The Yangon Court Buildings: Between Thick and Thin Heritage

Many colonial-era buildings in Yangon stand neglected or deserted. With global resonance, the Yangon Heritage Trust has spearheaded efforts to conserve the city’s unique legacy. But rather than focusing on particular histories of buildings and on local perspectives on them, the dominant view of “thin” heritage propagated today emphasizes age, aesthetics and generalized importance. Protests against the privatization of two Yangon courthouses show the difficulties encountered by a local lawyers’ association in arguing for its members’ interests in terms of a lived “thick” heritage. The multi-vocal heritage discourse in Yangon today is in danger of being monopolized by a marketable generic idiom.