The Past, Present and Future of Centres in The Intangible Heritage of Food

Universiteit Leiden Master Thesis MA Asian studies – Southeast track Kiara Kennedy s1436546 Supervisor: dr. Elena Burgos Martinez 26 September 2019 Table of Content

Table of Content ...... 2 Abstract ...... 3 1. Introduction ...... 4 1.1 The History of Hawker Culture in Singapore: from Street Hawking to Hawker Centres ...... 6

2. Methodology and methods ...... 9 2.1. Methodology ...... 9

2.2 Methods and Entering the Field ...... 9

2.3 Challenges ...... 11

2.4 Analysing Data...... 11

3. Conceptual Framework ...... 12 3.1 Intangible Heritage ...... 12

3.2 Food...... 15

3.3 Identity and Belonging ...... 18

3.4 Concluding Remarks ...... 21

4. Hawker Centres in Contemporary Singaporean Culture ...... 22 4.1 Everyday Life in a ...... 22

4.2 Getting to Know the Hawkers...... 26

4.3 Hawker Centres as Community Dining Spaces ...... 29

5. The Future of Hawker Centres in Singapore ...... 32 5.1 A New Generation of Hawkers? ...... 32

5.2 Food Courts as the New Hawker Centres ...... 35

5.3 Hawker Culture’s Nomination for UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage...... 38

6. Conclusion ...... 44 7. References ...... 46 8. Appendix ...... 51

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Abstract

This thesis focuses on the past, present and future of hawker centres in Singapore. Hawker centres are essentially communal dining spaces that allow from different ethnic backgrounds to enjoy a wide range of hawker foods for an affordable price. Singapore’s hawker culture has been able to exist alongside Singapore’s rapid urban development, beginning with sold by itinerant hawkers and transformed into hawker centres. Over the years these hawker centres have become more than just dining spaces and have become an indispensable part of Singapore. Changes in Singapore’s near future have triggered questions about the continuity of the hawker trade and the preservation of traditional dishes. Taking matters in their own hands, Singapore has nominated hawker culture for UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as they believe this is an intrinsic part of Singaporean identity and should be preserved and passed down to future generations. The aim of this thesis is to study the meaning of hawker culture in contemporary Singapore by discussing three periods of time, while discussing food as intangible heritage and its contribution to identity and belongingness.

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1. Introduction

In between Malaysia and lies the small but prosperous country, and island of Singapore. Singapore is known for its multicultural population which consists mainly of people from Chinese, Malay, Indian as well as Eurasian descent. All these people from different ethnic backgrounds have their own unique cultural expressions and ways of life. One of these cultural expressions is their food culture. Over the years these different food cultures have meshed together forming an unique Singaporean food culture. Singapore is in particular well known for its street food centres or hawker centres, which bring together all these different to one central location. Hawker centres are one of the main attractions for tourism, because of their wide variety of food and low costs. But more importantly local Singaporeans frequent these food centres day in day out, making it an intrinsic part of their everyday life (Henderson et al. 2011: Image 1. Maxwell Food Centre. 849) and part of their identity as Singaporeans.