and less dangerous. In Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang’s (2004) examination of the recent rise of sacred spaces in Chinese cities, an interviewee in Wenzhou highlights that it is best for common people not to speak too much as they always lose out. Their safety lies in the anonymity. Although they do not Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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overthrow governments, these commonplace forms of resistance, for the most part, nibble away the structures and policies.

Small struggles are not that dramatic, nor pretty; these are confined to the backstages of social life (Scott, 1985). Together these acts practiced behind the backs of the authorities form the hidden transcript of the subalterns. The social spaces where such transcripts grow – that is, contested spaces – are themselves an achievement of such processes. Hence, instead of trying to understand how power is constructed – as in Foucault, Said, or Flyvbjerg – or how it is directly challenged – as in the political-economy of the 1970s – this article opts to bring to light the clandestine forms of space-making taken by the dispersed, tactical, and makeshift creativity of groups and individuals already caught in the nets of power.

As scholars have pointed out, it is important for this kind of investigation to avoid voluntarism and the glorification – or the aesthetization – of poverty and powerlessness (see Roy, 2004). I do not wish to imply that familiarization of space carried out by the subalterns is one quixotic adventure after another, nor do I wish to ignore the chilling effects of heavy handed government action used on them such as ‘slum clearance’, or the significance of large-scale struggles. The small space-making processes by small people are not totally separate from stronger power structures and processes; yet these are not structurally determined by those either. The article aims to open up space for these small people to assert their voices in our discourses.

As Hamdi (2004: xxii) highlights: ‘This kind of knowing is less normative, less easy to standardize in its routines and procedures, less tolerant of data-hungry study, and less reliant on statistics and systems analysis.’ While it adopts standard elements of scholarship such as concepts, theories, and analytical frameworks, the article highlights the significance of the vantage point inquiry, and of the viewing of production of space from the subjects’ perspectives and the sites of production.

A precondition to this is the selection process, that is, what the scholar opts to see and consider as significant. Scott Bollens (2005) highlights – in regard to Israel – that ‘low-politics’ of the subjects largely become dismissed as unimportant compared to ‘high-politics’ of the authorities which is about power and economics. Planners have a way of focusing on growth and being silent about important tensions that emanate from ethnic, religious, and other cultural differences by portraying these as ‘low-politics’, thus getting back into their technology nests and serving the power. The official story, argues Leonie Sandercock (2005), portrays planning as a heroic pursuit leaving out gender, class, race, and cultural biases of planning practices, and by implication, serving as an agent of social control that regulates bodies in space. Hence the ‘official’ story has huge gaps. As this type of hegemonic thinking marginalizes the spacemaking processes of the ordinary people, one has to actively look for them. This is precisely what Sandercock (1998) attempts in her Making the Invisible Visible.

Most significantly, the investigation of social space which evokes its subjects’ perspectives cannot be effectively carried out without changing the vantage point and acknowledging the agency of the subalterns and the contested aspects Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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of space. As Sandercock (2005: 310) highlights: ‘community actors have great stories to tell, but no means of telling them, except to each other’. These stories could not be fully heard unless the scholar or planner develops empathy towards the storyteller. According to Johannes Fabian’s (1983) critique of how anthropologists have traditionally produced their subjects by locating them in a different time, acknowledging the agency of the people requires the scholar to recognize the people whom they study as those who share the same time and space. Locating them in a different time or space is to ‘Other’ them. Gayatri Spivak (2000) stresses the significance of relying on the subaltern as the vantage point of critique. This article is an exposition into the realm of people (the storytellers) to explore the fault lines of the hegemonic discourses and to provide different accounts and describe different spatial stories revealed in the cracks of the mainstream archaeology of knowledge (see Bhabha, 1994).

Familiarizing Colombo After losing the last major revolt against the British rule in 1848, the Lankans (indigenes) resorted to familiarization as their principal response to colonialism. Until 1815, the last kingdom of Kandy challenged the British authority in Colombo. Even after its fall, Kandy – of memories and dreams – continued to provide inspiration for riots and rebellions against the colonial regime (Figure 1). The colonial community, on the other hand, became comfortable in Colombo after the victory in 1848. This change is evident in the large-scale restructuring of the city between the 1860s and the 1880s, particularly the demolition of fortifications (1869) and the construction of a residential suburb in Cinnamon Gardens, about three miles from the fort. In 1865, the authorities expanded the official boundary of Colombo and established a municipal council to administer it (Figure 2).

The building of a museum in Colombo in 1877 to ‘store’ the past of the dead Lankan culture sums up this transformation (Figure 3). The Georgian-style building and the artifacts within it froze the past and attached an authenticity and purity to indigenous cultures, producing a static picture with fixed meanings for the gaze of its guardians, tourists, as well as for the Ceylonese. More significantly, the new exhibit both orientalized Lankan history and familiarized Ceylon for the British, both dehistoricizing and defamiliarizing it for the Ceylonese. This symbolical framing, with a bronze statue of Governor Gregory in front of it, highlights the appropriation of one culture and history by the dominant other.

After 1848, the Ceylonese sought to find accommodation within the restructured and newly invigorated colonial system, making indigenization the leading form of response. This process of familiarization became spatially evident in Colombo in the 1860s through the 1880s. By the 1880s, replacing the Colombo–Kandy conflict, Colombo itself had become the principal site of contest and negotiation.

At the early stages of colonialism, most Lankans rejected unfamiliar and disorienting colonial social structures with a view to returning to former Lankan Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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FIGURE 1

Map of Colombo

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FIGURE 2

Colonial Colombo zones

FIGURE 3

The museum ways of life. Kandy provided the inspiration until 1848. As Frantz Fanon (1968) asserts, while confrontation with the colonial order at first disoriented the natives, the colonial society eventually became a world of which the indigene Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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was envious. This transition of Ceylonese attitude from hostility to envy laid the foundation for indigenizing the colonial city. If the Lankans had attempted to avoid and escape colonialism, and reestablish their familiar environments, from the 1850s they were increasingly focusing on making a livelihood or strengthening their positions within the colonial society. By moving to Colombo, and building their homes and institutions, various Ceylonese groups began redefining and appropriating colonial structures, spaces, and symbols.

This resulted in a very different city than what the authorities had conceived.

In the following pages, I will examine the spaces produced as part of the rise of a Ceylonese élite, migration, naturalization, feminization, and the Buddhist revival between the 1860s and the 1880s. While some of the actors had better access to resources and ended up being more powerful than the others, even the processes such as the élite formation were carried out by the colonized – among others – through the familiarization process. The inclusion of the élite in this study also highlights the diversity of the process and the larger transformations of Colombo. Also, these identity groups – which may appear to be cohesive – had large variations within them. The article concentrates on people who came from various places and engaged in a quiet and anonymous welter of action, eventually developing into some identifiable groups.

The élite formation The colonial history in Ceylon was long and complex: its coastal areas were colonized by the Portuguese (1518–1656), the Dutch (1656–1796), the British (1796–1815), and the entire island by the British from 1815 to 1948. Yet the second half of the 19th century was pivotal to the élite formation (Jayawardena, 2000; Peebles, 1995; Roberts, 1982). By the 1880s, the emerging Low Country élite had surpassed the Up Country (Kandyan) aristocrats with regard to their social position. They had established places for themselves in economic, administrative, and political realms of the colonial system, separated themselves from the locals, and made Colombo their center.

The economic élite not only penetrated into the plantation economy dominated by the British, but also created a significant share for themselves within it (Bandarage, 1983; de Silva, 1984; Perera, 1999). The Ceylonese administrators, who served in the lower ranks of the colonial administration, also advanced themselves into a new administrative élite. As the role of traditional administrators became less important than attributes of education, proficiency in English, lifestyle, profession and landholding (Peebles, 1995), in the late 19th century, they changed from ‘barefoot chieftains’ in coats patterned after 17th century Portuguese uniforms to Victorian lawyers with Oxbridge degrees and fashionable suits. Concurrently, the political élite (the constitutionalists) also progressed within the colonial political system, but without challenging it.

In a broader sense, Low Country people had the means to support the muchneeded Western education and Westernization.

The élite adaptation to, and of, the colonial environment in Colombo caused substantial changes in it. The entrepreneurs penetrated into the fort and pettah – outside the fort – which had been exclusive European domains. They did not Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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question the appropriateness of the centrality of Colombo within Ceylon or its colonial organization, but vigorously followed the British model. Colombo even attracted already established businesses from second tier cities like Kandy and Galle. For example, the oldest jeweler in town, Othaman Lebbe Makan Markar, who began his business in Galle in 1860, moved it to Colombo a few years later (Hulugalle, 1965). Penetrating into the fort and pettah, the élite indigenized the central business district. The meanings of the fort and the pettah were depoliticized: erasing the colonial connection, these were identified simply as Fort and Pettah.

The Ceylonese-élite culture cannot be defined solely in terms of colonialism.

It was an upper-class Lankan culture which was heavily influenced by aspects of colonial culture, particularly as they attempted to demonstrate their worthiness to colonial authorities. In presenting their power to the average Ceylonese, they jealously guarded their culture from further diffusion, perhaps increasingly exaggerating the aspects of colonial culture which were used to symbolize their privileged position among the people (Duncan, 1989). Yet abolishing tradition was not so much the affirmation of the West as it was creating a Ceylonese space and ‘modernity’ within the colonial system.

The Low Country élite also challenged the supremacy of the Kandyan aristocracy and the Goyigamas who were viewed as upper caste people. As part of this struggle, they tended to pursue social prestige in a style that had been formulated by the Goyigama aristocracy, favoring the lifestyle of the walawwa hamu (lord of the manor house) (Roberts, 1982). In addition, they also invented new traditions; Ponnambalam Ramanathan, for example, took to wearing the long-coat and turban of the Indian aristocracy (Jayawardena, 2000).

This hybridity is evident in the environments they created. The opulent and top bracket Sinhalese gentry, particularly the chief Mudliars, had built their spacious walawwas (manor houses) with extensive groves of trees in and around Wolvendal, north of the Pettah (Brohier, 2000; Roberts et al., 1989). According to Tennent (1999: 161), these houses exhibited ‘European taste engrafted on Sinhalese customs’. After mid-century, the new élite not only followed the British to Colombo, but also mimicked their residential locations and house forms. The colonial residential trend, which had been towards the north of the Fort, turned towards the south – particularly Kollupitiya and Cinnamon Gardens – in the 1860s and the 1870s (Hulugalle, 1965). The élite also built new mansions adjacent to colonial residential areas (Figure 4). In this, they were both expanding the colonial residential zones and indigenizing them.

The élite’s neighborhoods were patterned after the colonial model and they followed the latest European architectural styles. Projecting their wealth and competitive spirit, ‘much money was spent [in the decades following the 1860s] on conspicuous housing; palatial residences were constructed in Colombo by the wealthy, with mock-Italian decor, large gardens and wedding cake architecture’ (Jayawardena, 2000: 258). Yet the older Sinhalese values remained resilient and relevant; the élite were not ready to discard them in their entirety (Roberts, 1982). This hybridity is most evident in the interior organization of the houses and in their local type names which followed the colonial pattern, Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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FIGURE 4

Elite houses for example, Ponklaar (Golden Garden), Tyaga Nivasa, (Tyaga’s Abode), and Sirimethipaya (Abode of Prosperity).

The élite were not pleased with segregation which marginalized them, but struggled to be on the privileged side of the divided city. As they were not allowed membership in British clubs, the Ceylonese élite created their own exclusive clubs (Roberts, 1974). Establishing their presence in Colombo, they also began publishing their own newspaper, the Ceylon Standard in 1898 (Roberts, 1984). In this, they made use of the cracks in the system, but gradually developed significant places within it.

In sum, the élite simultaneously expanded the colonial space and indigenized parts of it. Following British and Kandyan models, and establishing their new identity vis-à-vis the Ceylonese, they created their own spaces in Colombo.

What the élite produced were hybridized and liminal business and residential environments located in-between those of the average Ceylonese, the colonial community, and the Kandyan aristocracy which incorporated aspects of all these, thus creating a Ceylonese modernity. Their presence in Colombo was conspicuous; the buildings were built in high architectural styles; their names were alien; and the landscapes were unfamiliar to regular Ceylonese.

Migration and naturalization Along with the élite, the residents and migrants were also indigenizing and familiarizing their locales in different ways. The population of Colombo grew from a meager 28,000 in 1800, to about 150,000 in 1900, most of it occurring in the latter part of the century. By the 1870s, the Colombo municipal area held Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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twice as many people as Galle and Kandy, the next-largest cities (Ferguson, 1903; Turner, 1927). Migration was the principal cause of this population growth. The expansion of city limits also incorporated indigenous and migrant neighborhoods. In addition, the immigrants in Colombo had largely naturalized by the end of the 19th century, in the process, indigenizing their cultural practices and colonial spaces.

Prior to European colonization, Muslims had settled in Colombo ‘temporarily’ for trading and related activities. By the late 19th century, they had adopted Tamil as the daily language (Arabic for prayers) and caste stratification had also seeped into their communities (Azeez, 1986). According to Lorna Dewaraja (1995) – who investigates the Muslims in Kandy area – the Muslims adopted the outward appearance, the dress, and the manners of the Sinhalese.

Contemporary Muslim houses in Ceylon are very similar to those of the Sinhalese and Tamils (Rahim, 1986).

The cultural awakenings among principal Ceylonese ethnic and religious groups in the 19th century encouraged the consolidation of European and Eurasian groups in Colombo into what became the Burgher community; it was created by generations of adaptation to local culture and the environment, and mixed marriages. Clinging to the Dutch heritage and British leanings of the core group, and within a Ceylonese patriotism forged in opposition to British subjection, a comradery was developed among the Sinhalese and Tamil middle classes and European and Eurasian people, developing a distinctly Ceylonese middle-class community (Roberts et al., 1989). Although the people of Portuguese and Dutch origin were privileged by the British at the beginning of their rule, in 1871 about a third of the Burghers were in the regular labor pool (Roberts et al., 1989). While some moved out of Colombo, the main domain of the Burghers, the Pettah, had also naturalized.

The indigenization of various immigrant communities and their familiarization of the city were not even. The different origins of immigrants, their different periods and speeds of naturalization, and their varied cultures and spaces transformed Colombo into culturally and spatially the most diverse city in Ceylon. The stevedores opted to recruit labor from south India, thus adding a new immigrant population, especially in the docklands (Dharmasena, 1980).

The Dutch adaptation of verandas and courtyards in their houses inspired the local élite and the middle classes to develop their own hybrid versions, referring to both Dutch and Lankan houses. Concurrently, the spaces the Burghers shared with the British became contested. On cricket fields, for example, they were the first to represent Ceylon against the English. Familiarization was, therefore, multifaceted, uneven, and cut across the lines that separated the cultures that were in contact, thus destabilizing the colonizer–colonized divide in many ways (Sarker and De, 2002).

Migration from within the country not only escalated in the 1860s, increasing Colombo’s population by over 300 percent between 1824 and 1891, but also changed its ethnic, religious and class composition. The introduction and expansion of communication networks, which began with the advent of the railways in the 1860s, facilitated the rural to urban migration. By the beginning Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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of the 20th century, Pettah, the former location of the Black Town that was cleared up for the Burghers in the late 18th century by moving it further away into ‘Outer Pettah’ was reclaimed by the Ceylonese (Denham, 1912). By 1921, 47 percent of larger Colombo’s population was already Sinhalese (Hulugalle, 1965). The Tamil neighborhood of Wellawatta, then right outside the municipal boundary, had also been established by the 1880s (Roberts, 1984). By then, demographically and spatially, Colombo had largely become a Ceylonese city.

The expansion of the municipal boundaries incorporated indigenous and migrant areas that lay beyond the former city boundaries. The municipality in the 1880s was about 13 times larger than the Fort and included areas which had a large majority of Ceylonese. The population of Colombo in 1881 was about 20 times that of the combined Fort and Pettah areas (Hulugalle, 1965). The enlargement in the 1860s and 1870s had caused the colonial city itself to naturalize by grounding it in the larger ‘native city’, making the previously large ‘White City’ a small part of it. Simultaneously, the outskirts of the city were also transformed; for example, Wolvendal, a former élite area, became a low-income housing area, largely of the Malays and the Javanese.

The expansion of the port in 1883, and of its associated industries, was primarily instrumental in converting large areas such as Kochchikade and Gintupitiya into dockland areas where particular clustering of working-class tenements and small businesses took shape (Roberts, 1984). The neighborhoods which spread across Maradana, New Bazaar, Kotahena and Slave Island housed a large proportion of the laborers. As the market was unable to provide affordable housing for the emerging working population, they produced most of their own dwellings.

There were two main types of working-class dwellings. The first were the large houses, left over by middle- and upper-class people who had lived mainly on the north side of the Fort and Pettah areas. These were adopted between the 1860s and the 1910s as some lodging houses occupied by 80–100 mainly single men and ‘multifamily’ quarters shared by co-tenants (Dharmasena, 1980; Roberts et al., 1989). The lodging houses known among Indian immigrants as kiddangies were sustained by small shops and other marginal services which were part of the informal economy (Roberts et al., 1989). In an extreme situation, one such residence in Slave Island, for example, had 32 dwelling-rooms (Pinto, 1893, in Jayawardena, 1972). These dwellings did not transform the larger physical landscape, but they redefined its meaning and function.

The second type, self-built housing, added a new dimension to the physical landscape of Colombo. No thatch houses were previously allowed in the Pettah by the Dutch, (Correa, 1988) and the British authorities made an effort to keep what they called ‘huts’ out of the city (see Percival, 1990). Self-built housing imported ‘rural’ ways of building familiar to the migrants who used leftover urban materials to build in leftover areas of the city. In this, the city marked by clock towers and Georgian buildings at its center was infiltrated by self-built housing and was subject to ruralization and Ceylonization.

In sum, the heart of Colombo was transformed into a very different place.

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diverse zone in regard to people and activities. According to Wright (1907), by the beginning of the 20th century, the Pettah was almost entirely rebuilt since the days of the Dutch occupation, with only few of the congested blocks of small buildings being more than 50 years old. In 1893, H.W. Cave (1893: 10–11) described it as: an ever fascinating kalidescope . . . [where] . . . the handicraftsman works serenely in his open shed [sic] sometimes even in the open street; women are occupied in their most domestic affairs unveiled from the glance of the curious passer-by, and . . . tiny children, clothed only in rich tints of their own complexions, sport amongst the traffic.

Cave (1908: 47) highlights its character: Moormen or Indo-Arab traders occupy [the] Main Street, with well-stocked stores containing every description of goods . . . in the vicinity of the Town Hall we notice the great diversity of races represented: Sinhalese, Moors, Tamils, Parsees, Dutch, Portuguese, Malays and Afghans; the variety of costumes worn by each race in accordance with caste or social position, . . . This mixed and motley crowd live their life and carry on their labours almost entirely in public. Neither doors, windows, nor shutters interfere with a complete view of the interior of their houses and stalls.

The ‘jabbering and jestication’ that the British talked about highlight how the city had become unfamiliar to them.

Feminizing Colombo Similarly, women, who were originally excluded from the colonial city of Colombo, also made their way into it. As Anthony King (1990) emphasizes, a distinctive demographic characteristic of the colonial community, and of the early immigrant and migrant communities in colonial port cities, was the relative absence of women. Colombo which was literally established as a white male city by the Portuguese was no different (Perera, 2002b); even as late as 1921, 61 percent of Colombo’s population was male (Roberts, 1984). Modern (colonial) Colombo took four and a half centuries, until the 1960s, before its proportion of women matched that of the nation. The transformation, which I call the feminization of Colombo, constituted the transformations of institutions and spaces, especially their meanings, representations, and power relations that enhanced the little power that women had in the city (see Perera, 2002b). The late 19th century saw more Ceylonese women getting involved in the process.

Colonial policies changed from ignoring European women, prohibiting them from traveling to Asia, and sending orphans and respectable women to Asia as spouses for European men, to using indigenous female bodies to create a hybrid race (Perera, 2002b). In short, the authorities desired to control the mobility, identity, space, and place of women in ways to achieve their larger goals.

However, this process of objectification and sexualization of women was never complete. Instead of being passive subjects, women (relatively) empowered themselves by the creation, among others, of ‘women’s third spaces’. The special effort of certain groups of European and Lankan women and the gradual Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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increase in women’s migration to the city progressively undermined the colonial maps of gender control.

The gendered transformation led to the gradual increase in number and prominence of women in colonial Colombo. First nestled within the domestic sphere, under the Portuguese and Dutch regimes, the women’s third space was later extended into the public sphere by missionary and socialist women (Perera, 2002b). In the early phase of British rule, missionary schools for Ceylonese women undertook the narrow objective of producing good Christian wives for male converts. Later groups, consisting of theosophists, Orientalists, and Holy Mothers went against the grain of the colonial system.

While helping the Buddhist revival process, the Russian Helena Blavatsky and the American Mary Foster, for example, contributed to the ‘modernizing’ of Buddhist institutions (see Obeyesekere, 1970). In this, women developed an alternative public sphere and a new public space for them around the new Buddhist institutions in Colombo.

Upper-class upper-caste Ceylonese women also joined the process of feminizing the city in the mid-19th century. Their move to Colombo was largely as family members of a political and economic élite who emulated colonial roles and residential preferences in Muttuwal, Kollupitiya and, later, Cinnamon Gardens. It was Western women who helped them enter ‘modern’ (colonial) society, largely through enhancing women’s education and engaging in social movements (Jayawardena, 1995).

Nonetheless, they crossed the colonial divide to create their own spaces.

When compared to other countries in Asia, Ceylonese women had a head start in education. Yet there were only a few Buddhist women who had a systematic education under colonialism; the literacy rate of women in 1881 was only three percent. Moreover, modernized Buddhist men were reluctant to marry ‘uneducated’ women, preferring the products of the Christian convent system. A leader of Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka, Henry Olcott – an American – opted to create opportunities for women to educate themselves. Theosophical women were invited from the West to become school teachers and principals and Buddhist women’s schools were established in Colombo in the late 1880s. There were 50,000 girls enrolled in schools in 1901, raising the proportion of female students to 27 percent (Jayawardena, 1993). Education thus opened up an avenue for Buddhist women to enter Colombo and the public sphere. The upper-class upper-caste women who used this path were helped by educated middle-class European women who were also creating a space for themselves in the Western world.

The women of the Black City appear to be the backbone of the feminization process. This was the place in Colombo that Percival (1990) described as the meeting place of a large number of races and ethnic groups. This had also been the most women-friendly area in Colombo, where women defied most colonial restrictions and engaged in public activities such as vending, side-by-side with men (see Cave, 1908). Long before upper-class women, these women crossed the colonial divide, sometimes liaising with members of the colonial community.

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discriminatory policies of colonial regimes, and were poor, these women continuously questioned and contested the male dominance of Colombo. They were the ones who penetrated into the center of the colonial city, thus bringing the long process of feminizing Colombo to a high level.

Buddhist revival Reinforcing the larger process of familiarization, the Buddhist revival brought a power institution to the indigenous side of Colombo, causing the city to become more directly contested from within. The late 19th century was a period of cultural and religious regeneration in Ceylon (Bastin, 1997; Samaraweera, 1997). A generation after the Hindu revival, Buddhism revived strongly in the late 19th century (Gombrich and Obeyesekere, 1988; Malalgoda, 1976; Obeyesekere, 1970). In this process, Colombo was developed into the institutional center while Kandy continued to be the spiritual center.

Colonial Colombo had been divided with all power institutions located in the colonial zone. By attracting Buddhist institutions to Colombo, the Buddhist revival provided its ‘native city’ with a strong cultural institution capable of contesting the supremacy of colonial political and cultural institutions located in the Fort.

New key institutions were created, the old ones were adapted within the colonial system, and the protest against colonialism as well as the center of Buddhist institutions and activities were moved to Colombo. This transformation was strongly characterized by ‘oppositional politics’ which move under the sign of irony, following ‘a terrain already mapped out by [its] antagonists’ (Eagleton, 1990: 26). Gombrich and Obeyesekere (1988) argue that Buddhism was transformed in the late 19th century (1860–85) into what they call ‘Protestant Buddhism’, as part of its protest against British colonialism in general and Protestant missionaries in particular. In this, Buddhist institutions acquired many Protestant missionary attributes. The formation of a Buddhist Theosophical Society, the invention of the international Buddhist flag, the incorporation of songs modeled on Christmas carols and the use of English, among others, represent this change. The new missionary schools sponsored by the Buddhist Theosophical Society and the Mahabodhi Society adopted the model of Christian missionary public schools, whether in regard to the curriculum or cricket (Gombrich and Obeyesekere, 1988; Obeyesekere, 1970).

Colombo was transformed into the locus of the most important temples after Kandy, providing a strong Buddhist presence in it. First, the temples at Kelaniya and Kotte, former Lankan seats of power in the vicinity of Colombo, were reinvigorated. Second, these historical temples were supplemented with new ones, for example, the Jayasekararamaya at Dematagoda and the Dipaduttaramaya at Kotahena (Malalgoda, 1976) (Figure 5). Third, the dominance of Colombo with regard to monastic educational institutions (piriven) was firmly established with the founding of Parama Dhamma Cetiya Pirivena at Ratmalana (1845), Vidyodaya Pirivena in Maligakanda (1873) and Vidyalankara Pirivena at Peliyagoda (1875) (Malalgoda, 1976). These visible symbols were located in the periphery of the colonial city.

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FIGURE 5

Kelaniya temple The temples and pirivens were supplemented with new organizations such as the Society for the Propagation of Buddhism and the Mahabodhi Society.

Moreover, missionary-type institutions and schools such as the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) and Ananda College (1889) which involved more lay participation were established in the city. These were supplemented by daham pasala (school for Buddhist education), the main one established at the Dipaduttamaramaya. It was also in Colombo that the Buddhists established their main printing presses and publishing houses (Malalgoda, 1976). In this, a score of institutions, buildings, and related activities were developed, adapting Colombo as the institutional center.

In regard to peasants in India, Ranajit Guha (1983) stresses the importance of the violation of hegemonic signs and symbols as a process of identification which would otherwise be subjected to the ones assigned by the authorities. The new Buddhist leaders also staged public debates and speeches against colonialism and Christianity. In so doing, the leaders gradually occupied the colonial public spaces, creating an alternative public sphere.

Yet in regard to the built environment, they maintained a relatively low visual profile in the middle of the city. For the most part, existing buildings were adapted for new uses. The Buddhist Theosophical Society, for example, was located in a house in Slave Island (Amarasuriya, 1981). Most of the Buddhist activities were located outside the colonial domains, with the exception of Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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Pettah. The Buddhist Educational Movement and its Sunday school were located in Maliban Street, Pettah (Amarasuriya, 1981). In contrast to the lowprofile physicality close to the center, the temples were more visible on the outskirts of the city.

The Buddhist revival, therefore, created a clandestine landscape which surreptitiously penetrated and infiltrated into colonial Colombo. Physically, the Buddhist presence became more prominent as it went outwards from the city center, highlighting how Buddhist institutions were gradually encroaching on the colonial city from outside. Most crucially, a principal Lankan institution capable of challenging the colonial authority was located – for the first time – on the indigenous side of Colombo. In this, the very meaning of the colonial city was subjected to question.

Emergent spaces Familiarization of Colombo was neither a direct challenge, nor an escape from the colonial society, but a messy collection of a large number of attempts by various subjects to settle in the city and improve their livelihoods on their own terms, but within the extant social and spatial contexts. The transformations were neither isomorphic, nor isotemporal; they were made up of a multitude of (uneven) forms of familiarization – including indigenization, feminization, naturalization, and ruralization – carried out by a diverse group of social actors at different times. The Ceylonese were strengthening and expanding the colonial city, at the same time, carving out their own domains in its cracks, interstices, and margins, radically transforming its contents and their meanings.

At times they were challenging the colonial authority as well. As demonstrated, everyday familiarization of space could accumulate to a degree of substantial change; this was one of the most creative responses to colonialism by regular people.

The Colombo so emerged was very different to anything that the authorities talked about. The city of the authorities had grand Georgian and neo-classical buildings in the center, an emerging garden suburb, and a cultural space in Cinnamon Gardens. Yet its power was undermined: the subjects did not occupy the same city. The city was ambivalent and less legible for the authorities. The Ceylonese élite environments both expanded the colonial sphere and undermined the colonial power. Migrants moved toward colonial economic centers in search of work, both adapting existing mansions and building their own dwellings. They helped the economy but engaged in indigenizing, proletarianizing, and ruralizing the city. As the immigrants naturalized, their environments were adapted to local living. Women caused minimum change to the built environment but appropriated and redefined selected spaces through education, politics, and migration, thus carving out women’s third spaces. The Buddhist revival produced an insurgent environment which became more visually prominent as it progressed away from the colonial center. Buddhist institutions brought their contest to the colonial city, establishing a power institution on the indigenes’ side. No doubt, there were many other familiarizations Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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of space during this time. In sum, despite the British victory in 1848, Colombo was transformed into a contested city from within.

Familiarization of space is integral to the subject formation: the Lankan transformation into subjects – totally or partially – of the colonial system and of Colombo helped and was helped by the simultaneous familiarization of colonial society and space. Assuming a subject position is not a mere surrender.

Subject-formation is more an active threshold point which opens up new possibilities, choices, and directions. Depending on the kind and level of resistance from the authorities, the subjects create more ‘room for maneuvering’ and continue to negotiate for more appropriate spaces and conditions for their everyday activities and cultural practices that are absent in the city. When applied, subjects’ frameworks reinterpret extant spaces and spatial structures.

Although the familiarization of these structures and spaces did not fully overturn the colonial authority, the adaptation of subject positions provided new meanings for dominant social and spatial structures, allowing them to be reinscribed and appropriated by the subjects. Yet this is not a one-way process; the spaces are conditioned by contexts and are negotiated with the authorities and other stakeholders. Hence the outcome is less pre-determined and largely an ‘emergence’, and these spaces and practices are simultaneously within and outside the system.

What the inhabitants produced was a city of cities. Each city of the colonial community, the élite, the immigrants, the migrants, women, and the Buddhists had its own centers, frontiers, boundaries, and other recognized and unrecognized spatial elements. Yet these were not congruent; there were gaps between the authorities’ and inhabitants’ cities. Different groups of citizens and migrants also made different cities. The attempts to understand Colombo as a single city would generate huge gaps between the absolute city and its representations.

Colombo is certainly not unique in this regard; almost every city consists of multiple cities that are not congruent.

The changes that were taking place at the bottom, the margins, the cracks, and the interstices of the authority’s city reveal that the colonial society and the city were not as systematic and structured the way the subjects were made to believe and as most scholars represent. Due to the mismatch between the subjugation – from an authority’s standpoint – and the subjects’ adaptation into assigned positions, the city as perceived by its authorities was neither complete nor stable. Those in power were not in total control of space-making processes in the city. The many cracks and spaces ‘leftover’ by the colonial authorities were deployed by resident groups and institutions to develop their own domains, practices, and spaces. As powerful actors transformed select components of the Aalborg project, thus defeating the larger project (Flyvbjerg, 1998), small-scale space-making of the weak in Colombo made utter shambles of the policies dreamt by its power-holders. While the authorities controlled the public stage, the above actors transformed the city from inside.

This reveals a paradox. While the contestations and familiarizations highlight the incompleteness and the failures of the colonial city, the city – or its urban system – would have failed without the subjects’ space-making activity. Without Downloaded from http://plt.sagepub.com at University of Westminster on January 19, 2009

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being able to adapt to positions and spaces from their own vantage points, the colonized would not have been able to take part in the colonizer’s social system and be citizens of the colonial city; exceptions are as important as the rules for this urban system to function.

Most crucially, the familiarizations were initiated from subjects’ vantage points. For the most part, these processes were neither oppositional to the authorities’ provision of space, nor were they aimed at overthrowing the dominant social and spatial arrangements. People responded to a variety of immediate conditions that existed in Colombo – and their own villages – with the intention of carrying out everyday activities, cultural practices, and improving their livelihood within the context. Yet, together, their responses transformed that context; the colonial city.

This type of ‘resistance’ is different from direct confrontations such as anticolonial struggles or proletariat revolutions which are organized to overthrow the regime in power. Ashish Nandi’s (1983: 113) observation in regard to India is most telling in this regard: Aztec priests after their last act of courage die and leave the stage free for those who kill them and sing their praise; the unheroic Indian response ensures that part of the stage always remains occupied by the ‘cowardly’ and the ‘compromising’ who may at some opportune moment assert their presence.

What each of the above distinctive actors had in common is that they emerged out of the colonial assignment of space and asserted themselves. The most crucial aspect in this regard is the transformative capacity of the subjects. It is this capacity, built upon imagination and creativity, which makes these subjects and the spaces they produced ‘subversive’ to varying degrees. Although these small transformations may neither solve all their problems nor address all issues of social justice and equity, being legitimate subjects within the formal city affords them more bargaining power; subject-formation is intertwined with resistance and subversion. Once launched, the transformative process – sometimes with external influences – can extend into more direct confrontations. The familiarization of Colombo – and Ceylon – directly and indirectly helped the rise of more direct challenges to colonialism and capitalism. This is evident in labor movements and anti-colonial struggles that sprang up in Ceylon in the 1920s and 1930s.

Note 1.

For an elaboration of the context within which the arguments in this article have been developed, see Perera (1999, 2002a, 2002b).

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Perera

People’s spaces

and the Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China’, Journal of Asian Studies 63(3): 719–55.

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Nihal Perera is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and the Director of CapAsia, an immersive field study program in south Asia. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong (2006–07). His publications include Decolonizing Ceylon: Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Politics of Space in Sri Lanka (Oxford University Press, 1999); ‘Feminizing the City: Gender and Space in Colonial Colombo’ (2002); ‘Contesting Visions: Hybridity, Liminality, and Authorship of the Chandigarh Plan’ (2004); ‘The Planners’ City: The Construction of Town-Planning Perception of Colombo’ (2008).

Address: Department of Urban Planning, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306, USA. [homepage: http://web.bsu.edu/perera/; CapAsia: http://www.capasia.net/; email: nperera@bsu.edu]

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