Intangible Meaning Making beyond Conservation: The Interests in and Impact of the Nomination of the Historic City Centre of Yogyakarta as a World Heritage Site

From the beginning, Yogyakarta is not only a place where people live. The landscape and spatial arrangement between the mountain, the sea, the spring, and the river are crucial for understanding the way in which this and some other cities serve to create, reinforce and maintain the Ancient Javanese Philosophy concerning both an imaginary axis and a philosophical axis of the cycle of life – being born, childhood, teenage, adulthood, old age, and passing away. The first Sultanate of Yogyakarta created the imaginary axis of Yogyakarta city to legitimize his position as the king; recently, the tenth Sultanate of Yogyakarta and the provincial government of Yogyakarta Special Region have fabricated the philosophical axis of Yogyakarta for the World Heritage Site nomination of Yogya’s historical inner city. This article argues that the philosophical axis of Yogyakarta imbues colonialist ideas to restore the authenticity, the notion of masterpiece, and uniqueness of buildings and landscapes of the past, while ignoring the history of the population. As a result, this nomination of the world heritage contributes to the abolition of living cultures and marginalizes people who live around the philosophical axis of the Yogyakarta areas.