The Making of Heritage Places through the Narration of Ethnic Identity at the Melaka World Heritage Site

This paper focuses on the making of heritage places through the narration of ethnic's identity at Melaka World Heritage site (WHS). Ethnic identity plays a vital role in identifying the community's heritage because people identify themselves to places as it postulates their identity and provoke their sense of belongingness. Due to limited of scientific information in the related field, this study argues the significance in the making of heritage places through the narration based on ethnic's identity at Melaka WHS. This research was conducted using ethnographic methods, which used a snowball sampling technique. It involves an in-depth interview with 19 communities and participant observations. The audio data from interviews were transcribed into text and analysed using thematic analysis. Based on results, it shows community speaks their rights to be represented within the whole aspects of landscape, culture and history, which embodied in Melaka WHS. It is portrayed in the aspects of their historical records, culture, language, identity and place attachment. It also identifies challenges, which hinder the formation of ethnic's identity towards the place making such as generation gap, population density and uncontrolled developments. This study contributes to the importance of identity and placing making in cultural heritage management at World Heritage site.