Responding to Globalization : Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore 9789812304209, 9812304207, 9789812304216, 9812304215, 9789812307170, 9812307176

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Responding to Globalization

Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued almost 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

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Responding to Globalization Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore SELVARAJ VELAYUTHAM

INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES SINGAPORE

First published in Singapore in 2007 by ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 119614 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http:///bookshop.iseas.edu.sg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. © 2007 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the publishers or their supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Velayutham, Selvaraj. Responding to globalization : nation, culture and identity in Singapore. 1. National characteristics, Singapore. 2. Values—Singapore. 3. Social values—Singapore. 4. Singapore—Politics and government—1990– 5. Globalization—Social aspects—Singapore. 6. Globalization—Political aspects—Singapore. 7. City-states—Singapore. 8. Singapore—Cultural policy. I. Title. DS610 V43 2007 ISBN 978-981-230-420-9 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-230-421-6 (hard cover) ISBN 978-981-230-717-0 (PDF) Photo Credit: Photograph on front cover reproduced with kind permission of Marcus Oleniuk. Typeset by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Utopia Press Pte Ltd

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For my parents, Velayutham and Rajamani & my wife, Amanda Wise

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

xi

INTRODUCTION: Globalization and the Nation-State

1

Background Dealing with Globalization State Legitimacy and Control Outline of Book

3 5 10 13

1. The Making of the Singapore Nation-State and the Quest for a National Identity Imagining Singapore: From Colony to Nationhood Developing the Singapore Nation: Strategies and Policies of Nation-Building The Question of National Identity in the Academic Literature Internationalizing Singapore: Nationhood and Its Connections Elsewhere Conclusion 2. The Rhetoric of Asian Values and the Embracing of a “New Asian” Identity Introduction Family, Community, Order: The Discourse of Asian Values Asian Values in the Singapore Context Safe, Clean, Controlled: Characterizing the Commentary on Asian Values Economy, Identity, Modernity, Ambivalence: Four Functions of Asian Values in Singapore Asian, Western or New Asian: Relabelling and Re-sorting Our Boxes Conclusion

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20 21 26 36 41 46

52 52 54 56 58 61 73 76

CONTENTS

viii

3. Creating National Citizens for a Global City Introduction A City in Transition The Next Lap: Building the Global City 1991–1997 Singaporeans Emigrating Singapore 21 Solutions: From Next Lap to “Heartware” Putting Singapore 21 into Practice Unhomely Anxieties, Global City Dilemmas Analysing the Singapore 21 “Heartware” Solutions: Strategies to Create More Homely Citizens The Usefulness of “Folk”: Appropriating Singapore’s Heartlanders Synthetic Homeliness and the Logic of National Development in Singapore Conclusion 4. Re-Branding Singapore: Cosmopolitan Cultural and Urban Redevelopment in a Global City-State Introduction Culture and the State Domesticating Singaporeans and Attracting Talents from Overseas Cosmopolitanizing National Culture: Recent Cultural Policy Trends in Singapore Speaking Proper English Managing and Branding: Evaluating Singapore’s Vision for a Cosmopolitan Global City Nationhood and the Dilemmas of the Cosmopolitan City-State 5. At “Home” in a Globalized City-State?

8

82 83 85 93 97 101 102 106 107 109 112

119 119 121 124 128 133 135 148 159

Introduction Singaporean and Related Identities Being Singaporean in a Global City Affect, Identity and the Materiality of Nation The Contradictions of Singaporean Social Modernity Managerial Speak and Governmental Forms of Belonging Singapore and the Gift of Social Life Conclusion

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159 162 166 169 176 181 190 195

CONTENTS

ix

CONCLUSION

202

From a Barren Piece of Land to a Thriving Global City Global City/Nation The Nation-State in the Global Context The Uncertainty and Hopefulness that is Singapore

202 203 204 208

Bibliography

211

Index

233

About the Author

239

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My family left a small village in Tamil Nadu to a modern and multicultural city-state of Singapore in search of a better life. As with all migrants, my parents’ primary goal was to provide a good education for their children. It is through their sacrifice and support that I have come this far. I am deeply indebted to my parents, Velayutham and Rajamani, for their sacrifice and determination to see me through my education — an opportunity that had eluded them. This research began with a timely scholarship provided by the School of Cultural Histories and Futures at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. I would like to thank Ien Ang, Director of the Centre for Cultural Research, for her support, encouragement and guidance throughout the project. It has been a privilege to work with Ien and her own work on the politics of identity and difference has been both influential and a source of inspiration for my own. I am also grateful to George Morgan for his advice and encouragement. He helped to sharpen my ideas and writing and to successfully complete this book. I must also thank Greg Noble, a wonderful colleague and friend, who has always been extraordinarily thoughtful and supportive. Thanks are also due to my colleagues at the Centre for Cultural Research for their friendship and support: Fiona Allon, Aneela Barber, Barbara Bloch, Sharon Chalmers, Tanja Dreher, Meredith Jones, David Kelly, the late Philip Kent, Elaine Lally, Brett Neilson, Fiona Nicoll, Ricardo Peach, Zoë Sofoulis, Cristina Rocha, Francis Maravillas, Sarah Redshaw, Mandy Thomas, Dinesh Wadivel. Many of my friends in Singapore have been very helpful throughout this project: Gunalan Nadarajan and Irina Aristarkova for their love, generosity, wit and company which is always a joy. Ng Su-May has been extremely helpful from sending me newspaper clippings and images to proofreading and commenting on my draft. Jagdish Singh, Ramu Kodiappan, and Kamachi Ruthramurthi for their support. I would like to convey my appreciation to Vijay Devadas for being there with me and for his critical engagement with my writing.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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To my brother Subramaniam Velayutham, and lovely nieces Apirame Thirunavukarasu and Vickneswari Thirunavukarasu — my heartfelt gratitude. I am also grateful to the Wise family and in particular to Joan Wise for all her love and well wishes. I am grateful to the individuals who responded to my e-mail survey and also the participants in my interviews. I would like to acknowledge the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore for kindly allowing me to use their library in 1999. Thanks also to the Australian National University in Canberra for awarding me a Visiting Scholar Fellowship in 2001 at the Research School for Pacific and Asian Studies. I undertook the final revision of the manuscript as a Visiting Affiliate at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. I would like to thank Chua Beng Huat for making the visit possible as well as the administrative staff for their assistance. I would like to thank Ulf Hannerz and David Morley for their kind comments on my earlier manuscript. Thanks is also due to the two anonymous ISEAS referees for their detailed and encouraging feedback and recommending this work for publication. I am also appreciative of the help provided by Triena Ong, Rahilah Yusuf and staff at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. And of course, to Amanda Wise, without her undivided love, understanding and support — from reading my drafts to endless conversations about Singapore and mastering, along the way the art of providing dot-point solutions — I would have never completed this book. I am deeply indebted to her. A shorter version of Chapter 5 was previously published under the title, “Affect, Materiality, and the Gift of Social Life in Singapore”, in SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 19, no. 1 (April 2004): 1–27. Singapore January 2006

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Globalization and the Nation-State

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Introduction GLOBALIZATION AND THE NATION-STATE

The cities which in the late twentieth century we call world cities are beginning to lead their lives rather distinct from those of their territorial states again, and entities such as Singapore and Hong Kong may even suggest that city states can at least in some ways be viable social forms. (Hannerz 1996, p. 143). The more the government provides for Singaporeans, the higher their expectations of what the government should do. The more we educate Singaporeans, and the more economic opportunities we create for them, the more internationally mobile they will become. The more they gain from subsidised HDB [Housing Development Board] housing, the more money they have to buy cheaper houses in Australia. Will Singaporeans be rooted to Singapore? Will enough Singaporeans stay here, to ensure the country’s long-term survival? (Goh Chok Tong, Straits Times, 19 August 2002).

The first of these quotes comes from a section in Hannerz’s book, Transnational Connections, where he examines the cultural role of world cities in the context of contemporary globalization. Hannerz suggests that Singapore and Hong Kong are representative of an emerging new form of cultural life and exemplify what he has termed cities of the global ecumene (see also Hannerz 1989).1 This is indeed a thoughtprovoking assertion. These two city-states offer many possibilities for thinking about places which are distinct from, and different to, the territorially and culturally bounded form of the nation-state. Now that Hong Kong is no longer a British colonial territory, it remains to be seen whether it will be allowed to evolve as an independent cultural entity under Chinese rule. Singapore, on the other hand, is a city-state which is both a nation and, as we shall see, a world city. While nations have clearly defined territorial boundaries, continuous histories and

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common identities, world cities are very much of the contemporary global ecumene. Hannerz’s view that the city-state of Singapore can in some ways be a viable social form is based on his historical reflection on the role during the medieval age played by city-states like Venice, Florence and Amsterdam. What he means by viable social form is that these citystates can be conceived of as having had a global function, and in many ways as representing the “mosaic model of world culture”. As such, they were distinct from the social form of the nation-state, in the sense that there were no considered efforts made by the respective nation-states in which they were located to define their boundaries, produce their people or construct them as part of a national culture. Instead, these city-states thrived precisely because of their cultural organization as world cities which located them as distinct places with their own evolving history and identity. The city-state of Singapore is indeed a distinct place. A small island located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula with no hinterland, it has a multi-ethnic population consisting of a Chinese majority in a region surrounded by Muslim countries. Singapore is by far the most developed and modern country in Southeast Asia. Once a quiet fishing village, it started developing into a thriving metropolis over a century and a half ago under British rule. In the process, it attracted immigrants from East, South and Southeast Asia who came in search of economic opportunities and eventually settled on the island. As a territorial and administrative entity, Singapore is wholly a product of colonial modernity. The ruling elite, which inherited the apparatus of the colonial state following Singapore’s independence in 1965, began engineering its development into a modern nation-state. Nation-building, or the political process of constructing a “nation” and a sense of belonging via the state, is therefore a key feature of Singapore’s socio-cultural formation. After 37 years as an independent nation-state, the nature of the polity under the rule of the People’s Action Party (PAP) has largely remained unchanged. It remains characterized by a centralized power structure and a close, elitist policy-making apparatus (Chua 2000). At the same time, the citystate of Singapore has evolved dramatically; beginning as an exportoriented economy, becoming a newly industrialized economy and presently a “wannabe” world city. This brings us to the second quote at the head of this introduction. It comes from a National Day Rally speech delivered by then Prime Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong in which he focused on an

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urgent issue facing his government — that of Singaporean citizens emigrating overseas and the effect this will have on the future survival of Singapore as a nation. These anxieties about national viability exist in spite of Singapore’s rapid economic transformation and ambitious plans to become a world city. Singapore is an immigrant society and a young nation-state. The fate of its government therefore hinges on the development of a national identity and a sense of national belonging among its heterogeneous population. A nation-state needs its citizens to be committed and loyal. In the thirty-seven years since independence, the government has attempted to develop and maintain national identification among its people with the Singaporean nation-state, while at the same time increasingly promoting that city-state as a global city. Singapore’s dual orientation toward both the nation-state and the global city raises interesting questions about national identity in the global age. How are governments to deal with these two seemingly contradictory goals? How do they actively manage the socio-cultural forces of globalization, when the very survival of the nation-state is reliant on engagement with the global economy to remain competitive in the contemporary economic climate?

BACKGROUND The current research began with an interest in examining the ways in which the discourse of Confucian and Asian values has been used in the late 1980s and early 1990s by some Asian states to define their national cultural values and sense of identity. The Singaporean state was one of the most vocal champions of Asian values. Intellectual interest in the subject soon began to increase, and varying schools of thought emerged contesting, commenting on, or defending the assumptions and validity of the Asian values discourse (see, for example, Chua 1995; Tu 1996; Robison 1996; Dirlik 1997a; Mahbubani 1998). This debate emerged at a time when Asia, as a geographical region, was considered by many to be rapidly “catching up” and even overtaking the West in terms of economic development and prosperity. For many commentators, Asia’s economic success (dubbed as the “Asian miracle”) spelt the end of the global European/American economic and cultural dominance. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore rode the wave of economic success. Accounts of these emerging economies, in particular South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, sometimes referred to as the Asian

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Tigers or Asian “mini dragons” (Sheridan 1995), often explained their success and achievements by referring to Confucian values, as embodied in effective government policies, high saving rates, hardworking populations, a free market economy and educational development. The 1990s therefore was an interesting time as it brought to the surface a peculiarly “Asian” interpretation of modernity. By the mid-1990s however, when the economic bubble began to burst with the Asian economic crisis, the Asian values debate lost its momentum. In Singapore, at least, the official concern shifted from Asian values to globalization. The concern over the role of tradition in the modern era and questions of cultural preservation and national identity which preoccupied the political elite throughout the previous decade, shifted towards addressing the uncertainties presented by globalization. As the issue of globalization took centre stage in Singaporean official discourse and rhetoric, I became interested in examining more broadly the ways in which nation-states were responding to the process of globalization. There is a growing body of literature across various academic disciplines dedicated to the study of globalization.2 Emerging from these developments are various academic theses that seek to map the contemporary global condition.3 The cultural homogenization thesis, for instance, proposes that the globalization of consumer capitalism involves a loss of local cultural specificity and diversity (see, for example, Schiller 1976; Tomlinson 1991). It stresses the growth of “sameness” and a presumed loss of cultural autonomy, which is cast as a form of cultural imperialism. This argument revolves around the idea that one culture, usually conceived in national terms, dominates all others. The principal agents of cultural homogenization are said to be transnational corporations (Schiller 1976). Consequently, cultural imperialism is the outcome of a set of economic and cultural processes implicated in the reproduction of global capitalism (Miyoshi 1993). In opposition to the idea that globalization is a uniform process of cultural homogenization, there are those who propose the cultural diversity and fragmentation thesis. One of the most significant contributors to this discussion is cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1996). He argues that contemporary global conditions are best characterized in terms of the disjunctive flows of ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes. In other words, globalization involves the dynamic movements of ethnic groups, technology, financial transactions, media images, and ideological conflicts which are not neatly determined by one harmonious “master

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plan”. Rather, the speed, scope, and impact of these flows are fractured and disconnected. In these studies, the process of globalization (economic and cultural) and its implications are often the starting point for a discussion of the predicament facing the nation-state. The process of unprecedented economic and socio-cultural transformation, categorized broadly under the term globalization, in the form of an increase in the transnational mobility of capital, labour, information, culture and people, is said to unravel the conception of the nation-state as a bounded entity. Within this context, the role of the nation-state is diffused and its capacity to contain the influx of movements is considered as becoming highly improbable. The process of nation formation, it seems, is at odds with globalizing processes. This is because the nation-state relies on a clearly defined territory, continuous history and a situated communal identity. Globalization, on the other hand, as Beck argues (2000, p. 11), is comprised of the processes through which “sovereign national states are criss-crossed and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects of power, orientations, identities and networks”. It has been in progress throughout history (Waters 1995) and is a process which at once unsettles and complicates the nation-state’s project of producing a unified national identity. The prevailing two contradictory processes of cultural homogenization and heterogenization have led some theorists to argue that the general effect of globalization has been to weaken or over-ride national forms of cultural identity (Ohmae 1995; Bauman 1998). Growing transnational movements and diasporic communities are said to result in a loosening of strong identifications with the national culture and at the same time the strengthening of other cultural ties and allegiances, “above” and “below” the level of the nation-state.4

DEALING WITH GLOBALIZATION Many scholars regard globalization as a force which will inevitably bring about the decline (Held 1990, 1995), erosion (Hall 1991) or the end (Ohmae 1995) of the nation-state. As the argument goes, the process of globalization in its various manifestations is increasingly undermining the territorial boundedness, sovereignty and traditional role of the existing system of modern nation-states. These processes, often perceived in terms of disjunctive cultural “flows” as theorized by Appadurai (1996) and others, have necessitated the rethinking of the

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nation-state as a territorially and symbolically bounded “imagined community” (Anderson 1983). The result then is a call to think beyond the nation-state, emphasizing the transnational, deterritorialized and cosmopolitan forms of imagined communities. There is the growing urgency in disciplines such as sociology (Featherstone 1990, 1995; Featherstone, Lash and Robertson 1999), anthropology (Friedman 1994; Hannerz 1996; Gupta and Ferguson 1997) and cultural studies (Hall 1991) to develop new frameworks for the study of society and culture with a global focus rather than being overly concerned with a nationstate society approach. In this reformulation of theoretical thought, the borders of the nation-state are frequently characterized as becoming more porous and fluid, and the nation-state is seen itself as less relevant as a source of cultural identity. On the contrary, of course, there are those such as King (1991), Smith (1991), Hirst and Thompson (1996), and Tomlinson (1999) who argue that the nation-state will not lose its relevance and will remain a formidable force. Summing up his theoretical inquiry into the birth of nationalism and national identity, Anthony Smith (1991, p. 177) postulates that until the needs of people are “fulfilled through other kinds of identification, the nation with its nationalism, denied or recognized, oppressed or free, each cultivating its own distinctive history, its golden ages and sacred landscapes, will continue to provide humanity with its fundamental cultural and political identities well into the next century”. Whether they are viewed as tenuous or durable, there is nevertheless considerable academic preoccupation with nation-states (Clark 2000). This may well be justified considering the pervasiveness of nationalism (bounded or unbounded) and nation-state formations in the twentieth century.5 With the exception of studies dealing with reactionary or revivalist types of nationalism (Hall 1992), localisms (Wilson and Dissanayake 1996; Cvetkovich and Kellner 1997), transnational nationalism (Smith and Guarnizo 1999), and postnational formations (Appadurai 1996), not to mention the highly abstract theorization of local cultures and locality (Featherstone 1995; Appadurai 1996),6 it seems that a grounded and systematic examination of the specific ways in which nation-states deal with globalization and its consequences has received little attention.7 In other words, while there is a growing field of study examining the different manifestations of nationalism arising within and beyond the nation-state and various emerging reactions for and against globalization, these studies do not generally address the strategies employed by nation-states to remain relevant under such conditions.

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In the present phase of globalization, as Appadurai observes, the task of producing locality (as a structure of feeling, a property of social life and an ideology of situated community) is increasingly a struggle. He adds: “this is a world where nation-states are struggling to retain control over their populations in the face of a host of sub-national and transnational movements and organizations” (1996, p. 189). Appadurai’s argument about the effects of globalization on social and cultural life and in particular on questions of cultural identity is an immensely persuasive one. Indeed, most of the available literature on globalization is filled with rich descriptions of “a world that has become deterritorialized, diasporic and transnational” (Appadurai 1996, p. 188). As the argument goes, not only are these new kinds of rootless, displaced and unbounded identity formations undermining our deeply historical and situated associations, allegiances and sense of belonging, they also shift our attention to the search for more dramatic and conspicuous alternatives to the nation (Hannerz 1996). Evidently these new and exciting developments and possibilities for research work have shifted much of the attention away from the apparently mundane and more familiar projects of the nation-state. This is unfortunate. I would argue that it is crucial not to dismiss the nation-state’s continuing significance, but instead to examine the different and actual strategies employed by nation-states in their responses to globalizing forces. It is important to bear in mind that individual nationstates employ a variety of strategies to deal with globalization, not all of which are reducible to ideas generated by Western modernity (as in the case of Confucian revivalism in industrial East Asia). Local national responses to globalization are not uniform. Responses may include attempts to promote, channel or block global flows depending upon the power resources they possess and the constraints of the configuration of interdependencies they are locked into (Featherstone 1995). That is to say, countries may act and pursue policies to cut themselves off and delink from the outside world. Nevertheless, now more than ever there is also a great urgency for nation-states to participate and engage with the global economy. The reason for exploring different national cultural responses to globalizing forces is to move beyond the often generalized and broad assumption that the nation-state is in crisis or decline (see, for example, the work of Hoogvelt 2001). The emergence of global corporations, human movement across the globe, and the role of the global mass media are contributing to transnationalized imagined communities

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(Ohmae 1995; Hannerz 1996; Appadurai 1996). While these developments call into question the project of the nation-state, as I argued earlier, the ways in which nation-states are responding to the staging of these consequences may vary from nation-state to nation-state. There is a tendency in theories of globalization to reduce the work of the nation-state to a set of disciplining practices. For instance, as Appadurai (1996, p. 189) argues, the nation-state relies for its legitimacy on the intensity of its meaningful presence in a continuous body of bounded territory. It works by policing its borders, producing its people, constructing its citizens, defining its capitals, cities, […] and by constructing its locales of memory and commemoration […] The nation-state conducts throughout its territories the bizarrely contradictory project of creating a flat, contiguous, and homogeneous space of nationness and simultaneously a set of places and spaces […] calculated to create internal distinctions and divisions necessary for state ceremony, surveillance, discipline and mobilization.

However, these kinds of disciplinary interventions are just one aspect of the work of the nation-state. The normative practices of the nation-state which involve policing, disciplining and reproducing compliant national citizens are not automatically efficacious. This may be because of the kinds of challenges facing the nation-state under globalizing conditions. So, nation-states are being forced to come to terms with and devise new and ingenious ways of legitimizing their continued existence (see, for example, Smith and Guarnizo 1999).8 This book, then, seeks to provide a critical assessment of the different ways in which the Singapore government has been responding to the process of globalization. In particular, it examines how the PAP government actively deals with the challenges to national identity posed by globalization. I am interested in the ways that the government has gone about engaging and negotiating what it perceives as threats and indeed opportunities arising from this process. This book has another aim as well. Moving away from macro and at times abstract theoretical discussions of the impact of cultural globalization on identity, place and locality (see, for example, Featherstone 1995; Appadurai 1996; Soja 2000), I am reminded of Doreen Massey’s much more grounded analysis and critique of globalization. Although Massey is specifically interested with the issue of power, inequality and access to mobility, her approach to analysing the experiential dimensions of the impact of globalization appears very useful (see also Abu-Lughod 1991;

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Eade 1997). Massey (1994, p. 165), through her critique of the totalizing and universal effects of time-space compression and its outcomes, has raised an important question: “who is it in these times who feel dislocated/ placeless/invaded”. Challenging the hype and hyperbolic visions of globalization, Massey (1994, p. 163) notes pointedly that “most people actually live in places like Harlesden and West Brom. Much of life for many people, even in the heart of the first world, still consists of waiting in a bus-shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes”. This reminds us that not every place and every person is completely swept away by the waves of globalization. Indeed, the experience and impact of globalization varies from place to place and more importantly from person to person.9 More to the point, as Massey (1994, p. 151) observes: [M]any of those who write about time-space compression emphasize the insecurity and unsettling impact of its effects, the feelings of vulnerability which it can produce. Some therefore go on from this to argue that, in the middle of all this flux, people desperately need a bit of peace and quiet — and that a strong sense of place, of locality, can form one kind of refuge from the hubbub.

Massey contends that writers who interpret a desire for fixity and security in the middle of movement and change as necessarily reactionary are missing the point. This is where she poses an important question: “why is it assumed that time-space compression will produce insecurity?” (Massey 1994, p. 151) She adds “there is a need to face up to — rather than simply deny — people’s need for attachment of some sort, whether through place or anything else” (1994, p. 151). Of course, Massey is mindful that such a need for attachment can be highly problematic, especially when it manifests itself in the form of reactionary nationalisms and introverted obsessions with localism. Nonetheless, and quite rightly, Massey’s main argument is about reconceptualizing the notion of a sense of place as fluid, porous, and full of internal conflicts. In following Massey’s work, with its emphasis on the lived and experiential dimensions of globalization, I wish to examine more closely the ways in which people articulate their sense of attachment to a place and their identity in this dynamic and rapidly changing environment. For all the hype of increasing deterritorialization of life (as exemplified in the processes of globalization), “most of us still depend for our everyday reproduction on the “here-and-nowness” of (a) home or sense of belonging, however defined” (Ang 1998, p. 26). How then are ‘home’ and sense of belonging defined and experienced in a rapidly globalizing

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place such as Singapore? In particular, what kinds of affiliations and identifications do Singaporeans have with Singapore as a locality, nation and world city?

STATE LEGITIMACY AND CONTROL In this book, I will examine the ways in which the PAP elite have responded and are responding to the challenges that global processes pose to their vision of constructing and creating a Singapore nation. To do this, it is necessary to begin with the founding moment of the Singapore nation. Nationalism, in the sense of asserting a cultural identity and association with both history and place remains a fundamental means of responding to globalization (Holton 1998). Yet it is apparent that the idea of a national society is itself a global phenomenon, in the sense that the institutions of the nation-state and nationalist consciousness are truly characteristic of all regions of the world (Robertson 1991; Smith 1991; Lash and Urry 1994; Duara 1995; Axtmann 1997; Holton 1998). Thus as Holton (1998, p. 157) contends, “in this way, one may speak of the globalization of particularism, that is, of the model of nationhood as the embodiment of the specific claims of particular groups with a discrete history and identity of their own”. The “particularization” of nation building invariably must be understood as itself a response to globalization. Nation-state building is often defined as a “set of historical, institutionalized and affective processes that seeks to link heterogeneous populations together and forge their loyalty to and identity with a concept of a nation” (Schiller and Fouron 1999, p. 132). The forging of loyalty to and identity with the nation-state is quite a recent development in Singapore. Singapore was granted limited self-rule by the British in 1959. In order to secure complete autonomy, the ruling government led by the PAP joined a merger with the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. However, after two years Singapore was expelled from the merger. Thus on 9 August 1965, Singapore became an independent nation-state. Through the course of these events, it was the “state” which preceded and was instrumental to the development of the idea of a Singapore “nation”. In other words, a “Singaporean nationalism” as such did not exist and had to be forged from above by the government through various nationbuilding projects. As I will demonstrate in Chapter 1, the objective of nation building was to bring together the heterogeneous immigrant population of

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Singapore under a common and collective banner of the nation-state. The government hoped that through this process a distinctly Singaporean identity would evolve and that the population would identify with the nation. Later, the government feared that Singaporeans were becoming too “Westernized” and losing their “Asian” identity. It responded strongly by asserting and defending Singapore’s identity as an Asian nation. It began promoting Confucian/Asian values as a counter-discourse against Western ideas of modernity. Singapore’s territorially delineated national identity gave way to the articulation of a broad regional-based “Asian” identity (Chapter 2). By the early 1990s, the Singapore government began to realize that as a city-state it needed to embrace the world as its hinterland. The drive to globalize Singapore began in earnest with the government promoting and representing the city-state as a cosmopolitan global city (Chapters 3 and 4). So the construction of national identity was largely driven by the state and not, as in much of the colonized world, by grassroots movements and supported by the population at large. The features of the modern Western nation-states in contemporary societies are: that power is shared; rights to participate in government are legally or constitutionally defined; representation is wide, state power is fully secular and the boundaries of national sovereignty are clearly defined (Hall 1984, pp. 9–10). The Singaporean “state” has most of these features, in that a democratically elected government runs the country, it is a secular state, and its territorial boundaries are clearly defined. However the hegemony of the dominant order (represented by the PAP) is rarely contested. As Yao (2001, p. 5) argues: [I]n spite of their recent histories, nation-states in Southeast Asia are endowed with awesome coercive power to impose their iron will on their societies. In this context, state power is not merely an abstract entity but a sharp reality which permeates everyday experiences. From the time we pick up the morning paper, the moment we turn on the radio or television, the state is there with its busy pronouncements of another achievement of economic and national development, of another victorious crushing of political dissent which threatens national security or misleads the public about the doing of the government. Thus, those of us in Southeast Asia may be forgiven for overstating, out of experience and habit, the totalizing and systematic quality of the state and its power.

Yao’s overview of state power and the role of states in Southeast Asia applies to Singapore. The PAP government has held power since 1959

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with little effective opposition. The PAP maintains its political and popular legitimacy by constantly claiming to represent the collective interests of the nation. It has been peculiarly effective in repressing and silencing any form of dissent as undermining the “national interest”. Democratic elections are held once in every five years in Singapore. These elections have been marked by a small and weak political opposition, gaining little success. The PAP government has preserved its power primarily by delivering on its election promises, by securing continued economic growth and security, and investing in public housing, education, healthcare and social security (Quah 1990; Chua and Kuo 1991; Brown 1998). This is not to suggest that the PAP government has absolute power. Certainly, the PAP is frequently faced with a range of social and cultural challenges in its day-to-day running of the government. However as Birch (1993, p. 75) argues “within Singapore the very maintenance of a discourse of crisis is one of the main strategies adopted by the Singapore government to maintain its ideological control, anchor its people to the nation and create a climate of domestic uncertainty about the fragility of the state and the economy”. The discourse of crisis varies in form and substance and refers to things as various as external threats (for example, the impact of Westernization on Singapore’s Asian cultural traditions) and “inappropriate” social behaviour such as littering in public places and not flushing after using public toilets (see, for example, Birch 1993; Heng and Devan 1992; Clements 1999). Typically, these “crises” are represented by the state as a threat to Singapore’s national survival or interests. In generating this discourse, the state is able to make swift changes to its policies and mobilize the full support of the population for its cause. At the same time, however, the frequent staging of social and cultural threats in discourses of crisis not only highlights some of the anxieties facing the PAP government to its continued dominance and legitimacy but also, in spite of its success, its structural vulnerability is best illustrated when Singapore is faced with external threats which are beyond the control of the ruling party. The aim in this book is to explore the ways in which the Singapore state has been engaging with the challenges posed by global processes. Of particular interest are the strategies and policy initiatives undertaken by the state to resolve and overcome some of these challenges. Within this context, I shall explore how the relationship between global and national concerns is being constructed and played out by the state. To do

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this, I have divided the book into five chapters around the following themes: history and nation-building; challenging Western modernity; globalizing the nation and establishing a national home; creating a Singaporean cosmopolitanism and identity; and affect and belonging amongst Singaporeans. In focusing on these themes, my aim is not simply to develop a critique of the state and its policies but to highlight the critical shifts in the national imagining of the global. In looking at the construction of the Singapore nation-state as a bounded and contained entity through to its present re-imagining as a global city (both in public discourse and representation), I shall be concerned with the national question in an increasingly globalized world. While the first sections of the book focus primarily on government policy and representations of the nation, the closing chapter draws extensively on surveys and interviews with Singaporeans which asked them to reflect on their experiences and understandings of national identity and questions of belonging.

OUTLINE OF BOOK This book draws on several key government policy vision documents and official discourses. They include: the White Paper on Shared Values (1991); The Next Lap (1991), Singapore 21 (1999), the Renaissance City Report (2000) and Remaking Singapore (2003). These policy documents were issued within the space of a decade and were responses to key events, including the rise of the Newly Industrialized Economies of Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the subsequent economic meltdown triggered by the Asian economic crisis in 1997. They contain the policy visions of the PAP government for Singapore throughout the 1990s and the new millennium. I begin, in Chapter 1, by looking at the ways in which nationbuilding has shaped the history and construction of the Singaporean nation-state. In particular, I map the ascendancy of the PAP government and trace its political ideology of nation-building. I explore this initial phase of nation-building which centred on the formation of national institutions and a range of programmes instituted by the government to ensure the creation of a Singapore nation, and I consider how local academics have approached the question of national identity. Out of these reflections I argue the merits of a critical transnational perspective in exploring Singapore’s national response to globalization. This perspective sets the theoretical tone for the rest of the book.

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Chapter 2 deals with the Asian values debate that rose to prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, coinciding with the rise of the Newly Industrialized Economies of Asia. In Singapore, the government became concerned that Singaporeans were becoming too “Westernized”. To counter this social change, the government initiated a policy of “Asianizing” Singaporeans. The Asian values debate marked the beginning of the government’s concern with issues of cultural globalization. In this chapter I assess the dimensions of the Asian values debates, the government’s response and its eventual deployment of the discourse of “New Asia” as means of mediating the global and the local and tradition and modernity. In Chapter 3, I deal with the third phase of Singaporean nationbuilding. Here, I consider a number of specific government policy initiatives between 1991 and 2003 aimed at transforming Singapore into a global city, on the one hand, while addressing the twin economic and cultural challenges of globalization, on the other. The policy initiatives I explore are: Singapore: The Next Lap, Singapore 21: Making Our Best Home and Remaking Singapore. These policies all situate the future success of Singapore in a global context, yet recognize that this brings cultural challenges with it in terms of maintaining a population committed to the national cause. In this chapter, I show how these policies attempt to reconcile some of the dilemmas facing Singapore as it becomes more globalized through programmes which seek to establish the necessary affective building blocks to provide Singaporeans with the feeling of being at “home” in Singapore. Chapter 4 shifts the focus to arts, cultural and urban redevelopment policies in Singapore. In this chapter, I explore the government’s renewed interest since the late 1990s, in transforming Singapore into a cosmopolitan global city. I critically analyse the governmental logic underpinning this strategy and tease out some of its contradictions and implications on creating a Singaporean national identity. Chapter 5 draws on research data gathered from an email survey, an internet discussion forum, newspaper reports and individual interviews, and it focuses on the responses of Singaporeans to issues of national identity and belonging within the context of globalization.10 The internet discussion forum that I monitored is called the Straits Times Interactive Chat (STIC).11 This website is a Singapore-based internet discussion forum and it is linked to the electronic version of the Straits Times, Singapore’s major English language newspaper. The issues and questions posted for discussions are topical and as such they serve as

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an informal measure of the prevailing mood of Singaporeans on ongoing debates and issues. In particular, when I was monitoring the internet forum between August 2000 and December 2002 several of the discussion topics were concerned with the consequences of globalization for Singapore. I also conducted an e-mail survey between June and December 2001. A questionnaire was e-mailed to seventy voluntary recipients in Singapore. In this survey, I asked participants twenty-five short questions pertaining to national identity, the globalization of Singapore and belonging.12 I will also introduce responses from interviews that I conducted between January and April 2002 with ten Singaporeans currently residing in Sydney, Australia.13 These interviewees left Singapore in the mid1990s and are now permanent residents of Australia. They do not intend to return to Singapore but have retained feelings and attachments to Singapore. They thus represent a small sample of a growing number of Singaporeans who have chosen to leave Singapore to settle elsewhere. I consider the reasons for their relocation and their present relationship with Singapore. Chapter 5 considers the question of affect, belonging and identification with the nation. Through an analysis of Singaporean chat room discussions, newspaper reports, surveys, and a series of in-depth interviews, I consider how Singaporean citizens relate to the kinds of discourses on national identity presented by the government, and more broadly how they are responding to the forces of globalization in their own lives. While the impact of globalization on the role and function of the nation-state has received substantial scholarly attention, nation-states’ responses and their strategies to manage various globalizing forces have received little attention. In this light, the book in sum, examines the specific ways in which the Singapore nation-state deals with the major challenges of economic and cultural globalization, especially in the 1990s. A key challenge for the Singaporean state is how to reconcile the contradictory demands posed by globalization on the real and perceived need to maintain internal national unity on the one hand, and the global economic and other pressures which subvert this very emphasis on unity and coherence, on the other. Arguably most nation-states today face this dilemma, but the Singapore case is an extremely suitable starting point for its analysis, because the Singaporean state has always been explicitly interventionist in both economic and cultural terms in its management of the population and of national development.

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Notes 1. The term “ecumene” refers to a “region of persistent cultural interaction and exchange” (Kopytoff cited in Hannerz 1989, p. 66). In this sense, the global ecumene refers to a world where cultural connections and relationships are becoming a norm. 2. The use of the term “globalization” as a theoretical concept is much disputed. A survey of the literature on the question of what globalization is, reveals that commentators are far from agreed on its nature, impact or possible outcomes, let alone its definition. Nevertheless the features of globalization, to cite Waters (1995) are: increasing speed and volume of transnational flows (the greatly accelerated possibility of movement of large volumes of goods, people and information); shrinking space (the freeing of spatial constraints through instantaneous flows via new communication technologies); permeable borders (political and geographical boundaries are becoming porous and nation-states more interconnected with one another); and reflexivity (peoples’ orientation to the world manifests itself in contradictory ways as locals and cosmopolitans). 3. There is now an emerging sense of “the world as a single place”, a world or global culture, “created through an increasing interconnectedness of varied local cultures, as well as through the development of cultures without a clear anchorage in any one territory” (Hannerz 1996, p. 102, see also Featherstone 1995; Robertson 1995; Tomlinson 1999). While these authors acknowledge the significance of an increased sense of global interconnectedness, they argue that this process should not be seen as a totalizing logic. In other words, it would be wrong to assume that the process of globalization will decidedly spell the end of local cultures and that a single and homogeneous global culture will prevail. Rather than conceiving the global and local as a dichotomy, these authors argue that they must be understood as inextricably bound together. Any approach which insists on maintaining the global/local polarity is problematic (Massey 1994; Cvetkovich and Kellner 1997; Smith 2001). Instead there is a growing consensus that the global and local are “two faces of the same movement from one epoch of globalization” (Hall 1991, p. 27). Connected to these insights, some writers have drawn attention to certain “deglobalizing” processes (Hannerz 1996) arguing that global compression and the intensity of global flows have generated “nationalistic, ethnic and fundamentalist reactions often entailing a strong assertion of local cultures” (Featherstone 1995, p. 93). The assertion of localism or bounded locality expressed through a wide range of real or imagined affiliations has been explored by Featherstone (1995), Hannerz (1996), Castells (1996) and Appadurai (1996). There is of course the other ongoing theoretical interest that celebrates notions of hybridity, syncretism and the emergence of “third cultures” (Featherstone 1995) to dislodge the

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notion of fixity of identity and which reinforces the view of culture as a process, as always in translation. As Appadurai (1996, p. 43) points out “the critical point is that both sides of the coin of global cultural process today are products of the infinitely varied mutual contest of sameness and difference on a stage characterized by radical disjunctures between different sorts of flows and the uncertain landscapes created in and through these disjunctures”. Edward Soja’s idea of a “critical thirding” has emerged as a preferred mode of analysing the “glocal” precisely because not only does it debunk the range of polarities that circulate within the framework of globalization but it also seeks to offer a more complex picture of the contemporary global cultural landscape (see also Hall 1992). However, when such an approach is primarily aimed at locating “hybridized and glocalized movements and practices that recombine abstract flows and concrete places, opening up new and different real-and-imagined spatialities of resistance and contention at multiple scales” (Soja 2000, p. 215), it tends to overlook particular local combinations which may not always be resistive. As Dirlik (1997b, p. 85) cautions us, “in its promise of liberation, localism may also serve to disguise oppression and parochialism”. At the same time, others like Kevin Robins (1991, p. 36) argue that “it may well be that, in some cases, the new global context is recreating a sense of place and sense of community in very positive ways, giving rise to an energetic cosmopolitanism in certain localities”. It is clear therefore that the global-local nexus is not straightforwardly generating two parallel universes, one global one local. 4. In his article “Patriotism and Its Futures”, Appadurai (1996, p. 176) argues that “as populations become deterritorialized and incompletely nationalized, as nations splinter and recombine, as states face intractable difficulties in the task of producing “the people”, transnations are the most important social sites in which the crises of patriotism are played out” [emphasis mine]. The context of Appadurai’s argument comes from a combination of changes that began to take place in the late 20th century. With the ever increasing flow and movement of people across national borders either voluntary or under the pretext of internal unrest, economic migration, collapse of the state (for example, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia) and likewise with new arrivals to places like the United States, Britain, and Europe, the emergence of “transnations” and transnationalism is here to stay. For Appadurai, it is at these sites — amongst people of the diaspora, exilic and transnational communities — where a new form of nationalism is beginning to blossom creating a plethora of conflicting struggles for and against particular nationalisms. See also Smith and Guarnizo (1999). 5. A similar view is expressed by Anthony Smith (1991, pp. 143, 144) who notes that the idea of the nation is both “ubiquitous and pervade[s] the life of individuals and communities in most spheres of activity. In the cultural

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

sphere, national identity is revealed in a whole range of assumptions and myths, values and memories, as well as in language, law, institutions, and ceremonies. Socially, the national bond provides the most inclusive community, the generally accepted boundary within which social intercourse normally takes place and the limit for distinguishing the “outsider”. The nation may also be seen as the basic unit of moral economy, in terms both of territory and of resources and skills”. On this point, see for example, political economist Linda Weiss’s (1997) essay where she argues that the notion of the powerless state is fundamentally misleading. She points out that globalization theorists frequently ignore the adaptability of states, their differential capacity and the enhanced importance of state power in the new international environment in their consideration of the predisposition of the nation-state under globalization. Weiss (1997, p. 20) reveals that evidence from Japan and Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan indicates that strong states — that is, those with fairly firm control over socio-economic goal setting and robust domestic linkages — are acting increasingly as catalysts for the “internationalization” strategies of corporate actors and often facilitating the changes identified as “globalization”. There are of course many studies that examine how global managers of capital and multinational corporations develop strategies to enable the uninterrupted flow of capital across the globe. Terms such as “think global, act local”, “glocalization” (Robertson 1992) and “global localism” (Dirlik 1997b) are used to describe how global capital flows adapt to local conditions and are able to flow freely across national borders. Smith and Guarnizo’s (1999) case study on “transnationalism from below” examines the ways in which the governments of the Philippines, Guatemala and Grenada are facilitating their respective labour diasporas through revised immigration policies and providing dual residency is a case in point. Another example would be the granting of dual citizenship. See also, for example, Hirst and Thompson (1996) on governance and the nation-state. In Massey’s view, different social groups and individuals are positioned in very distinct ways in relation to the flows and interconnections that constitute the “globalization” of capital and culture (Massey 1994). The names of the participants in the e-mail survey and interview have been changed to ensure anonymity. Throughout Chapter 5 the messages from the Straits Times Interactive Chat are followed by the name of the author (this is usually a codename) and the date when the message was posted. The participants for this Internet survey were recruited through existing contacts in Singapore. More than 75 per cent of the survey forms sent out were returned fully completed. Through my involvement in a migrant community organization (the Australian Malaysia and Singapore Association) I met many Singaporeans who had

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migrated to Sydney and was able to recruit from this group ten participants for interviews. The ten participants were aged between 25 and 45, and all had left Singapore in the mid-1990s. The criterion for selecting these ten people was that they were new arrivals and therefore were representative of Singaporeans leaving Singapore in recent times — that is, in the decade of globalization — and their deliberations are central to the on-going debate in Singapore over the rise in the numbers of Singaporeans migrating overseas.

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian 20 RESPONDING TO GLOBALIZATION Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

1 THE MAKING OF THE SINGAPORE NATION-STATE AND THE QUEST FOR A NATIONAL IDENTITY

The nation is and shall long remain a persistent although modifiable entity. (Kristeva 1993, pp. 5–6).

In this chapter I present an historical background to Singapore’s national development from colony to early nationhood, and detail the various nation-building strategies employed by Singapore’s ruling PAP. The first section of the chapter offers a critical re-reading of Singapore’s historical legacy and transnational connections up until its independence in 1965. Soon after independence and over the next three decades, the Singapore political elite embarked on the project of nation-building: to create a sense of national identity amongst the heterogeneous and largely immigrant population. Through a range of institutions and institutionalized practices, an official process of national identification was put in place. I will briefly examine the different aspects of this nation-building project in the second section. In the final section, I explore how we might better conceptualize the formation of nationhood in the Singapore context. I advance two main arguments in this chapter. One is that, because of the circumstances of the formation of Singapore, the “imagined” dimension of nationhood did not emerge smoothly. The early phase of the Singaporean nationalization project was characterized by strategies aimed at reigning in, or binding Singapore’s multi-ethnic immigrant population within the boundaries of the nation-state. The second argument relates to the way the question of nationhood has been addressed in the academic literature. I argue that the conception of the nation, as something that is achieved when the national borders are fixed and delineated, is ultimately flawed. Nations such as Singapore are historically and spatially always-already connected with elsewhere, and are therefore never self-contained nor self-sufficient. Such

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connections beyond the nation however, do not inherently represent a failure of the national project. I argue that much of the academic literature on Singapore has typically been focused on evaluating and interpreting the effectiveness of nation-building strategies in achieving nation-ness, and propose that in this way both government and academic discourses have been centred on strategies to “domesticate” the population and their diasporic connections with elsewhere. My aim then is to foreground the question of national identity as always connected to and shaped by global conditions.

IMAGINING SINGAPORE: FROM COLONY TO NATIONHOOD Singapore was founded in 1819 as a trading settlement for the British East India Company.1 While historical records reveal that Singapore, formerly known as Temasek (sea-town), came into existence towards the late 14th century and that it was a flourishing trading city, much of its pre-colonial and pre-modern history has been disregarded and rarely appreciated.2 For example, historians Turnbull (1989) and Lim (1991) argue that historical records before this date do not offer a reliable and tangible account on Singapore because they were largely fragmentary, vague and often contradictory.3 Yet according to Lim (1991) the history of Singapore up to 1819 was largely a Malay history set in a Malay milieu into which there were Thai, Javanese, Portuguese, Dutch, and British intrusions. Moreover, as Lee (1986, p. 1) points out, “the people who left their mark on this ancient history were Chinese, Malays, Indians and others, who were essentially of the same ethnic stock as the people who constitute the racial mix in the Singapore nation of today”.4 This lack of public recognition of the pre-colonial past reflects a teleological contradiction of the contemporary modern Singaporean nation.5 In disregarding the fragmented yet rich and complex pre-colonial history of the settlement — that is, the contributions of the early sojourners and the prominence of Singapore’s role which figures predominantly in travel writings, Southeast Asian histories and processes of European expansion — it becomes clear that a Singapore national history relies on the dominance of “Europe”, in particular the British as the subject and principle source of its history (Chakrabarty 1992). As Chakrabarty points out the tendency to read [pre-colonial Singapore] history in terms of a lack, an absence or incompleteness that “translates into inadequacy in effect privileges a “transition narrative” — from obscurity to prominence, an ancient period to modernity, fragmented to unified” (1992, p. 339).

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Thus 1819, when Singapore became a British possession and subsequently an entrepot port, is the date identified by official histories as the beginning of Singapore. It is a history that is both entrenched in the discourse of colonialism and the arrival of Western modernity. The so-called founding of Singapore by Thomas Stamford Raffles on 28 January 1819 thus signals a dramatic shift in the ways in which Singapore is conceived as a knowable and distinct place in history.6 The colonial moment therefore allowed the possibility for the articulation of a single and unified sense of place despite the different and diverse histories of its immigrant population. In other words, the formation of Singapore as a “place” began to take shape in and through various colonial historical accounts.7 As George Windsor Earl, an assistant to the Resident Councillor of Singapore in 1837 recorded in his book, The Eastern Seas: Singapore contains an epitome of the population of the whole Archipelago, and indeed of continental India also. Chinese, Malays, Bugis, Javanese, Balinese, natives of Bengal and Madras, Parsees, Arab and Caffrees, are to be found within the circuit of a few miles, each people forming a separate community, and retaining its customs as completely as if it had never been transplanted (cited in Bastin 1994, p. 27).

In 1826, Singapore became part of the British Straits Settlement and, due to its rapid growth and development, was subsequently established as a crown colony in 1867. Perhaps what is more revealing about the role and presence of the British in Singapore comes across in Sir Henry Norman’s article in the Daily Chronicle in 1889. As he writes, Each race has its own quarter — there is “Kampong Malacca”, “Kampong Kling”, “Kampong Siam”, [and] “Kampong China”. In one spot you are dazzled with the silks of India; in another the sarongs of Java are spread out like a kaleidoscope; in another you are suffocated with an indescribable mixture of Eastern scents; in another appalling stench meets you, strange rainbow-like birds utter raucous cries, […] in another there is such a packed mass of boats that you hardly know when your foot has left dry land. And all this mixed humanity exists in order and security and sanitation, living and thriving and trading, simply because of the presence of English law and under the protection of the British flag. Remove that piece of bunting from Government House, and all that it signifies, and the whole community would go to pieces like a child’s sand-castle when the tide rises. Its three supports are free trade, fair taxation, and even-handed justice among white, black, brown and yellow; and these exist in the Far East under the British flag alone (cited in Bastin 1994, p. 142).

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These selected passages highlight, among other things, that travellers’ impressions of Singapore, even within the colonial context, exalted a sense of cosmopolitanism, richness in cultural diversity and the proliferation of commercial activities. Colonial Singapore was a fascinating place simply because it was a confluence of various cultures and peoples. It attracted large numbers of settlers from China, India, and neighbouring regions. Certainly, the ritualistic reinforcement of colonial authority as suggested in the above passage, enunciates very clearly the political position and vested interest of the colonial rulers of Singapore. The presence of the British, arguably, brought order and social stability as well as a sense of “identity” in an otherwise complex and chaotic polity.8 This colonial myth again reinforces the pervasive and universalizing tendency of the “transitional narrative”, that Singapore, if not for the British, would have been divided and fragmented, and thus, from a modernist perspective, would be deemed unconstitutional and feudalistic (Chakrabarty 1992). As such, the colonial constitution of Singapore both symbolically and historically has negated not only its pre-modern past but has also effectively consolidated the heterogeneous diversity of its population within a single and unified historical process. It is this course of history more than any other competing history (in particular narratives of immigrant communities) that serves to locate Singapore’s past and its position as always already “modern” in origin. Edwin Lee’s (1989) welldocumented article on “The Colonial Legacy”, attributes Singapore’s growth and success entirely to the arrival of the British, their performance and their vision for the place. Lee points out that the establishment of Singapore as an entrepot with free-port status; the building of a modern city and other infrastructures; the creation of governmental institutions, civil and legal services; the provision of education and medical services and so on were without doubt British achievements that have contributed to the establishment of a “modern” Singapore. In this sense, not only is the history of Singapore inseparable from a colonial moment but its identity and cultural location are a direct result of broader discourses of imperialism and Western modernity. Singapore remained a British colony until 1959, when it was granted internal self-government with the British retaining control over matters of internal security, external affairs and defence.9 In the same year, the People’s Action Party (PAP) led by Lee Kuan Yew came to power and the national flag and anthem were unveiled. In 1963, Singapore was incorporated into the Federation of Malaysia but was expelled from the

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merger in 1965.10 The editors of Imagining Singapore (Ban, Pakir and Tong 1992, p. 3) assert that: Colonialism had erased the specificities of Singapore history by constantly encouraging us to think of ourselves as attachments — always as part of a larger unit. And so we were part of the East India Office, of the Indian Secretariat or the Straits Settlements or the Federated Malaya States or of Malaysia. The sense of individual identity and specificity counted for little and was, in fact, suppressed by the perception of ourselves as part of some larger unit. These attachments and groupings emphasized the sense of fragmentation, of never belonging to a specific landscape even as it mystified and hid the larger body politic of the British Empire behind the orchestrations of various allegiances, treaties and obligations.11

It is clear that Singapore’s history has evolved as a product of the incorporation and changes brought about by colonial power (Smith 1991), as highlighted by its political attachment to various administrative units throughout its colonial rule. However, Ban, Pakir and Tong (1992) problematize this imagining as fragmented and deterritorialized precisely because it continually disturbs and complicates the narration of a national history. Their critique of colonial rule and history is presented from a nationalistic point of view and they speak of “Singapore” — its history, people and culture — in a homogenizing and totalizing way. Their attempt to signify a sense of “nation-ness”, of “ourselves”, is highly uncritical as it assumes that the immigrant population of British Singapore had a shared and collective identity. On the contrary, as Turnbull (1989, p. 154) notes “Singapore [despite being governed by different administrations] remained a collection of immigrant communities, with their culture, interests and loyalties rooted in foreign countries, their ultimate ambition often to return to the land of their origin, whether it was Britain, India or China”. At the same time, by dismissing the colonial past as fragmented and lacking in specificity, Ban, Pakir and Tong (1992) are able to evoke the idea that the origin of the nation is truly a post-colonial one. The critique of the colonial project reinforces the idea that the specific imagining of the nation actually begins when Singapore became an independent state. In my view, Singapore’s constantly shifting sense of belonging — I am referring here to its existence as a political entity under colonial rule — necessitates a reinterpretation of its history. It has always been spatially and symbolically interconnected to various other histories and locations. It is the disarticulation of Singapore’s attachment to various colonial administrative units, and more importantly, its immigrants belonging

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politically and culturally to their respective “homelands”, which has erased the complex and interlocking histories of Singapore. In other words, the transnational administrative and cultural links of Singapore’s past are where the specificities of its history may be grounded. In his article, “The National Past and the Writing of the History of Singapore”, Albert Lau (1992, p. 50) observes that: The evolution of a distinct Singapore historiography is a comparatively new phenomenon. Partly because of Singapore’s colonial past as a constituent unit of British Malaya, earlier accounts of the island’s history have treated Singapore’s story as inseparable from Malayan history, woven inextricably into the fabric of consecutive genre of Malayan historiography. The attainment of separate nationhood did not provide inspiration for the writing of a new history of Singapore. Instead the past was initially neglected as Singaporeans searched for meaning and for their destiny in the present and in the future rather than in the colonial past.

While Singapore’s colonial past and immigrant histories cannot be denied or ignored, it should be pointed out that it was Singapore’s leaders who were apprehensive about dealing with their peoples’ past. As Lau (1992, p. 50) notes “given Singapore’s multi-racial and multi-cultural mix, the search for her past, it was feared, could easily drift into a search to strengthen ethnic and cultural identities and turn Singapore into a bloody battle ground for endless racial and communal conflicts”. This discursive articulation of Singapore’s transnational history as a “threat” goes to show that there was a great sense of urgency to dissociate and disown conflicting pasts so as to ensure that a specifically “national” history could be created. Such a concern with solidifying the idea of the nation, has not only denied particular immigrant histories but also their transnational affiliations, which are integral to the formation of the Singapore nation-state. Thus, not only have the profound implications and consequences of British colonial rule been largely ignored, but its imperial past has also been valorised — as a past of progress. (Wee 1993, p. 720).12 In addition, Singapore’s rich, complex and heterogeneous immigrant histories have been, in their entirety, oversimplified and reconstructed to accentuate their commonality. This is not to suggest that such histories have been ignored in academic writings. There are of course numerous works on the different immigrant communities but it must be said that while they exist as separate documents or sections within a paper, they tend to treat immigrant experiences and activities as if they were

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incompatible with and never a part of a Singapore “national” history.13 As I will argue in the last section of this chapter, in emphasizing the “nation”, the diasporic and transnational links of its people have been excluded. In the next section I outline some of the nation-building strategies employed by the PAP government.

DEVELOPING THE SINGAPORE NATION: STRATEGIES AND POLICIES OF NATION-BUILDING While the country and the people of Singapore have had long historical experiences of statehood beginning with the British and attachments with Malaya, this state was always an extension of other states. These previous attachments and associations have had to be relinquished so that the sovereign state could be imagined as specifically tied and distinct to the boundaries of its territory. This is why, in Singapore’s case, the “state preceded the development of nationalism rather than emerging as its political consequence and the state itself became the first major symbol of national identity” (Willmott 1989, p. 581). At the same time, however, the need to situate and locate the state territorially was made difficult by the diversity and differences of allegiance that existed amongst the people of Singapore. As Chiew (1990, p. 7) points out: The colony of Singapore was culturally, demographically and politically an extension of Britain, Malaya, Indonesia, China and India as these early settlers came to make money before returning to their homelands to be reunited with their families and fellow countrymen [sic]. There was no social cohesion to bind these ethnic groups together. They did not comprise a nation, and it was unlikely that nation-building instincts would arise from these competing and disparate groups which felt no allegiance to this British trading colony.

More specifically, the nationalistic sentiments of the immigrant population have been well captured by Willmott (1989, pp. 582–83) in his article on “The Emergence of Nationalism in Singapore”: The Malays in Singapore identified with Malay society and culture on the peninsula and in the archipelago. Because prior to the Japanese Occupation most of the Chinese and Indians considered themselves merely sojourners, no Singaporean identity or sentiment emerged among them. A few Chinese, mainly professionals […] identified wholeheartedly with the British. Others remained primarily Chinese in their sentiments, and some of these were moved by Chinese nationalism to participate, if

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vicariously, in the political struggles in China. Similarly, many Indians in Singapore were staunch supporters of the Indian National Congress in its opposition to the British Raj. […] Most of the English-educated Chinese, on the other hand, did not feel any loyalty to China, whether cultural or political.

The imagining of Singapore as a separate place and political entity in history, as it is reproduced in national discourse, highlights what are deemed as key moments contributing to a sense of coherent national history. The fragmented and diversified immigrant histories are reduced and fused to bestow on the people a sense of continuity, a common journey, and a common destiny upon which the transcendent character of the nation can be founded (Guibernau 1996). The historical imagination of Singapore’s past and present is therefore entrenched in a discourse of a transitional narrative — a path towards progress. This is an important point to bear in mind. As I will show in this book, the transition of Singapore from a colony to an independent state and more recently from a new industrialized economy to a world city has helped to reinforce the idea of Singapore as a nation always in ‘transition’. This transitional narrative has also been accompanied by a state-manufactured anxiety over the fragility and survival of the nation-state. Between the late 1950s and early 1960s, the political scene in Singapore was characterized by factionalism, communism, communalism and a range of political parties (Willmott 1989; Tremewan 1994; Hill and Lian 1995; Khong 1995).14 It was the PAP (People’s Action Party) led by Lee Kuan Yew which out-manoeuvred rival claimants for power to emerge as a dominant political party to win the 1959 elections and establish internal self-government.15 It secured forty-three out of the fifty-one contested seats in Singapore’s first ever General Elections.16 The PAP victory marked the beginning of the consolidation of its political power and the process of state and nation-building.17 The new government was confronted with the realities of serious unemployment, immense poverty, low levels of education, acute housing shortages, strikes, and demonstrations, most of which were Communist-led, and it had to deal with a plethora of competing ethnic and national sentiments. The PAP addressed these challenges through what Chan (1975, p. 51) describes as “a steady and systematic de-politicization of a politically active and aggressive citizenry” and mobilizing the support of various organizations. Central to the PAP leaders’ thinking on the role of the government was their view that the compulsion to achieve economic progress and ethnic harmony made it imperative that the government in

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Singapore controlled all instruments and centres of power and did not allow the growth of political pluralism (Vasil 2000). As Tremewan points out (1994, p. 27), “the systematic harassment of [opposition] political leadership by the government, the deregistration of grassroots organizations, the PAP’s stringent anti-Communism along with its calls to national loyalty and solidarity in the face of Indonesian confrontation, all took a severe toll” on political oppositions in Singapore. The Internal Security Act (ISA) passed by the British with the introduction of selfgovernment in 1959, gave the PAP state wide-ranging powers to detain political dissidents and subversive elements without trial for up to two years. This legislation was used to counter both the “Communist menace” and the chauvinistic sentiments of extremists. The Trade Union Act (1966), the Employment Act (1968) and the Industrial Relations Act (1969) were passed to curtail labour unrest, prohibit strikes and lockouts and to discipline the labour force (Mutalib 1992). The new leadership immediately forged an alliance with the Civil Service by enlisting the support of the civil servants through the establishment of the Political Study Centre in 1959. The main purpose was to impart political education to civil servants and raise their consciousness and understanding of the problems facing Singapore (Rodan 1996b, p. 1997). Next, the PAP government reorganized the Singapore Civil Service specifically to enhance the working of the various ministries. It established a number of statutory boards such as the Public Utilities Board (1959), Housing and Development Board (1960), Economic Development Board (1961), Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (1964) and Port of Singapore Authority (1964) to oversee and implement its nation-building policies. Political participation and articulation by the public was centralized and formalized through the establishment of Citizens’ Consultative Committees. These official institutions served to guide citizen involvement in state institutions at the constituency level. The PAP government also backed the formation of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) which developed into a highly centralized framework by which labour was subsequently controlled and disciplined. The accession of the PAP government therefore was a crucial moment in Singapore’s political history. It marked the beginning of single party dominance. As Chan (1989, p. 75) observes “right from the start the PAP government showed an understanding of the equation linking legitimacy to performance and performance to state building and political capability”. This legitimization process has been labelled as administrative (Chan 1975), instrumentalist (Chua and Kuo 1991), authoritarian (Rodan 1993a),

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corporatist (Brown 1994) and developmentalist (Perry, Kong and Yeoh 1997). The PAP’s control of the state effectively undermined any form of political opposition in Singapore — all political participation and policy debates were severely limited and made exclusive to the PAP regime. The period after 1959 saw many policies and programs put in place by the PAP government in an effort to build a nation-state. According to Quah (1990, p. 45): [t]he rationale for the Singapore government’s approach to nationbuilding has always been and continues to be the nurturing of the growth of a Singaporean national identity among the population, which will surmount all the chauvinistic and particularistic pulls of the Chinese, Malay, or Indian identities of the various ethnic groups on the island. The objective of the political leaders is to build a nation of Singaporeans out of the disparate groups in the city-state. The government has relied on many instruments to promote national integration, including the promotion of economic development, public housing, national service, educational policies, the mass media, periodic national campaigns, and grassroots organization.

In these circumstances of diversity the Singaporean state consistently called on its citizens to undergo national soul searching: Who are we? What unifies us? And so forth. I outline some of the most important strategies of development here.

Promotion of Economic Development A key component of the nation-building project has been the promotion of economic development. In addition to providing Singapore citizens with the necessary material foundation for enhancing their commitment to the country, the rationale for this strategy, Quah argues, is based on two important factors: “the immigrant nature of the population; and the fact that Singapore’s survival depended initially on its ability to industrialize with the decline of entrepot trade, just as it depends now on its ability to globalize with the world as its market and hinterland” (1990, p. 46). From 1965 onwards, the Singapore government implemented an export-oriented industrialization policy and attracted a large flow of foreign direct investments to the island.18 This strategy has been pivotal to the economic growth and development of Singapore. It is worth noting that the promotion of economic development as a nation-building strategy has produced a very interesting scenario. The promise of economic prosperity and the betterment of people’s standard

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of living remains the single most powerful ideological tool employed by the PAP government. Its considerable success in delivering material goods has given the PAP tremendous support from the people. The PAP leadership therefore has based much of its legitimacy on this factor, so much so that all of its policies are seen to prioritize economic development over other concerns. For Singapore’s population, most of whom arrived on the island as sojourners looking for better opportunities, the PAP strategy continues to serve them well. As I will demonstrate later in this book, the promotion of economic development has also created an unresolvable anxiety for the state. The desired outcome of enhancing Singaporeans’ commitment to the nation is at once elusive and has resulted in a paradox. While Singaporeans are proud of their nation’s economic achievements, the material wealth and enhanced lifestyles they have experienced have increasingly meant that the Singaporean middle classes aspire to greater upward social mobility. Because of the natural limitations of Singapore, they are looking elsewhere to attain a better quality of life. This is especially so in terms of achieving more material wealth along with a less stressful lifestyle. I will address these issues in Chapter 5.

Promotion of Multiracialism Another key component of nation-building was the promotion of multiracialism and multilingualism. By emphasizing multiracialism and multilingualism as fundamental principles of the state, the Singapore leaders aimed to inculcate a sense of commitment in the various race groups to the state and to existence in racial harmony (Chan and Evers 1978, p. 123). In institutionalizing multiracialism as a state ideology, the fragmented and divided notion of the nation no longer became an issue. Multiracial Singapore — consisting of 77 per cent Chinese, 14 per cent Malays, 7.6 per cent Indians and 1.4 per cent Others (CMIO) — was redefined as an essential feature of a Singaporean identity and culture. The concept of Singapore’s multiracialism was fostered through every conceivable means — in all forms of official cultural representations, celebrations, schools, the media, national holidays and tourism. Many scholars (Benjamin 1976; Koh 1980; Clammer 1985; Siddique 1989; Mutalib 1992; Lai 1995) argue that the CMIO model accommodates and assures equality and rights for minorities and is a practical and viable ideology for maintaining racial harmony. However they also accept that this model has its shortcomings. The common thread to their

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arguments is that while the multiracial policy has its merits, it also poses the danger of reifying the divisions of the population into separate racial groups, thus preventing people from identifying with a Singaporean national identity.19 It erased the differences (language, dialect, regional, ethnic) that existed within the respective cultural groups by defining them as singular and fixed racial categories.20 As a result, it encouraged these groups to identify regardless of their differences from the official category. One the most notable critical assessments on Singapore’s multiracial policy was provided by Geoffrey Benjamin (1976, p. 115) who argued that although the multiracial policy “accords equal status to the cultures and ethnic identities of the various “races” that are regarded as comprising the population of a plural society, [it at the same time] serves to define such a population as divided into one particular array of “races”.21 In challenging the logic of multiracialism which is said to be the fundamental element of Singapore’s national culture, Benjamin argued that this policy constructed notions of “ethnicity” and “culture” as an unchangeable and irreducible fact of life thus maintaining the idea of “race” as immutable category of identity.22 In other words as Benjamin (1976, p. 124) argues “Singapore’s multiracialism puts Chinese people under pressure to become more Chinese, Indians more Indian, Malays more Malay in their behaviour”. Reiterating this argument, sociologist Sharon Siddique (1989, p. 575) adds that the dominant Singaporean CMIO model has caused certain internal contradictions and tensions within each of the constituent ethnic groups but given “the complexity of Singaporean society, the government has chosen the only alternative which could have sustained such a lengthy period of stability — measured ultimately in such a society in terms of harmonious race relations”.23 In this way, these categories became the cultural markers of Singapore’s traditional ethnic identities. They were seen as historically seamless and connected to the golden age of the traditions of Asian civilizations. Moreover, this policy did not encourage or acknowledge intermixing and hybrid identity formations. This is best exemplified in cases of inter-racial marriages where the offspring are officially forced to take on the racial identity of their fathers rather than assuming a hybrid identity. So while at the everyday level, a person of Chinese-Indian background, for instance, would identify with his/her hybrid identity, in an official context this status is rarely recognized. There are also many other instances where cultural intermingling between the various communities has produced practices which are uniquely and syncretically Singaporean, but once again they are not officially acknowledged. For

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example Singlish, a widely spoken form of Singaporean English (as I will discuss in Chapter 4) has been viewed by the government as detrimental to Singapore’s future as a global city. The disregard of hybrid identity formations is one of the biggest contradictions found in Singapore’s notion of a multiracial national identity. It undermines any possibility that a uniquely Singaporean identity could be officially recognized as a marker of the nation.

Promotion of Education and Bilingualism The position of the three major racial groups was further enshrined in the state ideology through a policy of bilingualism. Since 1966, the PAP government has elected to use English as the main medium of instruction and made it compulsory for students to learn a second language, Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil, depending on their racial background. Before this, schools were largely segregated along different language streams and thus very little interaction took place among the various racial groups. Up until 1959, the Malay language, which the state designated as the national language, was the most common vernacular of the people. After independence, however, English was emphasized as the language of development and instruction and the so-called “mother tongues” of the respective major racial groups were advocated as a way of retaining their cultural identity and recognized as the four official languages of the state. Chan and Evers (1978, p. 125) point out that: Each segment of Singapore’s population is too distinct and exhibits too strong a cultural tradition to warrant any hope that these traditions would merge into a single cultural and national identity. The pragmatic solution was to create a double identity: a somewhat subdued cultural identity based on the respective local language and a national identity based on English.

Singapore’s education policy and particularly the use of the English language aimed at neutralizing cultural and language differences was further justified by the government on the grounds that it was an international language and the language of modernity, of science and technology (Tremewan 1994). The English-educated PAP leadership considered it a neutral language for use by all racial groups and evidently, it was the language of investing industrialists (Gopinathan 1976; Wilson 1978; Tremewan 1994). Importantly, the bilingual education policy which promotes Mandarin, Malay and Tamil as the official languages spoken by the three main racial groups in Singapore has contributed to the

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marginalization of ethnic dialects and other languages belonging to these communities to the private realm and family settings. Further to the emphasis on the integration of children from different ethnic groups into the same schools, and the promotion of a national curriculum, there were also other efforts to foster a sense of nationalism. The daily ritual and ceremony of raising/lowering the national flag, singing of the national anthem, and recital of the national pledge were equally important in educating and espousing the idea of a national community in the minds of young Singaporeans.

Promotion of Public Housing With regards to the public housing programme which was designed to provide affordable housing for all and solve the country’s housing shortage, the aim of this policy was to bring multiracial Singaporeans together and thus provide them with more opportunities for interacting with and understanding each other (Quah 1990, p. 49). From the late 1960s onwards, the government began resettling those living in their respective ethnic enclaves around the inner city area, rural villages and squatter settlements.24 They were rehoused in multi-storey apartment blocks in new suburban towns constructed by the Housing and Development Board.25 In February 1964, the government introduced the Home Ownership for the People Scheme to encourage and allow Singapore citizens to own their own homes through their compulsory savings from their Central Provident Fund.26 This programme of encouraging home ownership was a bid by the government to give its citizens of all income levels the opportunity of owning a flat and therefore a stake in the country. On the one hand it adds to their personal assets and on the other hand, “a large percentage of the population possessing their own homes contributes to the overall political, economic and social stability” (Wong and Yeh 1985, p. 231). It can be argued that the government’s active promotion of home ownership specifically aims not only to anchor Singaporeans in the nation-state but also encourages the development of an affective link to a “home”. Today nearly 85 per cent of the population live in government public housing (Chew 2003).

Promotion of National Service Another important area of government policy to enhance nationalism is the introduction of compulsory national service. Since 1967, all male

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citizens and permanent residents have been oblige to enlist for full-time national service when they turn eighteen. The duration of full-time national service is between two and two-and-a-half years, after which Singaporean men are obliged to serve in the reservist force until they reach the age of 40 or 50. During this time, they are called up for up to 40 days a year for training. The requirement of compulsory national service is both constitutionally binding and legally enforced. Although the primary purpose of compulsory national service is the defence of the country, its other aim is to bring together young Singaporeans from diverse racial backgrounds, further enhancing the integration of the nation. Full-time and reserve national service men are conscripted into the Army, Civil Defence and Police.

Other Areas Along with the above areas of government policy, there are of course numerous other avenues through which national identity has been promoted. Public campaigns and national education programs are conducted regularly through the mass media to inform and educate Singaporeans on a range of social and cultural issues pertaining to the nation (see Sandhu and Wheatley 1989; Chew and Lee 1991; Quah 1990; Hill and Lian 1995). At times, these promotions relate to the private lives of Singaporeans (for example, campaigns promoting Singaporeans to get married, and to have more babies). Others are aimed at regulating what is perceived as “anti-social behaviour” (the courtesy campaign, kindness movement, flushing in public toilets, etc.). These national campaigns, according to Quah (1977, p. 215) promote nation-building as they provide the government with the “means for checking the spread of certain ‘undesirable’ practices, habits or values” among the local population and have been conducted by the PAP leaders to “maintain social discipline and enforce adherence to their policies”. Another important stage where national aspirations and ideals are orchestrated and performed is the National Day celebrations. During this month-long celebration around National Day many events are held to mark the independence of Singapore. They include social gatherings, flying of national flags all across the island, pledge-taking ceremonies, and community celebrations. The highlight of the celebration is the national day parade which is held on 9th of August. The parade involves

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military and civil processions, displays, and mass performances (see, for example, Devasahayam 1990; Velayutham 1995; Lim 1999). The policies and strategies for nation-building were driven by a managerialist state in Singapore. By providing incentives, political stability and social security, the PAP-controlled state has implemented these programs virtually unchallenged. In the absence of an effective political opposition and given the PAP’s remarkable track record in delivering economic and social provisions, the party has been overwhelmingly reelected to government ever since it came to power. The path taken by the PAP towards nation-building according to Chan and Evers (1978) was to create an identity based on an “ideology of pragmatism” — consistent with the obsession of survival as a small nation with limited resources, and taking into account Singapore’s geopolitical context and ethnic composition. They argue that due to the complex and fragmented makeup of Singapore, and because of the factions that existed amongst its population, the Singapore leaders were convinced that a distinct Singaporean identity could not be built on ruminating on the past but by persuading Singaporeans to look towards the future and their future destiny together. Most Singaporean academics have argued that the government has performed well in its task of building a Singaporean nation (see Sandhu and Wheatley 1989; Chew and Lee 1991; Quah 1990; Mutalib 1992; Yong 1992b; Hill and Lian 1995). As Quah (1990, pp. 59–60) writes “Singaporeans enjoy a much higher standard of living today than in 1959. There has also been political stability for the last three decades and the country has not experienced a racial riot for the past 21 years”. However, despite the so-called success of Singapore’s nation-building programme, a distinct Singaporean national identity has not fully emerged. As I will argue in later chapters, the definition of a “Singaporean” identity and what it means, and the project of nation formation has been regularly presented by the state as an incomplete process. Thus, while the nation-building policies have provided the foundations for the integration of Singapore’s multiracial population, an impetus to anchor themselves in Singapore (economic progress, high standard of living, and public housing and so forth), the lack of affective ties to the nation, evidenced since the late 1990s by increasing numbers of Singaporeans wishing to emigrate, has deeply concerned the PAP government. I will address their response to this later in the book. Next, I turn to how the academic literature has dealt with the “national question” in Singapore.

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THE QUESTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE ACADEMIC LITERATURE In this section, I will examine the key Singaporean academic literature that deals with the question of national identity. I want to put forward two arguments regarding the work that has been done in this area. First, there is a dominant tendency, especially in early sociological and in some cases more recent work in Singapore that deals with the study of national identity, to assess the success and support the PAP government’s nation-building project, but not to interrogate critically the idea of nation-building and national identity as such.27 The quest for a national identity is widely accepted as a natural objective. Out of this observation stems my second and related argument that there has been little attention paid to thinking about the question of national identity in a transnational context. By this I mean examining how national identity is being shaped and reformulated as a consequence of global processes. In my view, while it is important that we understand how national identity is constructed and ascribed in a local context through nation-building projects, it is not sufficient to understand the process of national identity formation in internal terms alone. In putting forward these two arguments, I am not claiming that these Singaporean scholars have been uncritical and completely subservient to government policy agendas. Rather, informed by particular theoretical concerns and indeed the state’s own concerns of the day (namely the creation of a cohesive nation), much Singaporean scholarship has largely been involved in assessing the state’s approach to nation-building and its outcomes for the development of a Singaporean society. That is say, to paraphrase Lian (1999, p. 49), local sociologists have too often taken the “state’s preoccupation with the normative order and communitarian notions of society” as a starting point in their analysis without questioning the parameters of that preoccupation itself. The study of national identity in Singapore has steadily grown since it began in the early 1970s. Singaporean scholars working in the field of social sciences have contributed enormously in providing a critical and in-depth understanding on how the state has undertaken this project. The main starting point in much of the literature on nation-building begins with the idea that a Singaporean national identity did not exist at the time when Singapore became a sovereign nation-state. Given the heterogeneous nature of the population whose allegiances were fragmented and largely tied to their respective homelands throughout

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the 140 years of British colonial rule, the Singaporean ruling elite was faced with the problem of creating a sense of belonging to the newly formed nation-state. These internal challenges have significantly shaped Singaporean scholarship on the study of national identity, framing scholarly discourses on how national identity construction should be understood in the Singapore context. When the Department of Sociology was formally established as a teaching and research discipline at the University of Singapore in 1965, it was influenced by modernization theory and its application within the sociology of development.28 According to Lian (1999, p. 39) it was the “problematic of “development” rather than that of the “nation-state” which informed the work of early sociologists” (see also Chen 1986; Yee and Chua 1999).29 As such, some of the works that emerged in the early years were concerned with examining the extent of national integration in Singapore. They include, for example, the works of Chiew (1971; 1978; 1983), MacDougall (1976) and Chew (1987). In a sociological survey on national integration and national identity conducted by Chiew in 1970, he reported that 74 per cent of the respondents given the choice between ethnic and national identity preferred to be called Singaporean and 19 per cent preferred to be called Chinese, Malay, Indian or Eurasian; 74 per cent professed that they would fight and die for Singapore; and 66 per cent expressed positive affective involvement and identification with the symbols of the state such as the National Flag, National Anthem, National Day, the President and the Prime Minister. In a somewhat problematic stretch of logic and simplistic manner, Chiew conclude that these results indicate that the PAP government’s experiment in national integration had been highly successful and that the level of national identity was fairly high (Chiew 1978, pp. 139–42). As I will demonstrate in Chapter 5 national identification is much more complex in Singapore. In a separate study, McDougall (1976) and Chew (1987) also concluded that the PAP’s multiracial policy had facilitated the emergence and stabilization of Singapore’s pattern of a high level of dual ethnic and national identification. There is a large body of work which examines from a historical perspective the PAP’s approach to nation-building (see, for example, Chan and Evers 1978; Quah 1977 and 1990; Chew and Lee 1991; Vasil 1995). These studies identify the major problems and obstacles that stood in the way of the PAP government and outline how they were addressed. The PAP government’s approach, they argue, has been to promote the development of a distinctive Singaporean national identity.

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Its nation-building programme is seen as instrumental to this project. These studies assert that the policies adopted by the government were successful in that they promoted national integration and the emergence of a national identity. This is an important point because these works readily assume that national identity is a natural end and is something that needs to be realized at all costs. To that end, the commitment of the state to create a new Singaporean identity was also reflected in academic research efforts which aimed to prescribe solutions rather than interrogate the notion of national identity. Correspondingly, Lian (1999, p. 47) in reflecting on the development of sociology in Singapore, points out that it has been “dominated by discourses about the nation-state — whether these have to do with the instrumental problems of institution-building and economic development or the cultural-symbolic ones of identity-formation and the promotion of public culture — much of the work has been drawn, critically or uncritically, to the official view”. The official view, of course, in the words of Lee Kuan Yew was to “integrate our different communities, in other words, to build up common attributes such as one common working language, same loyalties, similar values and attitudes, so as to make the different communities a more cohesive nation” (Straits Times, 25 November 1986). In another instance, Mutalib (1992, p. 69) in his discussion on Singapore’s quest for a national identity argues that “since a common identity defines the basis of membership within a political community and since social resilience and a sense of belonging are critical to the nation-building process of a state, the search for such a national identity must surely be one of the most fundamental or basic tasks confronting any government”. In Mutalib’s view, the ultimate end of creating a national identity would not only ensure order and stability but would also enable the nation to progress and prosper — politically, economically and socially. Although Mutalib points out that the Singapore government has adopted an interventionist and top-down approach to ensuring the development of a national identity, he does not challenge the notion of national identity itself. Rather he asserts that “with a judicious blend of creative and inventive imagination, and a flexible approach to nationbuilding, the Singaporean city-state can be expected to progress further towards becoming a more cohesive, dynamic and united nation” (Mutalib 1992, p. 69). Here again, nation-building is represented as a crucial building block to a nation’s progress and the realization of a national identity a necessary task.

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What is clear from this overview is that much of the scholarly literature emanating from Singapore takes the nation and national identity as doxa, in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms (Bourdieu 1986, p. 470 and 1990, p. 20). The doxa, as Bourdieu suggests, is the taken-for-granted commonsense world, the unquestioned consensus, and the invisible organizing category. The doxa “has the effect of normalizing, even naturalizing something which should be objectified and accounted for sociologically” (Alleyne 2002, p. 607). Sociological studies in Singapore have tended to normalize the notion of national identity as a natural objective, a doxa. It is important that academic discourse transcend such doxa and problematize the state’s political and social objectives and perspectives precisely because the construction of national identity is not based on a natural outcome. Nonetheless, the nature of a Singaporean identity has increasingly come under close analysis. As I will demonstrate in Chapter 2, in the 1980s a shift in the government’s cultural policy towards Confucianism and Asian values for instance, led many scholars to reassess the development of a national identity. One significant outcome here was the emphasis on thinking about Singaporean national identity as a hybrid formation. Koh (1980), Mutalib (1992), Lo (1992), and Chua (1998b) for example have argued that the government’s ethnicization programme through Asian values ignored the hybrid sociological realities of Singaporean everyday life. They stress that conceiving national identity as homogeneous and singularly Asian was highly problematic. However, while these scholars have argued for us to see the unique hybrid identities which manifest themselves in Singapore, their analyses have still tended to be bounded by the limits of the nation-state, seeing hybridity as a product of forces at work within its borders rather than evaluating them in a relational transnational context. The most popular approach to be found in the literature is the attempt to describe the socio-political construction of Singaporean national identity and how this particular ideological and cultural construct is reinforced by and transmitted through a whole complex of social institutions, namely the workplace, the educational system, the public housing system, multiculturalism, family planning, the media, the arts, and national celebrations (see, for example, Koh 1980; Quah 1990; Chew and Lee 1991; Chua and Kuo 1991; Mutalib 1992; Tong and Pakir 1996). In general, the widely-held perception is that nation-building policies have contributed to overcoming most of the socio-economic problems (poverty, unemployment, housing shortage, and illiteracy) faced by

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Singapore and to managing racial relations and political stability. At the same time, as Chua and Kuo (1991, p. 28) point out: The need for survival had dictated the tasks of nation-building almost exclusively in terms of the economic concerns at the national level, and correspondingly, in terms of betterment of the material conditions of the everyday life at the individual level. These concerns are constantly promoted through the various ideological institutions and inscribed onto the population, with legislative measures to police their propagation and entrenchment, if necessary.

What is important to note here is that the need for “survival” (meaning the survival of the nation and equally the survival of the PAP government) has dictated and continues to dictate the task of nation-building. This has been made abundantly clear by all Singaporean scholars. As I will discuss in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, the Singapore government’s survival rhetoric and economic concerns have contributed as much to shaping the construction and reconstruction of national identity as they have dictated national policy priorities. In addition, an analysis of the implications of the government’s approach to nation-building premised on enhancing the material well-being of Singaporeans on the national question has yet to be done. I will take up this issue in Chapter 5. In many ways, this trend in the literature stems from the ambiguous nature of Singapore’s beginnings. As Chua (1998c, p. 29) argues, “until 1965, Singapore as an independent political entity was an “absence”, it was not an idea which a population was trying to realize”. This “absence”, he writes, accounts for the successive attempts to “define”, to “substantiate” and to eventually “realize” a national identity at every level of social and political life. Therefore academics in particular have been so enmeshed in government nation-building that they have not considered whether such a rhetoric (with the exception of some earlier works, Chiew 1971; McDougall 1976 and Chew 1987) has taken root in popular consciousness. Chua adds that unlike economic development which has been highly successful in Singapore, identity building has been elusive and tended to “continuously and cunningly slip away from all attempts to represent it” (Chua 1998c, p. 29). The absence of the “nation” has thus served not only as a state-driven ideology represented as a “problem”, it is also for this very reason that it has been taken up by Singaporean scholars as a social fact that needs to be resolved. One consequence, as I will discuss in Chapter 3, has been that there still remains an interminable sense of anxiety on the part of the state to

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develop a national identity at the official level in Singapore. By constructing the status of the nation as an ideal but elusive category, state discourses not only project the realization of nationhood as an unfinished business but also legitimize its programme to manage and “bracket-off” competing and conflicting ways of representing Singapore’s history and identity. In this section, I have argued that the concept of the nation-state and its strategic reliance on constructing a national identity as a means of legitimization has rarely been problematized (Ang and Stratton 1996). In Singapore, the academic literature emphatically privileges the imperatives of developing a common national identity. The dominant scholarly concern therefore has been: Is there such a thing as a Singaporean identity? How are government policies contributing to this development? What are the ways in which the notion of a national identity can be reconceptualized? Here as Turner (1994, p. 67) points out, “in ‘postcolonial nations’, cultural or national policy is debated precisely in terms of its ‘national’ potential. And yet, paradoxically, the products of such policies are usually assessed in terms of how ‘naturally’ they speak of the nation”. The point here is that by privileging the status of the nation-state, Singaporean scholars have been mostly concerned with questioning, to quote Ang and Stratton (1996), “the national for internal reasons”. Singapore should be seen not only as a self-constituted nation-state but also as product of globalized modernity (Ang and Stratton 1995). The Singapore city-state has had a long history and continues to evolve as a territorial entity and cultural space intimately connected to and influenced by external forces. So we should ask first, why is national identity important and for whom, and second, in what ways is the state’s articulation of nationhood problematized and unsettled both from within and without?

INTERNATIONALIZING SINGAPORE: NATIONHOOD AND ITS CONNECTIONS ELSEWHERE Here I wish to consider briefly how the question of nation has been treated in the wider literature and how relevant it is to the Singapore case. Historian E.J. Hobsbawm (1990, p. 9), in his important book Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, points out that “in approaching ‘the national question’ it is more profitable to begin with the concept of ‘the nation’ than with the reality it represents” (see also Balibar 1991). The concept of the nation has been variously defined and theorized. Ernest Gellner, Anthony Smith, and Benedict Anderson have contributed

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enormously to this field. Each has sought to ascertain the objective criteria constituting nationhood. They identify the nation as a political and cultural unit that unites a group of people who share one or a combination of commonalities and solidarity. This commonality is often understood as a common “culture” and this includes language, ethnicity, history, territory, religion, and so forth. National identity and national culture therefore signify these bonds of solidarity as a form of selfexpression of the collectivity. The factors that compel a community within and without a given territory to adhere to or strive towards the establishment of a nation are one of the important bases for the theorization of nationalism. In this respect, the modernist perspective and paradigm has been the most influential set of ideas on the contemporary understanding of nationalism.30 Gellner (1983) for example, sees the engendering of nationalism as based on the processes of modernization and industrialization and the resulting developments in cultural literacy. The works of Anderson (1983) and Smith (1986; 1991; 1995; 1998) are premised on locating not only the conditions for the emergence of the nation but also on the need for individuals to be involved in a collectivity with which they can identify (Guibernau 1996). Anderson argues that the nation as an “imagined community” is founded on the advent of print capitalism, that as people are exposed to newspapers and novels, they begin to imagine themselves as members of a nation, the vast majority of whose citizens they will never meet. Newspapers represent an emerging rational sensibility, the forging of broad affective ties. Smith’s approach stems from the vital role of ethnic ties and ethnic communities or as he prefers to call it ethnie to account for the formation and character of nations.31 Importantly, in the Singapore case however, the formation of the Singapore nation is not a natural outcome whereby the citizens of Singapore before or even after independence began to consider themselves as belonging to a shared cultural unit. As Hill and Lian (1995, p. 18) point out, “states in Southeast Asia, which have been formed as a consequence of decolonization, are not products of popular uprisings in the sense that revolutionary-democratic states could be seen to be. They were independent states created out of territories under colonial administration”. In addition, the formation of such states meant little for their populations except where decolonization arose from popular struggle. In the Singapore case, the educated political elite inherited the state created out of territories under British colonial administration. More

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importantly, as Hill and Lian suggest, the political elite found “themselves in possession of a state but without a nation” (1995, p. 18). For these reasons, there have been repeated top-down attempts by the PAP government over the years to create a common bond and culture linking the heterogeneous immigrant population. We can see then, that the modernist approach to nationalism fails to take into account diffuse and pluralistic origins. The modernist account also ignores increasing global flows and the emergence of the kinds of fluid and hybrid identities proposed by postmodern and postcolonial writers (see Hall 1992; Appadurai 1996). Such factors challenge a concept of the nation which is grounded in some form of commonality and fixed allegiance. While the theorists of modern nationalism cited above stress that the nation and national identity are the product of specifically modern conditions, the PAP’s approach has been to create those conditions that will lead to and result in the emergence of a “homogeneous” national identity. As I have argued in the previous section, there has been little attempt in the literature on Singapore to think about national identity as a product of a globalized modernity, and how ongoing global processes at once shape and complicate this process. As I have shown, Singapore’s nation-building exercise in the first two decades since independence has been predominantly centred around developing institutions and a “system of cultural representation” (Hall 1992, p. 292) with the aim of imposing specific constraints on the process of identification. The appropriation of the European concept of the nation by former colonies (Anderson 1983; Chatterjee 1986) like Singapore with a heterogeneous immigrant population was always going to be a challenge. And it was this challenge of binding the population to a sense of shared identity so as to ensure its continued survival that has preoccupied the ruling elite and to some extent academic scholarship in Singapore. However, the need to theoretically reconsider and resituate Singapore beyond the boundedness and boundaries which are central to the idea of the nation-state is ever more urgent as Singapore aspires to become a global city — an always already transnationalized formation. This leads me to the notion of “transnationalizing” Singapore. Here I draw on two influential works that deal with the question of nationalism and national identity in the present context of globalization. According to Gupta (1997), to fully understand the makeup of contemporary Third World nationalism, we must account for its specific location within two macrologies. On the one hand, the question of national identity has to be

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“located within the postcolonial order, because everything from territorial boundaries to administrative and judicial systems and international alliances is tied to the political changes surrounding decolonization. On the other hand, it cannot be understood without paying attention to the global system of production and distribution within late capitalism” (Gupta 1997, p. 196). These two processes, Gupta argues, converge to produce and simultaneously to problematize the nation. Thus the study of national identity must take into account both these processes if we are to develop a rich and deeper understanding of the role of nationalism within the context of globalization. Similarly, according to Ang and Stratton (1996, p. 25) at the conceptual level, “the concern with national identity, while important in its de-universalizing impetus, doesn’t suffice if it doesn’t take into account not only its historical, but also its spatial, transnational context”. As I pointed out in the first half of this chapter, Singapore’s precolonial and pre-modern past, which are not incidental moments, have been wrongly presented as inconsequential simply because they do not offer a concrete founding moment for the nation. Before British colonization, Singapore was frequently fought over by the Indian states in Southeast Asia, the Siamese, and the Johore Sultanate, thus making it effectively an attachment or vassal to these regional imperial forces. With the arrival of the British, Singapore was governed by various administrative units in the Empire. Furthermore, because immigrants’ histories and the city-state’s links within the international economic system and the flows of goods and people associated with it, disrupt the imaginary singularity of the national formation (Balibar 1991), historians have never considered envisioning Singapore’s past as always interconnected with the rest of the world. Why has the idea of the nation-state and national identity become such a pervasive mode of identification and so fundamental in the modern world? Among other reasons, Anthony Smith (1991, pp. 143–44) argues that the nation-state is an “ubiquitous and a powerful reality, one that conditions our cultural outlook and political endeavours; by commanding the basic political allegiance of citizens [nation-states] have become the only recognized source of ‘inter-national’ legitimacy, of the validity of a system of states in each region and continent, and ultimately in the world as a whole”. The urgency with which Singapore political leaders responded to conceiving a national identity therefore has to be seen in relation to this modern global phenomenon. However, at the

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same time, as Gupta (1997, pp. 192–93) points out, “the pervasiveness of nationalism as a system of practices and as a form of ideology cannot […] be adequately explained simply by referring to the appeal that it has for those nationalist elites who clearly stand to gain the most from it”. Instead, he argues that “to understand why the nation comes to be such a privileged form of statehood, we need to locate the question of nationalism centrally within the context of the postcolonial interstate system” (Gupta 1997, p. 193). In this regard, it can be argued that the concept of the nation-state and national identity has been accepted as an inescapable reality predetermining the existence of the modern state in the contemporary world. The strategies for creating a “nation” should not be seen as purely a PAP orchestrated project. Rather they must be seen as arising from a combination of factors including the worldwide acceptance of the system of nation-states. The need for the construction of a national identity was further reinforced by: The circumscription imposed by Singapore’s physical parameters — its limited size and its geopolitical setting squeezed in between two much larger and ethnically dissimilar countries who view it with a certain proprietary regard — immediately marks it out as different. All concerned, within the state and without, remain acutely conscious of Singapore’s unique status as the only Southeast Asian state with a predominantly ethnic Chinese population. While geographic circumstances facilitate the political control of the ruling regime, they simultaneously feed its obsession with its own legitimacy (Khong 1995, p. 109).

The project of nation-building, in its totality, has been propelled by Singapore’s always problematic status as a “nation” both within and without. For the Singapore nation-state to be recognized within the contemporary world system of nation-states, it needed to put in place and generate a systematic process of national identification. A good example of this effort is the alliances and memberships that the nationstate establishes with other nation-states. As soon as Singapore became an independent nation-state, on 21 September 1965, it became the 117th member of the United Nations. On 12 June 1967 Singapore issued its own currency and on 8 August it joined Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand to form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

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To reiterate Gupta (1997) and Ang and Stratton’s (1996) argument, while it is important to pay attention to the concept and processes of national identity construction, the very concern with national identity must also take into account its historical, spatial and transnational context. In my view, this is where the theoretical discussion needs to be re-situated. This is because the discursive creation and inscription of Singaporean national identity does not evolve in isolation. Rather it is made possible by the need to mobilize a particular representation of national identity in response to the unavoidable contacts, interdependencies, and power struggles in which the nation-state becomes inter-locked with its significant others (Featherstone 1995, pp. 102–25). The articulation of national uniqueness and solidarity is inextricably linked to the ways in which a nation considers itself as an imagined community. It is imagined, as Anderson (1983) suggests, not only as both inherently limited and sovereign but also as distinctively different to other imagined communities. As the book unfolds, I will seek to situate the question of a Singaporean national identity within a transnational context and globalizing condition.

CONCLUSION Since independence the Singapore government has exhaustively pursued strategies to establish a Singaporean national identity. For the most part this process involved the invention and generation of institutional forms and ideas that were perceived to encourage the evolution of such an identity. These concerns were taken up by academics whose main interest was to expound on the complexities of formulating and conceiving this project. In this chapter, I have argued that the synergy that exists between state policies and academic discourses in Singapore pertaining to the construction of national identity and the legitimization of the nation, is characterized by a particular set of practical and theoretical concerns. They are to do with the unquestioned assumption that a national identity must be realized, driven by the need to manage differences and eradicate contradictory discourses that may unsettle the nation-building process. Such a determined effort to generate a discourse of the nation within a particular historical framework has led to the recognition of factors which only serve the substantive interests of the PAP government and the state. The subsequent chapters then, seek to situate the discussion of national identity within a transnational context.

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Notes 1. Singapore’s “official history” as it is taught in schools begins with the founding of Singapore by Sir Stamford Raffles, a representative of the British East India Company. It is a modern and modernist history because it coincided with the age of European colonial expansion in the East (see Turnbull 1989; Lee 1986). The year 1819 which marks the arrival of the British is a turning point and significant point of reference for the nation. It also represents a symbolic moment that allowed for the generation of nationalistic discourses that reject colonial rule. 2. It is believed that the Sanskrit name “Singapura” meaning Lion City came into use some time in the late 14th century. The name is popularly attributed to Sang Nila Utama, a Hindu prince who according to the Sejarah Melayu, upon landing on the island is said to have encountered an animal of similar description and immediately named the island Singapura. 3. Historical sources on pre-colonial Singapore include Chinese travel writings (1300), Javanese Nagarakretagama (1365) and the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals (1600). See also Brown (1970), Lee (1986) Turnbull (1989), Lim (1991), Sheppard (1992) and Lau (1992) for different perspectives on Singapore’s pre-colonial history. 4. In his article, “The Historiography of Singapore”, Edwin Lee (1986) offers an extensive bibliography on historical records and writings relating to premodern and pre-colonial Singapore. See also Turnbull (1989). 5. Tong and Pakir (1996, p. 174) also share the view that these facts are generally glossed over in the process of nation-building. 6. The purpose of Raffles’s expedition was to establish a settlement that would serve as a free trading port to facilitate the British East India Company’s China trade. It was from this point that the island of Singapore came into prominence, finding a place in British colonial history and creating its own history. 7. See Said (1979; 1993) for his discussion on Western conceptions of the “Orient”. 8. According to Bhabha (1994) colonialism and colonial discourse generated an illusionary sense of unity and identity amongst the colonized communities by appealing to the European sense of power and knowledge. 9. Singapore was not granted full independence due to Britain’s fear of communist subversions and threats in the country. 10. The 1959 Constitution of self-government was due for revision in 1963. With the continued communist threat and insurgency, the PAP government envisaged that Singapore could only gain full independence through a merger with the Federation of Malaya. The government called for a Referendum on this issue. On Referendum Day, 1 September 1962, 70.8 per cent of the electorate voted decisively for the PAP-supported merger (Yeo

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11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

and Lau 1991). On 16 September 1963 Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak united with Malaya to form Malaysia. However, Singapore merged with the Federation only to realize that the newly founded Malaysia did not allow either the economic or political latitude that its PAP leaders were driven to pursue (Yeo and Lau 1991). Moreover favourable treatments and privileges accorded to the Malays by the Malaysian government led to a bitter conflict with Singapore which had a dominant Chinese population. Singapore was forced to separate from Malaysia. For a more comprehensive reading on the turn of events leading to Singapore’s merger and its expulsion from the Federation of Malaysia refer to Chan (1971), Yeo (1973), Drysdale (1984) Turnbull (1989), Chew and Lee (1991) and Yeo and Lau (1991). It should be pointed out that between 1942 and 1945, Singapore was under Japanese occupation. The British returned to Singapore on 12 September 1945 after the Japanese formal surrender. During the three years of Japanese occupation the locals, especially the Chinese, were subjected to brutal torture and severe deprivation. This is why Sir Stamford Raffles is the celebrated founder of modern Singapore. As Wong (1991, p. 41) argues “Raffles’ initiative and foresight in the choice of Singapore, and the enterprise of Asian and Western merchants had rescued Singapore from obscurity in history, turning it into the most successful Western enclave in Southeast Asia developed almost wholly by untrammelled private enterprise”. See, for example, Arasaratnam (1970) on the history of Indians in Malaysia and Singapore, Wang (1991) on the Chinese community in Singapore and Li (1989) on the Malay community in Singapore. The reasons for this civil unrest and turmoil in post-war Singapore were a direct result of the Japanese occupation. The severe ill-treatment experienced by the Chinese under Japanese occupation drove many to join the procommunist Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). At the end of the war, the MPAJA emerged from underground and began taking revenge on supporters of the Japanese (especially the Malays). Later the MPAJA turned into an anti-colonial communist army and began an undeclared war against the British. As a result, the British declared a state of Emergency in 1948 in an effort to crack down on anti-colonial sentiments and communist insurgence. The steps taken to counter the insurgency which was generally directed at the Chinese further increased racial tensions between the Chinese and Malays. In addition, as the independent movement gathered momentum, the various political parties jostled for power by exploiting the racial tensions, canvassing along communal grounds. This led to numerous incidents of civil unrest and riots triggered by pro-communists and pro-communal factions. The two major communal riots took place in December 1950 and July 1964. The PAP was formally established on 21 November 1954 by a group of English-educated nationalists. This group of returned students, as Tremewan

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18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

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(1994, pp. 18–19) points out, were “aware that existing legal parties [in Singapore, at that time] were proving weak and incompetent and lacked wide political appeal. They also knew that the Malayan Communist Party and its open mass organizations were the most popular and highly organized political force in Singapore. A wide range of unions, educational institutions, vocational and cultural associations were sympathetic to the left and being predominantly Chinese, to political developments in China. The political aspirations of the majority of Singaporeans were, they knew, represented by the left”. The PAP forged a political alliance with the left-wing communist forces, namely the Barisan Sosialis and successfully came to power. On coming to power, Lee immediately denounced his association with the radical populist support and addressed the urgent need to legitimate his rule through the promise of economic performance (Khong 1995). For a detail historical overview of the PAP’s rise to power, see Yeo and Lau (1991), Chan (1991) and Vasil (2000). Five years after the 1959 General Elections, Singaporeans went to the polls again in 1963. This time the PAP was challenged by the Barisan Sosialis party. However, the PAP was returned to power with a popular mandate. It won 37 of the 51 seats and the Barisan Sosialis won only 13 seats and about one-third of the total vote. The PAP’s electoral domination of the Singapore political scene was confirmed by the 1968 general elections when it won all 58 seats in parliament (Vasil 2000). A detailed examination on Singapore’s industrialization program can be found in Rodan (1985, 1989, 1997). See, for example, Clammer (1985), Siddique (1989), Lai (1995). As it is well documented, traditionally, the Chinese population has been socially differentiated according to language groups, mainly Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, Foochow, Malay (Straits Chinese) and English. Although there are regional variations among the Malay community, the mother tongue of Malays can be taken as Malay. The Indian population includes a large Tamil-speaking community and also smaller communities speaking Malayalam, Punjabi, Telegu, Hindi, Bengali, Gujerati or English as their mother tongue. Those who fall into the category “Other” are made up Europeans, Eurasians (of mixed European and Asian origin) and other minor ethnic groups which do not fit into the core CMI categories. One such group is the Baba (Peranakan) or the Straits Chinese community who consider themselves to be Chinese but favour the Malay language instead of Chinese. In my view, the work of Singaporean sociologist Chua Beng Huat (1995, 1996, 1997a, 1998b, 1998c) is also exemplary of a critical engagement with notions of “race”, and the government’s management of identity in Singapore. In this view, this idea of “culture”, refers specifically to the distinctiveness, country of origin, and traditional practices of the Chinese, Malay, Indian and

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23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

Others (CMIO) which constitute the racial make-up of Singaporean society and its idea of multiracialism (see also Clammer 1985; Koh 1980 and 1989). This decision to rather unproblematically attribute each “race” with a cultural quality has meant that each community is perceived as homogeneous and as having a distinct and non-ambiguous character. In other words, Chinese race = Chinese Culture = Mandarin language = Taoism/Buddhism; Malay race = Malay culture = Malay language = Islam; and Indian race = Indian culture = Tamil language = Hinduism (Lai 1995). Several scholars have argued that although the public housing program has been highly successful in providing the population with affordable housing in a massive scale, it has also served as a form of social control (Minchin 1986, Tremewan 1994 and Brown 1998). As Minchin (1986, p. 249) argues the HDB has been the PAP’s “effective instrument in altering the political demography of Singapore — breaking up natural communities based on affinity of race, clan, religion, language and dialect or on generations of friendly contact and shared work and transferring the fragments into compact areas that are easy to monitor and easy to isolate should the need arise”. The Housing and Development Board (HDB) is a statutory board which was formed in 1960 to provide government-subsidized housing. Since its inception the HDB has built more than 896, 810 apartment blocks. The Central Provident Fund (CPF) was set up in 1955 to provide financial security for workers upon retirement or when they are no longer able to work. Over the years, it has evolved into a comprehensive social security savings scheme. Under this scheme, both the employer and employee make a monthly contribution to the fund. The rate of contribution is set by the government in line with the economic climate. The CPF contributions can be used for housing, government approved investments, education, and healthcare. More recently, Jones and Smith (2001) in their article “Is there a Sovietology of Southeast Asian Studies?” have similarly argued that the Singapore School (of the 1970s and 1980s) was guilty of compromising academic integrity for concurrence with government nation-building initiatives. In 1980, the University of Singapore and Nanyang University were merged to form the National University of Singapore. See Chen (1986) and Yee and Chua (1999) for a chronological and thematic survey of sociological research undertaken in Singapore. In an article, “The Nation-state and the Sociology of Singapore”, sociologist Lian Kwen Fee (1999) in view of the recent developments in the field of sociology to embrace the implications of globalization on traditional conceptions of “society” and “nation-state”, proposes that Singapore sociology too must come to terms with the immediate concerns of the nation-state within a globalizing condition. Lian acknowledges that Singaporean sociological studies have tended to reflect the state’s concerns of the day

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such as assessing the implications of economic development, modernization, modernity and problems of societal construction. He argues that it is crucial that Singapore sociology must emancipate itself from the straitjacket of boundaries and boundedness so central to the nation-state, and confront head-on with the cultural ambiguities and conflicting identities of a shifting if not globalizing condition (see also Chew and Kramer-Dahl 1999). 30. Some pioneers of the modernist approach to the study of nationalism are Ernest Gellner, Anthony Smith, E.J. Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson. The modernist approach holds the following ideas in common: nationalism is an explicitly modern ideology and movement and begins to emerge from the eighteenth century onwards; the nation as a social structure and cultural system is both novel and relatively recent; and more importantly nationalism, nation and the international order of nation-states are the product of specifically modern conditions: namely capitalism, bureaucracy, industrialism, urbanization and the like (Smith 2000, pp. 3–4). 31. According to Smith (2000, p. 12) an ethnie may be defined as “a named human population with a common myth of descent, shared historical memories, one or more elements of common culture, a link with an historic territory, and a measure of solidarity, at least among the elites”.

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian 52 RESPONDING TO GLOBALIZATION Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

2 THE RHETORIC OF ASIAN VALUES AND THE EMBRACING OF A “NEW ASIAN” IDENTITY

Yet, is Singapore too elusive to be defined? (Yong 1992a, p. 26) Asia may not need Singapore, but Singapore needs Asia. (Chua 1996, p. 88)

INTRODUCTION In Chapter 1, I examined the particular ways in which the construction of national identity began to take shape in post-independent Singapore. This early phase of nation-building was as much about creating a unique national-societal identity as it was about reworking the nation-state norm to suit the local context. From the outset, the Western-educated PAP elite rejected the possibility of reviving the past traditions of Singapore’s immigrant population and chose instead to deliberately construct a pragmatic identity based on development and economic success as the symbols of national identification. At the same time, these nation-building efforts were designed to create a bounded sense of national identity, but they disregarded the diasporic connections of Singapore’s people and its transnational history. Instead, a progressoriented transitional narrative became a central feature of the PAP’s nation-building strategy. The government’s pragmatic approach to identity construction based on development and economic success reinforced the idea that Singapore as a nation is always in transition — on a path towards progress. While this transitional narrative generated a perception that Singapore is always evolving, it has also been accompanied by a state-generated discourse of anxiety over its long-term economic prospects and survival as a nation.1

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This anxiety resurfaced in the early 1980s as Singapore, within two decades of independence, rapidly made its transition from being a relatively underdeveloped nation to becoming a modern urban metropolis. In the wake of rapid industrialization and modernization the Westerneducated PAP political elite became troubled by the influences of “decadent Western values”. They feared that individualism, hedonism and generally self-centred “anti-social” habits would undermine the people’s work ethic and group solidarity, thereby threatening the social fabric of society. Throughout the 1980s, the Singapore government adopted a number of policies in an attempt to safeguard Singaporeans from the perceived influences of these so-called decadent Western values. Singaporean political leaders along with others in the Asian region began advocating the importance of the role of “Asian values” in the economic, social and political development of their country. In this chapter I do not attempt to develop any significant analysis of the broad content of Asian values as many scholars have already done this (see, for example, Bartley 1993; Birch 1998; Chua 1996; 1997a; 1998b and 1999; Clammer 1993; Lawson 1998; Robison 1996; Rodan and Hewison 1996; Wee 1993; 1995; and 1996b). Instead, I have two aims here: The first is to describe the rise of the Asian values debate in Singapore and to characterize the main streams of academic response to it. The second is to analyse the rise of Asian values in Singapore as an early strategy developed in response to globalization. In other words, the chapter does not try to analyse the merits or truth claims of the Asian values discourse, but rather aims to characterize and analyse Asian values as representing a national response to and embrace of globalization. My position is that there are two different phases to the Asian values discourse in Singapore. While the first phase is backward-looking, the second, which I term the shift to “New Asia”, is a forward-looking discourse which embraces globalization through “Asianization”. I identify three interrelated functions of Asian values in the Singapore context and argue that these values were aimed at enhancing state control; facilitating Singapore’s economic development and success; and promoting a modern but Asianized national identity. Thus the formulation of Singapore as representative of a “New Asia” signals the attempt by the state to represent Singapore’s modernity both rooted in tradition and flexible enough to embrace the modern world. The chapter concludes by looking at the demise of Asian values as a central discourse in Singapore in relation to the post-1997 Asian economic crash.

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Western commentators in particular have argued that the promotion of Asian values stemmed from a desire by Asian governments to shore up its own power and create a subservient population. I argue that, while there may be some truth to this, we must understand the specific contextual circumstances under which various Asia’s Newly Industrialized Economies (NIEs) embraced Asian values. In the case of Singapore, I argue that Asian values represented the first in a series of strategic moves to engage with the forces of globalization while negotiating the paradoxes of its national beginnings. It also marked a critical turning point in the way the government worked to articulate the construction of national identity in Singapore: a shift from a process of independent nation-building — the nation as a bounded cultural entity — to one that called for a transnational, regional and even civilizational identification. The “Asianizing” of Singapore, a term coined by Vasil (1995), therefore was one manifestation of a politics of cultural uniqueness, that is a societal response to the challenges of globalization (Axtmann 1997). It must also be understood as part of an on-going process of the state seeking to bind together its heterogeneous population in order to maintain the “imagined community” that is the nation. What is particularly interesting about this process is that the re-imagining of Singapore was informed and motivated by the rise of the East Asian economies and that they have benefited from Confucian ethics. The articulation of Singapore’s cultural connection with “Asia” therefore occurred at a time when the Asia-Pacific region was prospering.2 The discourse of Asian values was not only a counter-discourse against Western modernity made possible by this economic resurgence but it is also a critical gesture towards repositioning Singapore as a culturally dynamic Asian city-state.

FAMILY, COMMUNITY, ORDER: THE DISCOURSE OF ASIAN VALUES In a nutshell, Asian values are a set of ideals which include an emphasis on the community rather than individual, the privileging of social order and harmony over individual freedom, an insistence on hard work, a particular emphasis on saving and thriftiness, a respect for political leadership, a belief that government and business need not necessarily be natural adversaries, and an emphasis on family loyalty. These values were most famously advocated by Asian leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, as shared by the people living in East Asian countries (Robison 1996; Rodan and

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Hewison 1996). Those discussing Asian values most commonly see them as having originated in Confucianism. As the argument goes, Confucian values such as hard work, an emphasis on education, pragmatism, selfdiscipline, familial orientations and collectivism have been the key cultural factors contributing to the economic ascendancy of Asia’s NIEs (Dirlik 1997a; Kausikan 1998). The discourse of Asian values came to the fore when recent economic developments in East and Southeast Asia were touted as an alternative paradigm of development in opposition to Western modernity (Dirlik 1997a).3 The discourse accounts for the rapid rise of the NIEs’ of Asia by reference to the Confucian cultural traditions of these societies.4 This culturalist discourse, according to Dirlik (1997a), originated not from Asia but from the United States and was popularized by Western academics. As Dirlik points out, it was the attempts by sociologists such as Kahn (1979), Berger (1987) and Redding (1993), East Asian specialists such as MacFarquhar (1980), and Hofheinz and Calder (1982), and popular writers such as Kotkin (1992), to explain the rapid rise of capitalism in East and Southeast Asian societies that led them to “discover” Confucian values as the cultural basis for the rise of capitalism in the region. This perspective was then taken up by the political leaders of the NIEs to proclaim their unprecedented economic growth and success against apparent regressions in Euro-American capitalisms (Dirlik 1997a; Chua 1999). The promotion of Confucian values, later generally referred to as Asian values, gained momentum with the proliferation of writings focused on the rise of “Asia”, such as Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Vogel 1979), The Japan that Can Say No (Ishihara 1991) The Voice of Asia (Mahathir and Ishihara 1995) and The Asian Renaissance (Anwar 1996). What emerged from this literature was a complex combination of arguments and assertions that proclaimed the significance of so-called Asian values as an alternative paradigm to Western universalism for economic and civilizational development. This paradigm signalled a shift in centre/periphery relations.5 Critics have argued that Asian values have been used by political elites in Asia to legitimize their authoritarian rule and as a cultural weapon against domestic pressures for political pluralism (Clammer 1993; Robison 1996; Rodan 1996b; Lawson 1998; Dauvergne 1998). More generally, the debate has been characterized as part of a broader global ideological contest between authoritarianism and liberalism. This viewpoint, as I will show later, is typical of the way Singapore and the

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political regimes of NIEs like Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea have been represented through this debate.

ASIAN VALUES IN THE SINGAPORE CONTEXT While the Asian values rhetoric was an East Asia-wide phenomenon, it is important to explore how it was taken up in each national context. As I outlined in Chapter 1, prior to the popularity of Asian values, the Singapore government’s first approach to nation-building, pioneered by the first generation PAP political elite, was focused on eliminating any sense of communalism amongst its multiracial immigrant population (Chua 1998c). Implicit in this project was the need to develop a unitary Singaporean identity which rejected the privileging of individual ethnic groups, in particular the majority Chinese. The PAP leadership was determined to preserve and maintain the cultural roots of the respective racial groups but in order to avoid the attendant dangers of racialism, it emphasized industrialization and economic developmentalism as a metanarrative to frame Singapore’s national identity. As the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew stated in 1971: We must give our children roots in their own language and culture, and also the widest common ground through a second language… [T]hen we shall become a cohesive people, all rooted in their traditional values, cultures, languages; but effective in English, a key to the advanced technology of the West, from where all our new and more advanced industries come (cited in Chua 1998b, p. 194).

From the start, it was clear that the PAP leadership had to come to terms, on the one hand, with creating a society anchored in traditions, and on the other, because of its small size, it also had to plug into transnational economic flows. The leadership was therefore committed to ensuring that both these objectives were kept in balance. As Lee Kuan Yew noted: If they are to develop, people in new countries cannot afford to imitate the fads and fetishes of the contemporary West. The strange behaviour of demonstration and violence-prone young men and women in wealthy America, seen on TV and the newspapers, are not relevant to the social and economic circumstances of new underdeveloped countries. The importance of education, the need of stability and work discipline […]: these are vital factors for progress (cited in Barr 2000, p. 319).

This remark clearly highlights Lee’s antipathy towards aspects of Western life and America in particular. The contemporary West was a symbol of

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wealth, progress and prosperity. At the same time, some aspects of American youth culture and social behaviour that were reported in the media were seen as undesirable. Lee was convinced that the permissiveness and social indiscipline demonstrated by young Americans would lead to disorder and decline if they were adopted by people in underdeveloped countries like Singapore. As Lee pointed out, the only sure way to development and progress was not to imitate the fads and fetishes of the contemporary West. Some social changes taking place in Singapore were clearly perceived by the PAP elite as potentially jeopardizing the continuing economic success of Singapore and as representing a possible political challenge to the PAP government. The political elite in government began to argue that a “creeping individualism” had accompanied economic development and had invaded the moral basis of society. The “signs” included: “excessive job-hopping” among workers, which disrupts smooth operations of commercial and industrial enterprises; an overwhelming number of single people among applicants for government-sponsored middle-income housing, signifying the potential emergence of a hedonistic singles’ lifestyle; intense competition at school and at work; conspicuous consumption among those who have “made it”; and finally, the threat of all these, and more, everyday practices coalescing into a general social attitude of “excessive individualism” (Chua 1995, p. 157). The political rhetoric against the process of “Westernization” and the move to “Asianize” Singapore thus became a significant focus of PAP rule between 1979 and 1990. Throughout this period the PAP government implemented a number of policies beginning with the promotion of the use of Mandarin among Chinese,6 the introduction of religious and moral education in schools,7 support for Confucian scholarship and eventually the promulgation of “Shared Values” as the national ideology of Singapore.8 Up until now, the government’s formulation of Asian values was mainly scattered in various statements.9 The idea behind the establishment of Shared Values which was institutionalized in a Parliamentary White Paper in 1991 was to give Singapore its own national ideology similar to Indonesia’s Pancasila and Malaysia’s Rukunegara. The values, according to the White Paper, incorporate “the relevant parts of our various [Chinese, Islamic, and Indian] cultural heritage, and the attitudes and values, which have helped us to survive and succeed as a nation” (White Paper on Shared Values 1991, p. 1). The values were: nation before community and society above self; family as the basic unit of society; regard and community support for the individual; consensus

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instead of contention; and racial and religious harmony. Although the Shared Values have no institutionalized legal status and are not legally binding, as I will discuss later, they have been used to rationalize public policies and shape social order in Singapore (Chua 1998a). In addition, in 1983 the Singapore government established an Institute of East Asian Philosophy at the National University of Singapore, to promote and “advance the understanding of Confucian philosophy so that it can be reinterpreted and adapted to the needs of present society” (Tamney 1996, p. 400). The institute attracted many eminent Confucian scholars such as Professor Tu Wei Ming from Harvard University. However, there was eventually a subtle shift from simply “traditional” Asian Values — set up in opposition to those values which had come be labelled as “Western” — to a more forward looking version of “New Asia”. As the world’s attention began to turn towards Asia because of the spectacular rise of the East and Southeast Asian economies, Singaporean leaders began to boast and champion the notion of an emerging “New Asian” identity. In this discourse, “New Asia” was touted as “the model for an affluent, hypermodern future, not the residue of a traditional and backward past, as classic Orientalism would have it” (Ang 2001, p. 6). I will pick up on this concept of “New Asia” a little later in the chapter to argue that it is a fundamentally important twist in the Asian values rhetoric, one that functions to ameliorate the ambivalence inherent in Singapore’s “at once Western and Asian” status. First, I wish to turn briefly to map some of the key trends evident in the commentary generated by the rise of the Asian values discourse.

SAFE, CLEAN, CONTROLLED: CHARACTERIZING THE COMMENTARY ON ASIAN VALUES Ironically, while Asian values were to some extent invented in the West, the key forms of critique also emanated from the West. On the whole, the international commentary on the Asian values rhetoric challenged Singaporean politicians’ promotion and defence of Asian values. But also within Asia well-known political leaders, intellectuals and social activists spoke against the Asian values rhetoric.10 Among these critics, there are two major interpretations of Asian values: one which rejects the idea completely and the other which calls for a different philosophy of Asian values which is in agreement with Western liberal ideals. The academic interest that began to emerge around “Confucianism” mostly attempted to repudiate Singapore’s claims to an “Asian” way. Quite predictably, this

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generated a particular understanding of Singapore. Not only has Singapore’s successful economic transition consistently attracted attention, but the political dominance of the PAP since independence in 1965, and most importantly its authoritarian style of government, have become the central focus for many analysts researching the country (see, for example, Hewison, Robison and Rodan 1993). Ang and Stratton aptly describe the ideological contestation which eventuated: [F]rom a Western point of view, the clash is between a West representing itself as “free and democratic” against an East imagined as “authoritarian and despotic”, while from an Asian point of view, the same clash is constructed as one between an East representing itself as “ordered and harmonious” against a West constructed as “decadent and selfish”. Both “West” and “East” here are imaginary entities constructed through a mutual symbolic mirroring, in a battle of overlapping, interested self/ other (mis)representations (Ang and Stratton 1995, pp. 66–67).

It is this ideological contestation between the “West” and the “East” which has dominated the Asian values debate (Osman 1998). In other words, advocates and commentators on both sides essentialized what were perceived to be Asian values in order to exaggerate the cultural differences between the “West” and the “East”. Though these positions appear simple and clear enough, both the advocates and opponents of Asian values relied on an idealized and stereotyped version of self/other. That is, an idealized “Asia” which was essentially considered to be ordered, disciplined and founded on notions of communitarianism versus a stereotyped “West” said to be individualistic, and lacking in social discipline and social order. Conversely, when the West was idealized it was seen as liberal and democratic, and the stereotyped “Asia” was authoritarian and illiberal. In many respects, scholarly writings on the Asian values discourse have provided a somewhat reductive image of Singapore. Singapore is always portrayed as a monolithic authoritarian regime. Such a perception is well illustrated by Australian political theorist, Peter Dauvergne (1998, pp. 7–8) who writes: In many respects, Singapore is undeniably one of the world’s strongest states. The state dominates social groups. There is relatively little government corruption, and compliance with legislation is strong. The standard of living and educational levels are high. It is safe, clean, and everything runs on time. The government has even managed a peaceful and effective transition from Lee Kuan Yew to Goh Chok Tong. Part of this control arises from elite manipulation of culture. Elites use

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Confucianism to facilitate obedience and conformity. Confucianism also helps to justify the rejection of norms that underpin modern democratic politics, especially the principles behind an active and relevant political opposition. Yet Confucianism has no more cultural resonance in Singapore than many Western democratic ideas. It is instead a tool of the People’s Action Party to maintain control in a system that only superficially resembles a democracy. Arguing that Confucianism explains why people conform and obey is therefore misleading, especially since this conceals the mechanisms of political control over social forces.

As Dauvergne’s work highlights, the Singapore state’s strength and effectiveness in maintaining political control, social order and managing “culture” is rarely disputed. This has become a well accepted feature of Singapore society. That is, Singapore for most Western commentators represents ideal modern convenience and a high level of socio-economic modernity. Yet there exists in the account a deep-seated suspicion and scepticism over the level of modernist perfection created by the state. That is to say, Singapore is portrayed as a sterile society run as a police state and a place where anything and everything is controlled, manipulated and managed by the state. In this version of things, the Asian values rhetoric is simply further evidence of the state’s social engineering. It is seen as a tool for perpetuating order, discipline, and the authority and continued dominance of the state. Dauvergne’s critical overview, I would argue, presents a strikingly reductive interpretation of Singaporean society, so much so that it preclude any possibility of understanding the efforts of the state other than the perceived intention of political and social control. It is therefore a straight-forward and simplistic top-down reading of the state, divorced of the complex conditions out of which its policies are formulated and implemented. Dauvernge’s account overwhelmingly relies on stereotypical dichotomies based on arbitrary categories such as Eastern authoritarianism versus Western democracy. For example, in the quote above, he seems mildly surprised at the peaceful transition from Lee Kuan Yew to Goh Chok Tong, attributing this to the Singaporean state’s successful mechanisms of social control and elite “manipulation” of culture to facilitate “obedience and conformity”.11 No doubt if a similar peaceful transition were to occur in a Western country, commentators such as Dauvergne would attribute it to the success of Western liberal democracy. It appears then, that the point of departure for much Western academic commentary on Singapore has thus far centred around the

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ideological contestation between liberal democracy and authoritarianism and it is clearly evident in accounts such as Dauvergne’s (see, for example, Rodan 1993a; 1996b; Brown 1994; Lawson 1998). The primary focus of these political theorists has been to critique state initiatives from the point of view of assumptions of Western democratic political theory. As another example, sociologist John Clammer (1993) see the White Paper on Singapore’s Shared Values as irrelevant. Indeed, he dismisses the very ideals put forward by the PAP government. He points out that “Singapore is paradoxical in many ways, not least in the fact that, despite defining itself as a newly-industrializing country, it is in most respects a mature economy co-existing with a very immature society, the constant preoccupation with identity being a very good indication of this latter” (1993, p. 36). He adds that “the economic in the last instance is seen as the determining factor, and although the Shared Values makes little reference to the economic it is clear that the logic is that the PAP sees political domination as resting on economic control and economic control as resting on culture” (1993, p. 48). In a similar vein, David Birch argues that the creation of a public culture centred around the principles of Asian values has come about because “governments are beginning to realise the fragility of their own position and the need to redefine ways of maintaining power for an increasingly vocal and articulate educated middle class” (1998, p. 178).12 Put simply, these readings present an overwhelmingly singular image of Singapore in which the state’s social engineering and management of cultural change are always deemed as “oppressive” and self-serving. It is ultimately about maintaining control and authority. By reproducing such an approach, theorization on Singapore is fixed on the issue of how political pluralism is suppressed and the dominant party, the PAP, consolidates its hegemonic position. Western analysts frequently deliberately “equate the defence of Asian values (that is, the question of cultural preservation and national identity) with the defence of existing political structures, which just happen to be authoritarian and just happen to be controlled by the state” (Ingleson 1998, p. 229).

ECONOMY, IDENTITY, MODERNITY, AMBIVALENCE: FOUR FUNCTIONS OF ASIAN VALUES IN SINGAPORE While I accept these arguments to a certain extent, especially in terms of how the state has curtailed the development of democracy, I want to

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argue that there are several other important dimensions to this debate which need to be examined more closely. Understandably it was the political agenda of Asian values and its antagonism to “Western values” that has engaged (mostly Western) intellectuals, rather than the real challenge faced by Asian governments to sustain economic development, and the efforts to “avoid the pitfalls and dead ends that have confronted many more developed (mainly Western) societies” (Kausikan 1998, p. 24). However, the impact of Westernization on local conditions and how local cultures and forces adapt to, appropriate, inflect and rework global phenomena (Cvetkovich and Kellner 1997, p. 13) has gradually been understated by many critics of Asian values. For this reason, rather than falling back on the “social control” argument, in this section I want to unpack the function the discourse of Asian values has had in the context of Singapore’s emerging economic globalization. I argue that there are four interrelated motives behind Singapore’s embrace of Asian values during the 1990s which I will map out in some detail in the following sections. First, there is of course the well documented motive of social control, as sketched above. There was obviously a certain degree of cultural manipulation in the name of shoring up PAP power. However, closely related to this is the second function, which was an economic one. The state had to ensure a hardworking population engaged in those activities and forms of social behaviour which would have the most beneficial economic effects. This in turn, is tied closely to the third function, which was to create a unique sense of Singaporean-Asian national identity in the name of national, and indeed, economic survival. And related to this is the fourth function, which was to promote a very particular version of Asian values, the discourse of “New Asia”, as a means of resolving the deep-seated ambivalence surrounding the fact that Singapore was neither properly “East” nor properly “West”. As I will argue at the end of this section, it is this last element which ties the other three functions together in important and interesting ways.

Maintaining PAP Power Despite the problems with much of the Western critiques of Asian values just described, it is quite clear there was an element of social control in the government’s enthusiastic embrace of Asian values. In highlighting Confucian traditions, the state was able to reject political pluralism and de-emphasize liberal values and individual rights. As

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Robison contends, “by claiming an immutable and discrete Asian set of values, conservative leaders are able to deny legitimacy to domestic opponents, who can be dismissed as opposing the national interest or simply being un-Asian” (1996, p. 314; see also Rodan 1993a). Since the government began its Confucian/Asian values education campaign and introduced the national ideology, there is little evidence to suggest that Singaporeans have renewed their interest in this issue. For instance, the result of a survey in 1997 which studied Singaporeans’ awareness of and interest in national issues revealed that they are more concerned with issues pertaining to the narrow confines of family and personal life (matters relating to cost of living, education, taxation, etc.) than broader state issues like the Shared Values debate (Tan and Chiew 1997). In addition, the researchers observed that “half of adult Singaporeans are likely to be not interested in the national issues of the day even if they know of their existence [and] only 5 per cent said that they were interested in the Shared Values debate” (Tan and Chiew 1997, pp. 331–32). Nor have Singaporeans gone back to rediscover their socalled Asian roots as a way of insulating themselves from the governmentdefined decadent Western values. As Khong (1995, p. 125) points out, in the Singapore context the “Confucian campaign was instituted by the ruling elite not because the citizenry was seeking a deeper understanding of its heritage, but rather because the leadership wanted to establish a set of cultural values it believed will further its policies”. In addition, the fact that the government was obliged to import a number of Confucian scholars from abroad to develop the appropriate texts indicates that there was virtually no expertise in Singapore (Chua 1995; Lawson 1998). In my view, the government’s strategy of legitimizing its role through its promise of providing political stability and economic security was on the verge of becoming unstuck as it realized that the rapidly changing values and the influence of new lifestyles might harm the nation’s aspirations and development goals. In employing the rhetoric of Asian values regularly in their public address and officially endorsing the Shared Values as the national ideology, political leaders believed that these values would help guide Singapore to greater economic success and prosperity.

The Economic Imperative In Singapore, in particular, the idea of economic survival is intimately tied, in the public and the government’s mind, to the stability of PAP

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political power so although I detail each of these functions separately, they are in fact closely interrelated. In essence, the economic function of Asian values was two-fold. First, Asian values provided a kind of “cultural buffer zone” against those social trends which the government perceived to be economically damaging. Second, it provided a cultural basis to engage economically with the other booming economies of Asia. Singapore was able to bathe in the limelight of Asia’s success on the international stage. At the forefront of the government’s concern with Asian values and its emphasis on establishing a national ideology of Shared Values was the perceived need to contain and manage the changes brought about by Singapore’s economic prosperity. The social changes of particular concern to the government were: excessive and extravagant consumption patterns; declining respect and care for the aged; the widening communication gap between young and old; and a rise in rates of divorce amongst young generation Singaporeans (Ho 1981; 1989). The PAP leaders in government feared the “traditional cultural and social values” such as close family ties, filial piety, respect and care of one’s aged parents, the sanctity of marital ties, thrift and hard work, with which they and their generation had grown up, were being abandoned in favour of a new set of “Western values”. The PAP leaders were convinced that this change in values was a direct result of modernization and the influences of “Western” lifestyles through the mass media. As one commentator suggested, these changes would impose a considerable strain on the economy (Ho 1981, p. 145). For example, if young generation Singaporeans relinquished their filial duties and obligations towards their aged parents, the government would have to shoulder the burden of “housing, feeding and caring for so many economically unproductive people” (Ho 1981, p. 145). It can be argued that the social consequences of Singapore’s economic prosperity are a result of the government’s own policy of encouraging and prioritizing the pursuit of a better material quality of life for Singaporeans as a way of anchoring them to Singapore. This strategy, as I argued in Chapter 1, has been a central pillar of Singapore’s nationbuilding project. The immigrants who came to Singapore came to make a living and possibly “strike it rich”, and hoped to eventually return to their ancestral homelands. As Singapore prospered, most immigrants chose to settle on the island, and contributed to its economic development. In time, the PAP leaders saw the younger generation of Singaporeans, born after World War II, having no memories of the privations of hard times and having grown up reaping the benefits of Singapore’s economic

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prosperity, as more committed in pursuing their own individual material needs. The question was how to reverse this perceived trend, which the government feared would make young Singaporeans less interested in the “social well-being of the nation”. And in the Singaporean case, the social well-being of the nation is intimately tied to its economic success. The state’s preoccupation with the construction of national identity in the first phase of nation-building was rhetorically legitimized by the official history of Singapore’s untimely birth as a nation-state. Singapore’s struggle to exist as a nation-state helped to justify its drive to develop its economy. The rapid economic progress and success that Singapore achieved in less than two decades after independence was not enough to provide Singapore “with the sense of identity which every modern nation-state requires as a vehicle for self-representation” (Ang and Stratton 1995, p. 74). For instance, in a speech to the PAP Youth Wing on 28 October 1988, Goh Chok Tong, who was then First Deputy Prime Minister explained why Singapore needed to develop a national ideology based on a set of core Asian values: Like Japan and Korea, Singapore is a high-performance country because we share the same cultural base as the other successful East Asians, that is, Confucian ethic. We have the same core values which made the Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese succeed. If we want to continue to prosper we must not lose our core values such as hard work, thrift and sacrifice. The question is how to preserve them when daily we are exposed to alien influences. My suggestion is: formalise our values in a national ideology and then teach them in schools, workplaces, homes, as our way of life. Then we will have a set of principles to bind our people together and guide them forward (quoted in Vasil 1995, p. 78) [emphasis mine].

This speech is a good example of how the government perceived social problems such as exposure to alien influences as representing a direct threat to Singapore’s economic prosperity. Added to this, national survival has been a key ideological tool through which the PAP government has sought to strengthen its grip on the nation-building process and to forge a general consensus amongst the populace. The ultimate concern with national survival therefore is deeply entrenched in the notion of economic development. The issue of economic imperative plays itself out in a second way. It serves as a tool to engage with the rising Asian economies and a means of being seen internationally as part of this Asian economic success story. As Western scholars began to see Asian values as the basis for the

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rapid industrialization and economic success of the East Asian economies, these values gained enormous credibility both in academic and political circles around the world. The Singapore political elite in turn has relied on this evidence, frequently invoking the success of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to justify and gain credibility for its own position. Being a small independent city-state but reliant for its survival and well-being on favourable external conditions, Singapore needed to assert its independence actively and work with regional states and other international actors. One of the main reasons why Singapore has been so vocal in the “self-representation of Asia” was self-interest. As Chua argues (1998b, p. 198) it was of “strategic economical and political importance for Singapore to insert itself into a larger piece. Asia may not need Singapore, but Singapore needs Asia”. In this context, the PAP viewed establishing not only a political and economic relationship but also a cultural link with Asia as a sure way for enhancing Singapore’s economic growth and long-term future. The reaffirmation of “cultural roots” through the promulgation of Asian values in a new form of cultural politics was largely motivated by economic self-interest and a desire to take advantage of East Asia’s economic rise and the possibility of attaining greater clout in the international system (Sebastian 1999). Moreover, on a supranational scale for example, there were attempts to develop an ASEAN or East Asian identity as a basis for “saying no” to the West, and on a regional scale there was a celebration of regional and traditional identities as the basis for place marketing, and imaging (Jessop 1999; see also Ibrahim 1996). This is evidenced by the Singapore government’s regionalization programme which began in the mid-eighties. One of the first initiatives the government launched in 1989 was the trans-state economic zone or Growth Triangle made up of the Malaysian state of Johor, the nearby Riau Islands of Indonesia, and Singapore. This aimed to encourage the relocation of labour-intensive local industries in the region and to reduce rising labour costs and free-up land in Singapore for more high-tech industries. Following the Growth Triangle initiative, the Singapore government began to develop an even more comprehensive plan to promote the city-state’s regional economic integration by way of offshore investment (Rodan 1997). It tried to integrate Singapore-based enterprises with regional economies and was an attempt to transcend the limitations of a city-state economy. Authorities referred to it variously as the building of “an external economy”, a “second wing” or “expanding the economic space of Singapore” (see Mahizhnan 1993). Under this

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programme, Singaporean private and public companies ventured to countries like China, India, Myanmar and Vietnam to undertake regional investment projects on a large scale. Thus one of the more tangible outcomes of the discourse of Asian values has been the realization of greater economic links with the nations in the region. Singapore’s vision of fostering a new Asian identity for the purpose of national imagining was about strategically embracing its regional geography — linking in with the emerging Asian economies — being part of the regional success and making use of the economic opportunities it had to offer. The regional identity also showed the West that Singapore was part of this broader Asian success story. Singapore’s new Asian identity thus represented not a backward-looking retreat to tradition, but rather a forward-looking Asian vision, at once regional and global in outlook and one which embraced modernity and its futures in an Asian way. As Axtmann argues “the success of the nation-state in the last two hundred years or so, as well as its universality and legitimacy, was premised on its claim to be able to guarantee the economic well-being, the physical security, and the cultural identity of its citizens” (1997, p. 44). The ascendancy of the East Asian nations such as Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Taiwan and the potential of China to emerge as a new economic superpower were signals to the PAP leaders that Singapore’s economic future now rested on developing close links with these nations. As a first significant engagement with the cultural forces of globalization, the “Asianizing” of Singapore was a state-constructed “nationalism of necessity” (Axtmann 1997, p. 45). It was aimed at providing a solution for the consequences of modernization in Singapore and more importantly at positioning Singapore — one of the most modernized and Western-oriented nation-states in Asia — as an integral part of and belonging to “Asia” while creating the “West” as its cultural “other”. In this sense, it was a nationalism which was not only opportunistic but strategic as well.

Asian Values as National Identity We can see then that the appropriation of Asian values in Singapore was strategic not only in economic terms. It was also strategic in terms of Singapore’s nation-building aims. While the first phase of Singapore’s nation-building efforts was undeniably successful in practical terms, as I argued in Chapter 1, ideas of progress and modernity are not in

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themselves sufficiently effective or particular enough to produce a sense of unique “we-ness”. The Singaporean state was always acutely aware that such a tiny nation relied for its survival on the identification and commitment of its citizens to its fate. Yet the discourse of progress was not able to fulfil this function on its own. The idea of a kind of distilled and non-ethno-specific set of “Singaporean Asian values” was undoubtedly an attractive option to the government, and was perhaps the closest available thing to a collective identity to which different sections of the heterogeneous population could readily identify. While Singapore’s spectacular economic growth and success in the decades after independence seemed a sure way of instilling pride and a sense of collective achievement, it offered no guarantee for the formation of a Singaporean national identity.13 By the beginning of the 1980s, as economic and materialist orientations were fully established, some influential members in government began to notice that younger generations of Singaporeans were abandoning traditional values in favour of a more self-seeking and materialistic outlook in life. This was not simply a moral dilemma but was also one motivated by a view that by adopting such values, young Singaporeans may abandon the government’s goal of achieving development and progress. It was as though Singapore needed some effectively “affective” values of “we-ness” to cement itself as a nation. And so the concept of “Shared Values” was born. On the request of the Singapore government, the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) at the National University of Singapore was given the task of identifying and formulating a set of National or Shared values. The first chapter in the IPS publication In Search of Singapore’s National Values (Quah 1990) is “National Values and Nation-Building: Defining the Problem”. Quah (1990, p. 1) writes that “the value-transformation of Singaporeans is being viewed with concern by the government because it will determine our national competitiveness, and hence our prosperity and survival as a nation”.14 In 1990, without clearly outlining the nature of this value-transformation which is “defined as a problem”, the First Deputy Prime Minister reflected on why the government felt a national ideology should be formalized and taught in schools, homes and workplaces. It was to “immunise Singaporeans from the undesirable effects of alien influences and to bind them together as a nation” (cited in Quah 1990, p. 1). With nation-building as the central theme, this publication presented a number of research papers examining the impact of different government policies and their outcomes. The publication’s assessment was that the government had generally done well in nation-building but

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it needed to fine tune those policies which had had unintended consequences. In particular, the author claimed that earlier policies emphasizing Confucian values and religious knowledge education had led to “the increased racial and religious consciousness of Singaporeans” (Quah 1990, p. 62). As such, Quah concluded that there was a need to focus on the similarities instead of on the differences among the Chinese, Malays, Indians and Eurasians. In short, the formulation of a set of national values which would be accepted by all Singaporeans was in order. However, these values had to tap into identity codes with which the population could identify. Clearly the PAP felt a discourse of “progress” was inadequate for the job of creating a sense of unique “we-ness”. Based on its study, the IPS issued the following sets of values to be adopted as the national values of Singapore: nation before community and society before self; family as the basic unit of society; regard and community support for the individual; consensus instead of contention; and racial and religious harmony. These were subsequently presented in a Parliamentary White Paper in 1991 and have since been constantly articulated by the PAP leaders and actively promoted by the state through various national campaigns and public programmes. These included: the restoration in the mid-1980s of four historical districts, namely the civic district of colonial administrative buildings, Chinatown, Little India and the Malay-Arab area of Kampong Glam, as way of preserving Singapore’s “Asian ethnic” heritage; advertisements promoting marriage, childbirth, and living in extended family; special preference and concessions given to extended families applying for public housing; and the establishment of racially-constituted community self-help groups — Mendaki in 1981 (the acronym of a Malay-Muslim organization), the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) in 1991, and the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC) in 1992. These agencies officially labelled as “community self-help organizations” typify the discursive compartmentalization of the three main official races in Singapore. Prompted and aided by the government, these voluntary and charity organizations were initially established to help raise the educational performance of students from the respective ethnic communities.15 They have over time extended their services to include helping lower-income groups, providing family services and addressing the socio-economic issues facing their respective communities. These organizations are “rationalised under the auspices of the idea of a community’s “regard and concern” for individuals and are considered an instance of the realization of this Shared Value” (Chua 1998a, p. 221).

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In a series of articles published in the 1990s, Singaporean sociologist Chua Beng Huat has offered invaluable insights into the workings of the PAP government, focusing on its various strategies aimed at conceptualizing and promoting national identity.16 As I noted in Chapter 1, he argues that the idea of a Singaporean national identity is an “absent”. Here the “Asianization” of Singaporeans which he refers to as: The intentional discursive distillation and reformulation of vast traditions and their respective histories into a simple “cultural” formula, constitutes the current ideological conjuncture in the PAP government/regime’s attempt to “fill-in” the absence of a defining, if not definitive, “national” character that may ideologically homogenize differences among the population and unify them as a “people” in the collective imaginary (Chua 1997a, p. 32).

The process of “filling-in” the necessary attributes of what it means to be a “Singaporean” has been an on-going one since Singapore became an independent nation-state. In the early years of nation-building, the emphasis was on domesticating “subversive” elements such as cultural difference and fragmentation, economic and social problems, and diasporic attachments, all of which were seen as a threat to the idea of a common national identity. As I outlined in Chapter 1, this was done through a number of institutionalized strategies such as the narrativization of a national history, the ideology of multiracialism, the public housing programme, education and national campaigns. In this context, the process of defining Singapore as authentically “Asian”, must be seen as yet another attempt by the state to realize a homogeneous and singularized national identity, gathering together a multi-ethnic Asian population into one imagined community. Throughout the 1980s, the Singapore government was indeed trying to grapple with the concern that the citizenry was being increasingly exposed to ideas seeping in from abroad, influences that were difficult for the ruling elite to monitor and control (Khong 1995). To all intents and purposes, the “Asianizing” of Singapore was an attempt to resolve the problems that globalization posed for national cultures. It represented a response to the need to create and maintain a nation from the disparate ethnicities of its people (Cunningham 1992). This was clearly exemplified by the framing of the implications of Western individualism as a challenge to the continuing economic success of Singapore. This in turn, was represented as threatening the social cohesion required for political stability and national survival. Because progress and consumer capitalism

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cannot function as an identity, Asian values represented a strategic attempt to address this “national absence”. However as I argue in the following section, this was not a reactionary, regressive version of tradition. The particular “Asian” narrative that Singapore most enthusiastically embraced was that of “New Asia”.

Resolving Ambivalence: Embracing the Global Through New Asia There is no reason to abandon our values. Confucianism must adjust and change with changing structures of the economy and society. (Lee Kuan Yew in an interview ‘Is Confucianism Dead?’ Newsweek July–Sept 2000.)

Lee Kuan Yew’s words encapsulate in two lines the essence of Singapore’s engagement with Asian values. It is clear that promotion of Asian values in Singapore was never a backward-looking strategy. In many ways, the exclusive attention given to the state-driven disciplinary role of Asian values rhetoric has circumvented the possibility of understanding the more productive dimensions of them. The Asianizing of Singapore must be understood as a historically specific response to the process of globalization. It is not a problem peculiar to Singapore, nor is it a strategy simply aimed at bolstering authoritarian rule. As Hall (1992, p. 314) points out, “the resurgence of nationalism and other forms of particularism (religious and cultural fundamentalism) have occurred alongside and are intimately linked to globalization”. He argues that the rise of fundamental Islamic movements in the Middle East since the 1960s was and is a response to the failure of the various policies of modernization. For example, Hall (1992) points out that the Iranian Revolution was partly a direct response to the efforts of the Shah in the 1970s to adopt Western models and cultural values. Thus, Cheah (1998, pp. 310–11) for instance argues that Islamic fundamentalist nationalism ought to be “analysed alongside Confucian chauvinism championed by the Singaporean government as the basis of the East Asian path of global capitalist development as cases of postcolonial nationalism in the New World Order”. However, especially for a state the size of Singapore, a retreat to the past was neither realistic nor desirable. Singapore’s very survival hinged upon its successful engagement with global modernity. What was needed was a way of relabelling some of the more useful outcomes of globalization

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and modernity not as Western but as something that could organically emerge from an Asian society per se.17 At the height of the rising success of the NIEs, an alternative model of development seemed to have manifested itself. Thus was born the phrase “New Asia”. The phrase was used by George Yeo, the Minister for Information and the Arts, in an article in the Straits Times (29 August 1993).18 He proclaimed: “I like the term ‘New Asian’ because it expresses both the past and the future. However much we may be influenced by the West, we will remain Asian at our very core because as Chinese, Indians, Malays and Eurasians we are derived from civilizations with long historical memories and deep traditions”. Since then, Singaporean political leaders and the state have embraced the phrase “New Asian” and used it in official discourses. For example, since January 1996, the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (STPB) has employed the phrase “New Asia-Singapore” as a tagline in all of its promotional activities and advertising campaigns. Speaking at the inaugural promotional launch, STPB’s chief executive Tan Chin Nam pointed out: New Asia-Singapore captures the essence of today’s Singapore, depicting it as a place where tradition and modernity, East and West, meet and intermingle comfortably. It speaks of a destination that has managed to preserve and nurture its Asian heritage even as Singapore embraces the economic marvels of high technology. It expresses the new dynamism that marks the entire Asian region. In many ways, Singapore’s progressiveness, sophistication and unique multi-cultural Asian character epitomises modern Asian dynamism (Straits Times, 5 January 1996).

Similarly in a number of other international marketing efforts such as in the Ministry of Information and the Arts promotion of Singapore: Global City for Arts since 1995 have employed the “New Asia-Singapore” branding; and it was the theme of the pavilion showcasing Singapore at the World Exposition 2000 in Hanover, Germany (see also the special issue of Newsweek July–September 2000, on the “The New Asia”. In these depictions, Singapore and Asia is presented as a tapestry — to quote Birch, Schirato and Srivastava (2001, p. 18) — “a weave of old and new; tradition and innovation, East and West, local and global, but with a specific foregrounding of the concept of ‘Asian’ and ‘Asian’ ”. The search for a particularistic identity in the age of globalization is thus constructed in full awareness of the rest of the world. It is an identity that does not aim at insulation from the world but allows local units conscious, if potentially fraught, external interactions (Robertson

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1992; Axtmann 1997). The revival of Confucian/Asian values gained momentum precisely because it provided an alternative way of dealing with some of the effects of cultural globalization. While traditionalist discourses of identity are often seen as defensive modes of disengaging with the perils of modernity and the West, in the case of the Asianizing of Singapore, the situation is different in important ways. Asian values was precisely about engaging with globalization through the prism of Asia. The “New Asian” identity emphasizes the importance of maintaining a strong connection with the cultural traditions of Asia while engaging with modernity.

ASIAN, WESTERN OR NEW ASIAN: RELABELLING AND RE-SORTING OUR BOXES While at a broader level, the problem was how to address the twin imperatives of economic success and national identification, the challenge for the state was also how to appropriate and redesignate those strategically useful features more usually defined as Western, to fall instead under the categorical umbrella of New Asia. According to Ang and Stratton (1995, p. 67), “the conflict between ‘cultures’ — ‘East’ and ‘West’ played out at the level of ideology and rhetoric, is both an articulation of, and an attempt to provide a solution for, the ambivalent cultural status of the Singaporean nation-state”. In their view, Singapore in a fundamental way is both non-Western and always-already Westernized. They argue that: Western tourists find Singapore “too Westernized” (in becoming modern, it has lost its innocuous exotic charms), while Western social scientists find Singapore wanting for failing to live up to Western definitions of a truly modern society (generally defined politically in terms of reified Enlightenment notions of freedom and democracy). Here we see, in a nutshell, the quandary of Singapore’s place on the Western dominated international stage: it finds itself positioned between two competing systems of representation — neither in the West, nor properly in the Asia constructed by the West (Ang and Stratton 1995, pp. 70–71; see also Mini Dragons on Singapore 1991).

While the Asian values discourse had economic and politico-nationalist motives, it can also be read as a strategy to deal with the kind of ambivalence that Ang and Stratton depict. Towards the end of the 1990s there were subtle shifts in the way the government described both East and West, that is, which values were attributed to which cultural system. In the earlier stages of “Asian values”, Singaporeans benefiting from the

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economic boom were seen as adapting to a “new” kind of values system largely associated with consumerism. These values, in the state’s mind, had a strong affinity to “Western” and in particular American values, especially that of individualism. For example, reflecting on the contemporary American social life, Lee Kuan Yew argued that: I find parts of it totally unacceptable behaviour in public — in sum the breakdown of civil society. The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of orderly society. In the East the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This only exists in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy (Cited in Zakaria 1994, p. 111).

We can see clearly here a series of dichotomies framed as oppositions belonging to the natural cultural attributes of the West and the East; consumerism/modesty; anarchy/order, individualism/community; contention/consent. Of course, as we saw in the earlier part of the chapter, the Western commentators are also guilty of such simplistic neo-Orientalist dichotomizing. East and West are framed in terms of authoritarianism/democracy, conformity/individualism and so forth. Herein lies the magic of “New Asia”. As Ang and Stratton (1995) point out, the ambivalence of Singapore lay in its being neither in the West nor properly Asian. Uncoupling the exclusive association of modernity with the West, the discourse of New Asia is able to “own” or appropriate modernity as a uniquely organic Asian achievement (an Asian modernity), while leaving its “undesirable” aspects behind in the category of “Western modernity”. This is, of course, a politically clever strategic move. Under the category of “modernity” are things such as progress, technology, education and high standards of living. But it also traditionally includes the ideas of freedom and democracy and the notion of the autonomous individual. Under “New Asia”, Singapore could successfully claim the first three, technology, progress and high standards of living and represent these as natural outcomes of an Asian way of modernization. Importantly, this is an Asian modernity which relies for its success on conformity to authority, and thus lets the Singaporean powers off the hook when it comes to the idea of democracy. In dismantling the idea of universal modernity, by repackaging its elements into boxes labelled “New Asia” and “the West”, the PAP could seemingly demonstrate that an Asian “orderliness” was the prime reason

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for Singapore’s success as a glowing representative of New Asia. Indeed, the idea of Western democracy was and continues to be represented by the Singapore government as a potential threat to the survival of that Asian modernity, making frequent references to the potential for anarchy to develop. So, in a sense, the rhetoric of Asian values was employed both as a response to what can be seen as the universalizing project of modernity and a response against “globalisation functioning as a cloak disguising a relentless Westernisation or Americanisation of the world” (Cvetkovich and Kellner 1997, p. 18). It offered the possibility to reposition Singapore both as a representative and integral part of a region which had recently outperformed the West and was fast becoming the centre of the global economy. Thus it can be argued that the promotion of a “New Asian” identity founded on Asian values (even though it was a political construct) was not a defensive mode of identification. It was a forward-looking vision that embraced an imagined “Asia” of great economic potential from which a nation-state like Singapore, wholly dependent on the international economy, could not disengage. As Ang and Stratton (1995, p. 84) argue “what is promoted here is an idea of ‘Asianness’ that is both flexible and particularist: flexible in that it can accommodate the consequences of modernization and modernity, but particularist in that this concept of the “New Asian” defines its boundaries through a categorical repression and suppression of the encroachments of Western universalism”. At the same time it presents an image which categorically denies the causal effects of Western universalism, attributing economic success as directly resulting from uniquely Asian characteristics. That is, a uniquely Asian modernity. As indicated earlier by George Yeo, the “New Asian” is at once culturally rooted in the traditions of Asia and attuned to the modern way of life. However, while the content of what it means to be Asian is modernized, the very category “Asian” itself is not called into question, thus maintaining the Asian/Western dichotomy. At the same time, in the discourse of “New Asia”, Asianness is not precisely predetermined, essentialized and unchanging but capable of change. It is nevertheless, an identity that attests to the idea that the irresolvable conflict between being non-Western and modern can be re-configured. At the height of its popularity, the New Asian identity seemed the perfect solution to the contradictions and ambivalence at Singapore’s heart. As I hinted when I introduced the four functions of Asian values earlier in this chapter, the spectre of “New Asia” tied together in important and creative ways the

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first three objectives, power, economy and national identity. A successful Singaporean economy relied on the twin imperatives of embracing a globalized modernity while developing a population with significant commitment to Singapore as a nation and consent to the powers which drive it. Yet, achieving “national identification” traditionally requires a process of “self-othering” which taps into readily available identity codes. In this instance, this happened to be a potentially anti-modern sense of collective “Asianness” framed against a modern consumerist West. The “New Asia” and “New Asian” identity therefore can be read as a reworking of these two contradictory imperatives into complimentary ones.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have looked at the way the PAP leadership used Asian values to define the “nation” from the early 1980s onwards. This coincided with Singapore’s rapid economic development and the official perception that social problems were emerging. The PAP leaders were alarmed that economic prosperity had given birth to so-called “undesirable social values” in the form of “excessive material consumption” and “excessive individualism” amongst Singaporeans. They feared that decadent Western values were infiltrating Singapore and could potentially pose a threat to the nation’s continuing prosperity. Thus “Westernization” became a convenient holder of all the ills of capitalist development in Singapore, against which a very loose formulation of Asian values was elevated to arrest the threatening rot (Ho 1989; Chua and Kuo 1991; and Chua 1995). The Asianization of Singapore policy began to unfold in schools, workplaces and in the public sphere, and through repeated official political speeches stressing the importance and the need for Singaporeans to maintain their traditional Asian values. In contrast with earlier government policies where the emphasis was on anchoring and domesticating the different immigrant communities of Singapore as national subjects, the inscription of Asian values, in my analysis, represents more than simply an attempt to control Singapore’s predominantly Asian population. To a certain extent, it seeks to anchor a newly affluent population, born into modernity and supposedly overtaken by economic success, in a traditional Asian cultural identity. Through the orchestrated production of a “localized-regional” national identity the state sets out to challenge certain perceived threats of globalization. In this case, it involved safe-guarding Singaporeans from the allegedly morally dubious cultural influences of the West and

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articulating an alternative cultural paradigm which would ensure the economic success and continued growth of Singapore. Thus, the PAP government’s championing of Asian values and the articulation of an official “New Asian” identity served both a social engineering role in respect to Singaporean citizens and to boost Singapore’s regionalization/ globalization programme. Meanwhile, Singapore’s embrace of “Asia”, both as a reference point for articulating its cultural identity and to further its economic development, took a new turn when the government revealed its ambitious national policy vision statement Singapore: The Next Lap in 1991. The aim of this document was to set in motion policy initiatives and strategies that would transform Singapore into a global city. In a chapter entitled “Singapore our Home”, an elaborate urban plan was unveiled with the promise of transforming Singapore into a “modern city with world-class infrastructure and facilities as well as a tropical island of fun and leisure” (The Next Lap 1991, p. 77). It is at this point that we begin to see yet another dramatic shift in the official construction and cultural representation of Singapore, from being essentially Asian/modern to one that seeks to embrace a globalized/ cosmopolitan national identity. This shift came to a head when the successful NIEs began to falter and an economic crisis took hold of the region after the 1997 Asian financial market crash. As a consequence, the discourse of Asian values was no longer seen as a fruitful basis for Singapore’s own economic growth and social development as Asia became associated in the global economy with nepotism, corruption and financial mismanagement. While Singapore escaped the Asian economic meltdown, the question of national identity re-emerged with some force. The government’s anxieties this time were not so much the erosion of cultural traditions but had more to do with how to sustain Singapore’s viability as a nation-state in its attempt to plug into the global economic system. In a city-state known for its frequent and swift policy changes and implementations, the Asian/Shared values policy highlighted particular concerns facing Singapore at the height of the Asian economic boom. These concerns although often obscured by economic and political motives were substantially about the state agonizing over what constitutes modernity (Birch 1998). Now the question is how to produce affective national citizens in the era of globalization. In the next chapter, I investigate the attempts made by the State to engineer Singapore as a symbolic and effective imagined national home since the 1990s.

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Notes 1. The question of national survival has been played out in a number of ways. The first instance was the push for merger with Malaysia in 1963. The PAP government promoted the merger as an imperative for the long-term economic and national survival of Singapore and won. The sudden expulsion of Singapore by Malaysia in 1965 brought with it once again the old anxieties about Singapore surviving on its own. The PAP-dominated government was able to establish a strong state and maintain its authority and legitimacy based on its technical capacity to plan and manage the “national” interest, especially on improving the material life of the population (Chua 1996). In both instances, the idea of “national survival” was directly linked to Singapore’s economic interest to which all other interests were reduced. 2. The terms “Asianness” and “Asia” are difficult to define but nonetheless have been used loosely to indicate a sense of geo-cultural commonality, proximity and interconnectedness amongst the nation-states of the Asia Pacific region. 3. Arif Dirlik (1997a) in his article “Critical Reflections on ‘Chinese Capitalism’ as Paradigm” offers a comprehensive overview of the invention and development of the discourse of “Confucian Capitalism”. 4. See, for instance, Berger (1996; 1997) on the rise and success of countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. 5. See, for instance, Huntington (1993), Krugman (1994), Zakaria (1994), and the journal of Social Semiotics 8 (2/3) August/December 1998, Birch (ed.). This edition was fully dedicated to the Asian values debate. 6. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign on 7 September 1979. In his opening speech he said: “Chinese Singaporeans face a dilemma. The Chinese we speak is divided among more than twelve dialects. Children at home speak dialect; in school they learn English and Mandarin. After twenty years of bilingual schooling, we know that very few children can cope with two languages plus one dialect, certainly not much more than the 12 per cent that make it to junior colleges. The majority have ended up speaking English and dialect” (cited in Vasil 1995, p. 70). One of the primary objectives of this campaign was to promote Mandarin as a common language amongst the Singaporean Chinese community. Authors like Vasil (1995), for example, argue that the introduction of the Speak Mandarin Campaign and subsequently the promotion of Confucianism by the PAP government was an attempt to appease many of the Chinesespeaking Singaporeans, who represented a significantly large part of the Chinese community. The PAP leaders were concerned that their earlier emphasis on creating an English-speaking Singapore may have alienated the Chinese-speaking community. Thus the “re-sinification” of Chinese Singaporeans began to take place through the Speak Mandarin Campaign. 7. In 1982, the Ministry of Education introduced the following subjects for

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9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

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upper secondary students: Bible Knowledge, Hindu Studies, Islamic Studies, Buddhist Studies, civic education and Confucian Ethics. For a detailed historical account of these policies see Sandhu and Wheatley (1989), Quah (1990), Clammer (1993), Chua (1995; 1997a; 1998a; 1999), Tamney (1996) and Sebastian (1999). For a sample of these statements see Chan (1975), Koh (1993), Zakaria (1994) and Mahbubani (1998). They include Aung San Suu Kyi (1994), Anwar Ibrahim (1996), Kim Dae Jung (1994), Abdurahman Wahid, Buyung Nasution, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Robison 1996). On 28 November 1990, Singapore’s longest serving Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew retired from office and was succeeded by Goh Chok Tong, the deputy Prime Minister. This represented the transfer of power to the second generation leaders, chosen and trained as their successors by the first generation PAP leaders (Vasil 1993). The following year, Goh Chok Tong called for an early election, some two years ahead of schedule to establish a clear mandate for his government. His government was returned to office but lost four seats to the opposition. Although there is no direct empirical evidence to suggest that an educated Singaporean middle class is seeking greater involvement in politics and decision-making, some commentators (for example Rodan 1993b; 1996a; 1996b) have argued that the rise in electoral support for a weak and divided opposition in the general elections — 37 per cent in 1984, 38 per cent in 1988 and 40 per cent in the 1991 — was an indication of a weakening in popular support for the PAP. In particular, it has to be pointed out that from the early 1980s, the ruling PAP government was beginning to experience a sustained electoral decline. In 1981, the Anson by-election Workers’ Party (WP) candidate Joshua Jeyaretnam became the first opposition member to break the PAP’s absolute monopoly in parliament. The 1984 general election results confirmed a further swing against the government as not only was Jeyaretnam re-elected with an increased majority but Chiam See Tong of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) became the second member of the opposition elected into the Singapore parliament. In the 1991 general election, out of the 41 contested seats, the PAP lost 4 seats (3 to the SDP and 1 to the WP). Between 1980 and 1991, the PAP’s share of total valid votes dropped from 77.7 per cent to 61.0 per cent (Sunday Times 1 September 1991). Despite these slight set-backs, the PAP continues to maintain its mandate as the ruling party. See, for example, Berger and Borer (1997) and, Dirlik (1997a) for discussions on the rise of the NIEs of Asia, including Singapore. Several authors like Vasil (1995), Chua (1995) and Holden (1999) point out that the publication of Ideology and National Competitiveness: An Analysis of Nine Countries by George Lodge and Ezra Vogel (1987), which claimed that

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15.

16. 17.

18.

predominantly Confucianist societies were likely to be more competitive than the “individualistic” nations of the West, was a greatly influential study on the PAP leadership. Unlike charity organizations where public contribution of funds are entirely voluntary, the Singapore government has made it, in principle, compulsory. Every working citizen must make a small contribution unless she or he has sought in writing an exemption specifically from the respective ethnic groups. The contributions are deducted monthly from the employees’ compulsory social security savings in the government managed Central Provident Fund and no cross-racial contributions are permitted in this basic deduction (Chua 1996, 1997a). See, for instance, Chua (1995; 1996; 1997a; 1998a; 1998b; 1998c; 1999). As Featherstone (1995, p. 102) reminds us “it is insufficient to assume that other non-Western cultures will simply give way to the logic of modernity and adopt Western forms, or to regard their formulations of national particularity as merely reactions to Western modernity. Rather, the globalization process should be regarded as opening up the sense that now the world is a single place with increased contact becoming unavoidable, we necessarily have greater dialogue between various nation-states, blocs and civilizations: a dialogical space in which we can expect a good deal of disagreement, clashing of perspectives and conflicts, not just working together and consensus”. Ibrahim’s (1996) The Asian Renaissance is a good illustration of this dialogical process. Although it is not clear who invented the term “New Asia”, the flamboyant Singaporean pop singer-composer Dick Lee has been credited as popularizing the idea through his Pan-Asian popular music (see Wee 1996a; Kong 1996; Crang 1998; Mitchell 2001). Lee’s music is a classic example of Asian indigenization of Western popular musical influences (with his use of rap along with disco, techno and lounge music). On his 1989 album, “The Mad Chinaman” Lee rapped in Singlish to a version of a popular Malay song, “Rasa Sayang” (To Feel Love). The songs lyrics goes like this: Now we can explain in a little while this is not an ordinary tropical isle everything we have, has to be the best of the fabulous East and the wonderful West. of all the things we’ve got that’s good, at the top of everybody’s list is food… we can eat, eat, eat till we nearly drop then we all get up and we shop, shop, shop. and if you asked us how we rate this place we’ll just say this: it’s GREAT!… we work, then makan [eat], watch a film, enjoy the fruits of tourism. there are so plenty tourists, but we love their spending money…

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The use of rap as a rhetorical strategy to express a positive, pro-capitalist, national and pan-Asian identity politics suggests Mitchell (2001), is yet another example of the global appropriation of rap music and other western popular idioms into political contexts of ethnic and national assertiveness. Lee’s 1991 album, “Orientalism” recorded in Tokyo, Jakarta, Singapore and Miami, suggests a distinctively pan-Asian notion of orientalism which ironically mimics Western homogenizations of Asia. The title song expresses a positive, reverse sense of Said’s (1979) term describing Western exoticization of the Orient in asserting (in English) a “New Asian” identity (Mitchell 2001).

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian 82 RESPONDING TO GLOBALIZATION Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

3 CREATING NATIONAL CITIZENS FOR A GLOBAL CITY

We need the resources from a sound, competitive economy to build a worldclass home, and we need a world-class home to anchor Singaporeans to create a first-world economy for Singapore. Singapore risks becoming like one of those well-run, comfortable international hotels which successful business executives check in and out. What makes a home different from a hotel is where the heart is. Most homes are less comfortable than a hotel, but they are where the people feel they belong, where they are king and where they can decorate and arrange the furniture the way they like. This, in essence, is what distinguishes a home from a hotel. (Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Straits Times, 14 October 1999.)

INTRODUCTION Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong’s quote provides a typically colourful account of the latest set of perceived challenges facing Singapore. Continuing my exploration into the national response to globalization in Singapore, this chapter turns its attention to the government’s project of “globalizing” the nation since the early 1990s and its related efforts to create a sense of home among its citizens. I argue that going global has posed particular challenges to the government, not the least of which is a trend among Singaporeans wishing to emigrate. In this chapter I analyse one of the main governmental responses to these “unhomely” consequences of globalization: the affective citizenship-building strategies put forward in the Singapore 21 policy. In this chapter, against the trend among many theorists who have argued that the nation-state is “losing control” of its territoriality (Sassen 1996) and its ability to manage globalization (Held 1990; Ohmae 1995; Appadurai 1996), I propose to consider the Singaporean state’s embrace of globalization and the citizenship policies it has developed in response

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to it. I argue that these strategies are designed to manage the tension between the local and the global. They have the express aim of ensuring the continued viability, especially the global economic viability, of the nation-state. In Singapore’s case, rather than precipitating its demise, “going global” is designed to ensure the nation’s survival. I begin by exploring the earliest emergence of a discourse of a “global Singapore” in a ground-breaking Ministerial speech made in 1972. In his speech, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, S. Rajaratnam, predicted that Singapore is becoming a global city, a key nodal point in a network of cities. Quite remarkably, his predictions began to unfold as Singapore entered the 1990s. I then discuss some of the challenges and anxieties the PAP perceives as emerging from this new phase of economic transformation, in particular the issue of emigration and other accompanying dilemmas. I then examine the PAP’s latest policy visions Singapore 21 (1999) and Remaking Singapore (2003) and critically analyse its efforts of “nation home-building”. I argue that the state has tried to resolve the tension between the national and the global through the formulation of a Singaporean identity and through affective nationalism which aims to “glocalize” Singaporean-ness (Robertson 1995). In other words, the government’s aim has been to develop a Singaporean populace that is global in outlook but rooted in the local.

A CITY IN TRANSITION On 6 February 1972, speaking to the Singapore Press Club, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, S. Rajaratnam put forward the bold idea of Singapore transforming itself into a new kind of city, a Global City. He made his speech to answer the many critics who predicted that independent Singapore would never survive. Rajaratnam (1972, p. 8) argued that “if we view Singapore’s future as a Global City, then the smallness of Singapore, the absence of a hinterland, or raw materials and a large domestic market are not fatal or insurmountable handicaps. It would explain why, since independence, we have been successful economically and, consequently, have ensured political and social stability”. Rajaratnam’s prescient statement amounted to an admission that Singapore’s economic viability, because of its territorial constraints, would always be dependent on the global economy. This assertion can be read in two ways: first, Singapore’s economic viability and indeed national survival has always been dictated by the global economy and second, Singapore has thrived precisely because of its global economic links.

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In his speech, Rajaratnam goes on to argue that the traditional role of Singapore as a key trading city in Southeast Asia, and marketplace of the region — a role it served during British colonial rule and which was inherited by the independent state — is becoming less important. Rajaratnam points out that in its place Singapore is: Transforming itself into a new kind of city — the Global City. It is a new form of human organization and settlement that has, as the historian Arnold Toynbee says, no precedent in mankind’s past history. People have become aware of this new type of city only recently. They have found a name for this distinctive type of city. They call it Ecumenopolis — the world embracing city. It is this global character which distinguishes Ecumenopolis or the World City from the cities of the past. Earlier cities were isolated centres of local civilisations and regional empires. They were in comparison with Global Cities somewhat parochial with an extremely limited range of influence. They were either capital cities or cities of prestige, holy cities, city states and even capitals of convenience. But the Global City, now in its infancy, is the child of modern technology. It is the city that electronic communications, supersonic planes, giant tankers and modern economic and industrial organisations have made inevitable. Whether the Global City would be a happier place than the megalopolis out of whose crumbling ruins it is emerging will depend on how wisely and boldly we shape its directions (Rajaratnam 1972, p. 3) [my emphasis].

It is indeed quite remarkable that Rajaratnam was able to envisage the idea of the global city and its prominence as distinct from other kinds of cities ahead of its time. In particular, his vision of Singapore as a global city puts to rest the notion that its limited size and its lack of a hinterland would spell the end of Singapore. The idea of Singapore as a worldembracing city leads Rajaratnam to posit that: [t]he Global Cities, unlike earlier cities, are linked intimately with one another. Because they are more alike they reach out to one another through the tentacles of technology. Linked together they form a chain of cities which today shape and direct, in varying degrees of importance, a worldwide system of economies. It is my contention that Singapore is becoming a component of that system — not a major component but a growingly important one. It is in this sense that I have chosen to describe Singapore as a Global City (1972, p. 5).

Rajaratnam then makes several other predictions, touching on Singapore’s port facilities, air communications, international financial network, and the role of multi-national corporations and internationalized production

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as areas where the city-state is forging ahead. At the same time however, he adds as a cautionary and telling remark, “the alternative to not moving into the global economic system, is for small Singapore, certain death” (Rajaratnam 1972, p. 11). As he points out: An independent Singapore survives and will survive because it has established a relationship of interdependence in the rapidly expanding global economic system. Singapore’s economic future will, as the years go by, become more and more rooted in this global system. It will grow and prosper as this system grows and prospers. It will collapse if this system collapses. But the latter is hardly likely to happen because that would be the end of world civilisation (Rajaratnam 1972, p. 12).

Rajaratnam’s vision of global cities as a new form of human organization and settlement linked intimately with one another through various networks (communication, transportation, and global flows of technology and capital) in a worldwide economic system, in many ways pre-empted recent scholarly discussions on this subject (for example, Friedman and Wolff 1982, Castells 1989, King 1990a, 1990b, Sassen 1991 and AbuLughod 1999). Rajaratnam’s prediction that Singapore would become a global city, without doubt reinforces the idea not only that Singapore is fundamentally dependent on the global economy but also that its character as a city-state can never be fully self-contained. It took another two decades before the PAP leaders revisited this vision.

THE NEXT LAP : BUILDING THE GLOBAL CITY 1991–1997 In this section I introduce the first major policy vision designed to develop Singapore into a truly Global City. The 1991 Next Lap policy statement was important for two reasons: Firstly, it contained the first strategic policy aimed first at “going global”, and secondly, at creating a “homely nation” for Singaporeans. The structural changes Singapore has undergone in the last thirty years can be categorized into three broad phases.1 Singapore was initially an Èntrepot economy. It shifted in the 1960s and 1970s to develop a lowtech manufacturing and trading economy. In the third phase Singapore became a high-tech manufacturing, financial and business services economy from the late 1980s onwards (Grunsven 2000, p. 101). This latest shift was governed by the imperative to embrace and compete with other NIEs and first-world economies at a global level. More than anything Singapore’s economic policy serves as an interesting case of the

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progressive transformation and integration of the city-state within the global economy.2 With the structural change and redefinition of the economy, particularly in its third phase, the government sought to position Singapore as a strategic transnational node in the Asia-pacific region (see Perry, Kong and Yeoh 1997). An important dimension of this strategy is that since 1986, and increasingly so in the 1990s, the government has been encouraging Singapore-based companies to move their operations to regional locations.3 As I argued in Chapter 2, the strategy was aimed at enhancing the competitiveness of Singapore-based companies and expanding Singapore’s economic space beyond its limited geographical boundaries. The strategic thrust of both these economic policies: first, creating “a total business centre” oriented towards the diversification of Singapore’s economic role and encouraging the relocation of regional headquarters of businesses to Singapore, and second the “regionalization drive”, was conceived as a result of the severity of the 1985–86 recession (Rodan 1997). The PAP believed that these two strategies would restore Singapore’s international economic competitiveness and foster its growth in the long run. We have seen that in retrospect, Rajaratnam’s 1972 address portended the direction of government policy more than ten years later. Although many scholars (see, Murray and Perera 1996; Perry, Kong and Yeoh 1997; Savage 1999) would contend that the colonial Singapore as a “colonial city” and “entrepot” has characteristically and historically existed as a global city (a point made by Abu-Lughod 1999), I would argue that in official rhetoric and policy terms, the concept of the “global city” was only adopted in 1991. Indeed, as I will argue later in this chapter, this acknowledgment and intentional drive to transform Singapore as a contemporary global city, opens up for the PAP challenges that were meant to have been supposedly addressed by its nationbuilding programme. That is, the realization that its citizens may well be transient, and uncommitted to the Singapore nation-state. And so, by encouraging and attracting international capital to invest in Singapore, and forging global economic links, the PAP government sought to convince Singaporeans that this was a credible route towards improved living standards for all. The twin ideologies of national survival and economic developmentalism served to legitimize the role of the state in the nation-building project. Moreover, they have also facilitated Singapore’s transition and indeed rapid transformation from a developing country to a newly industrializing economy to its present status of

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“advanced industrializing nation” in thirty short years (Perry, Kong and Yeoh 1997).4 In the years since Rajaratnam’s extraordinarily forward-looking speech, the Singapore government has been actively engaged in promoting and representing Singapore as a world city and regional hub through academic literature and a wide range of business, tourism and economic activities.5 In particular, Singapore’s globally oriented nation-building efforts have been driven by a series of so called “policy visions” put up by the government. Vision-setting commenced in 1984 with Vision 1999. Its main goal was to accomplish a Swiss standard of living by the year 1999.6 Vision 1999 “was to be measured by, among other indicators, per capita income. The target was to reach S$31,550 by 1999, equal to what the Swiss had achieved in 1984” (Perry, Kong and Yeoh 1997, p. 287). When Vision 1999 was released in 1984, Singapore’s per capita Gross National Product was S$13,599. By 1991 it was S$21,870, and in 1999 it reached S$35,470, surpassing the Swiss standard (Singapore Facts and Figures 2000, p. 59). The Singapore: The Next Lap national policy vision was unveiled by Goh Chok Tong upon taking over the leadership of the PAP, and succeeding Singapore’s long-standing Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1991. It was his government’s first blueprint for Singapore under the second generation of PAP political leaders. This document marks a turning point in Singapore’s political history and to some extent a transition in the style of leadership, with Goh announcing that his government would adopt a “more open and consultative”, approach and “less combative and a onedimensional preoccupation with economic growth and expansion” which was the trademark of Lee’s rule. He added: “I do not want Singaporeans to be known just for economic efficiency — cold, disciplined, efficient, with high standards of living, but everybody looks like a robot” (Straits Times, 29 November 1990). The Next Lap then outlines the national development plans and strategies of the new Goh government.7 As Goh pointed out: In The Next Lap, we are trying to give Singapore a more rounded personality. In the past,.. we emphasised primarily the basics, relating to economics. That’s unquestionably a very important aspect. But that’s a one-dimensional aspect of a society’s development. Now, having succeeded in fulfilling the basic needs, we have got to address the question: how do you make life more fulfilling for Singaporeans, what is it that they want? (cited in Vasil 1993, p. 298).

Its primary aim was to further enhance the economic growth of Singapore, while attending to improving the standard of living and quality of life of

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Singaporeans. The objective of this vision was to transform Singapore into a world-class city and a global hub. The main component of this document was a so-called Revised Concept Plan, a blueprint for the future, which proceeds from earlier visions of urban planning that transformed the slums of the Singapore landscape into a thriving metropolis and a Garden City.8 Under the 1991 Revised Concept Plan, major programmes designed to create a developed city for business, living and leisure, with world-class transportation endowed with nature, would be put in place (Perry, Kong and Yeoh 1997). This plan was structured in three stages: to the Year 2000, to the year 2010, and to the year X (some 50–70 years in the future when Singapore is expected to reach an ultimate population of around four million and be enlarged in area by another 17 per cent through land reclamation projects).9 The new vision contained in The Next Lap was underpinned by the twin desires to achieve economic survival through competing in the global economy, and to make a unique Singaporean locality or place in the face of these global forces. These two quotes from the policy document highlight these dual aims: We live in a world that is ever changing. External events can shake us, as they have in the past. Nothing is certain. We have to keep trying to stay ahead in the race of nations. We must never forget the basics: we have to stay united, work hard, save, look after each other, be quick to seize opportunities and be vigilant to internal and external threats to our national security. No one owes us a living — we have to earn it (The Next Lap 1991, p. 15). In Singapore, we live in an urban environment. We want a city that is pleasant to work and live in, a city of beauty, character and grace. To achieve this, we need variety in our physical landscape. In our master plan, green spaces, the hills, the sea, beaches and rivers are carefully woven into the urban landscape. It is a city we will be proud to call home (The Next Lap 1991, p. 16).

In other words, the objectives of the policy vision were two-fold: “to make Singapore one of the major hub cities of the world” (The Next Lap 1991, p. 16) and “to make Singapore not just a pleasant place to work and live in, but also a home” (The Next Lap 1991, p. 29). This is an important statement as it flags the central ambivalence of the “going global” policy initiatives that were to follow. The Next Lap addressed a wide range of issues concerning the overall future outlook and direction of Singapore.

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Focusing on several areas such as people, housing, education, economy, national security, culture, sports and the arts, this document outlined the challenges Singapore could expect to face, and the government initiatives for dealing with them. It envisaged the transformation of Singapore into a world-class city and global hub for communication, transportation, research and development, finance, and commerce. Various strategies to achieve this status were discussed including (in anticipation of a fall in fertility rate): encouraging Singaporeans to produce more babies; attracting talented people from abroad to work and live in Singapore; minimizing the number of Singaporeans leaving the country (especially professionals); educating and preparing the younger generation for a knowledge-based economy; retraining of workers; and improving the quality of life of Singaporeans (The Next Lap 1991, pp. 19–55). As I will discuss in Chapter 4, the issue of attracting foreign professionals (known in Singapore as “Foreign Talents”) to meet the demands of Singapore’s new economy and to address labour shortages, has become ideologically enmeshed with the survival of Singapore. The following passages from The Next Lap highlight the government’s long-term nation-building goals and to some extent its concerns: “we must invest even more in our people and give them a stake in the common prosperity” (1991, p. 15) and “we will find ways to give Singaporeans a greater stake in this country” (1991, p. 29). The following is a summary from the The Next Lap chapter on “Singapore Our Home”:

Small can be Beautiful The total land area of Singapore is 641 square kilometres, which includes 63 small offshore islands. The proposed strategy is — given the limitations on available land for use and a high population density of over three million people on the island — further increase the land area by 15 per cent through reclamation. This would provide more space for commercial and industrial activities, as well as quality housing and lifestyle facilities. At the same time, future landmark developments on the island will be carried out to create a rich and varied urban environment catering to all basic needs. The People’s City At present, more than 85 per cent of Singaporeans live in and own houses provided by the Housing and Development Board — a government statutory board that plans and develops affordable and quality public housing in Singapore. The aim is to continue encouraging home ownership amongst Singaporeans and improve their living environment. Future public housing

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programmes will take on new and innovative housing projects. For older housing development board occupants, their blocks will be upgraded. Business City This component addresses several areas with an overall emphasis on transforming Singapore into a world centre for trade, finance, aviation, maritime services, information, businesses and manufacturing. In the pipeline is the development of a new city hub, creation of regional centres, and business parks. The creation of such sites is an attempt to decentralize business activities away from the existing Central Business District area. Transit City The transport infrastructure will be continually monitored and upgraded to ensure comfort, convenient and smooth travel. Existing road networks will be upgraded and expanded to allow for smooth traffic flow. Public transport, especially the Mass Rapid Transit (rail network) will be extended to cover most of the island. Environment City Maintain a high standard of environmental quality and public health by ensuring and upgrading the standards of environmental management and instil in Singaporeans a national commitment to protect and preserve the local and global environment. City of Culture and Grace The creation of more cultural, arts, sports facilities, activities and events. The Singapore Arts Centre will be built to boost artistic activities. Buildings of historical and architectural merit will be conserved and put to good use as art galleries and museums. A large part of the Civic District will be designed as a museum precinct to accommodate a new museum complex and other cultural facilities. A City for All Seasons Singapore will be a city of diversity and richness in which intensive urbanization is balanced with the natural environment. That is, the natural landscape will be carefully woven into the urban fabric. Old buildings and monuments will be conserved to provide a blend of old and new.

Many of these economic and social initiatives have been implemented since the launch of The Next Lap. They include the gradual upgrading of old Housing Development Board flats,10 the construction of a new northwest train-line (completed in December 2002) and resourcing the landscaping and beautifying of Singapore. With the establishment of the Ministry of Information and the Arts in the late 1980s, and its subordinate

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agencies the National Arts Council and the National Heritage Board, cultural and artistic activities have gradually increased. A permanent heritage trail through sites of historical significance in the Civic District was launched in August 1999. Singapore’s development into an attractive international/global hub has gathered considerable momentum.11 World cities are best known for their multiple economic roles, activities, and functions in a global context. John Friedman (1986), one of the first scholars to examine the notion of the “world city”, most notably pointed out that world cities operate within a global hierarchy. A world city can be defined by the following criteria: major financial centre; site for headquarters of transnational corporations, including regional headquarters; international institutions; rapid growth of business sector; important manufacturing centre; major transportation node; and population size (Friedman and Wolff 1982, Friedman 1986, King 1990a, 1990b and 1991, Sassen 1991 and Hall 1998). Based on these economic indicators, the world cities ranking reinforces the status of respective cities in their relationship to the global economy. How does Singapore measure up as a “real” world city according to these criteria? Singapore is certainly a significant financial centre for Asia and is also home to regional headquarters for a substantial number of transnational corporations. For instance, it ranks amongst the top ten world cities as a global service centre in banking and finance and the world’s twenty-five largest commercial banks have offices here.12 In addition to hosting some 6,000 multinational companies, fourteen of the world’s twenty-five prominent information science companies and thirtyone of the world’s top fifty industrial corporations have subsidiaries in Singapore.13 Although Singapore is not home to any regional/world institutions (i.e. headquarters of non-governmental and non-commercial organizations), leading surveys conducted by the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), the U.S.-based Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI) and Swiss-based World Economic Forum (WEF) have consistently ranked Singapore highly as one of the best business environments in Asia, one of the world’s best investment locations and one of the most competitive economies in the world in recent years (Singapore Bulletin August 1999). Singapore is also a major manufacturing centre for information technology and its major port (focal point for 400 shipping lines to more than 700 ports worldwide) and international airport (with more than 3,450 weekly flights to 146 cities and over 50 countries) certainly classifies it as a leading transport node (see Menkhoff and Wirtz 1999; Economic Development Board of Singapore 2003a; 2003b).

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The key elements of The Next Lap policy vision are those that promote Singapore’s high-end service-oriented and high-tech industries, its connectedness as a transport and communication hub and its small, liveable and manageable size. As scholars such as Axtmann (1997, p. 45) have pointed out, the restructuring of Singapore as a knowledge, information technology and transport-based economy allows it to sidestep the obstacles posed by its small size (see also Castells 1989; 1996). Its leading-edge capital intensive industries are directly aligned with the global economy and are not reliant on cheap unskilled labour. Moreover, unlike manufacturing-based economies, Singapore’s knowledge-based and service-oriented economy can be quickly responsive to global trends. The ideas contained in The Next Lap are very much in line with what Rajaratnam predicted almost two decades earlier, namely that Singapore would become a world-embracing city, an important component within the global economic system. Rajaratnam touched on the economic aspects of Singapore as a global city but he did not deal with the socio-cultural implications of this transformation. The Next Lap takes this issue in hand, endeavouring to make Singapore not only a world city but also a genuine “home” for its people. At the outset, the government’s continued investment in improving Singapore’s quality of life — in terms of beautifying the city, providing better homes and living conditions, more efficient transport system, a pleasant environment and cultural, arts and sports facilities and so forth — can be seen as part and parcel of its nation-building strategy. The production and representation of Singapore’s urban cityscape as a place that is inextricably grounded in the notion of “home” in an advanced world-city context suggests that it is possible for Singapore to be a home to locals and non-locals at one and the same time. What we find in The Next Lap is not only a vision to transform Singapore into a global city so that it becomes an effective node within the space of global flows, but also a vision of place where people still live and make their place-oriented homes. It presents a utopian and appealing image of Singapore and its vibrant cityscape as a “homely place”. In this sense, it is clear that there is a desire on the part of the Singapore government to create a seamless continuity between the local and the global. The Next Lap (1991, p. 99) promises that in the utopian urban Singapore “our home will be a city that is pleasant to live and work in, a city which has something to offer everyone, whether resident or sojourner”. However, while Singapore’s ambitious urban plans and hitherto impressive social and economic achievements signal a sense of national

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arrival, the government’s “homely imagery” had so far primarily emphasized the material aspects of homeliness. The vision statement “Singapore our home” found in The Next Lap epitomised the nationalist search for an ideal cityscape and sense of community reflected and rationalised through its urban planning discourse. This signals the modernist and instrumental belief that “ideal forms can generate or elicit certain behavioural as well as social and political responses for a community” (Savage 1992, p. 192). Indeed, the almost obsessive emphasis in recent government policy on the idea of “making Singapore a home” suggests that somehow Singapore was not yet a home. That is, despite the government’s nationbuilding efforts in the past twenty-five years, there was an assumption in The Next Lap that although Singapore is a pleasant place it was not yet ‘homely’ enough to keep its citizens there. By the mid to late-1990s the dispersal of Singaporeans emerged as a key issue that made the matter of “home building” ever more urgent.

SINGAPOREANS EMIGRATING During the 1990s the government began to fear the possibility of a mass emigration of its educated elite. In a speech to Parliament in 1997, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong alerted Singaporeans to the challenges facing many developed countries within the new global economy, in particular Singapore. Besides emphasizing the need to retain Singapore’s economic competitive edge, he argued that: Singapore faces a far more fundamental challenge: rooting our best and brightest in this country. A recent survey by MasterCard found that 1 in 5 Singaporeans wishes to emigrate, despite Singapore’s economic success. I am not sure how much to believe this survey, but there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest a potential problem (Straits Times, 6 June 1997).

The government’s concern over Singaporeans emigrating is of course not new. In the 1970s and 1980s, many emigrants left mainly because of the bilingual policy in education and concerns about the viability of the young Singapore. In the late 1980s, following the economic recession, some Singaporeans left mainly to pursue better prospects elsewhere. This resulted in a peak of an estimated 4,700 Singaporeans leaving the country in 1988. In the 1990s, the number of emigrants was hovering around 2,000 annually. Singaporeans who emigrate generally cite reasons

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such as high cost of living, better employment opportunities overseas, not wanting to do national service, wish for a less stressful lifestyle and doubts about Singapore’s future (see Sullivan and Gunasekaran 1991; Yap 1991; 1999). Nevertheless, the government also recognizes the benefits of a Singaporean working overseas temporarily (see Yeoh and Willis 1998; 1999). Since 1993, Singaporeans have been encouraged to invest and work abroad in conjunction with the government’s regionalization programme. By 1996, around 5,000 companies had set up operations overseas, compared to 2,000 in 1991, and there were an estimated 150,000 Singaporeans working and living overseas. However as Goh pointed out “this dispersal carries a danger — if Singaporeans are not deeply rooted to Singapore through strong bonds of family, friends, community and nation, the core of our nation will unravel” (Straits Times, 24 August 1997). More importantly though, it was the MasterCard survey which suggested that one in five Singaporeans wished to emigrate that reignited the debate around questions of belonging and national identity. The issue of Singaporeans emigrating became a big talking point in the local English-language press. A Straits Times survey (16 August 1997) was commissioned to examine the underlying reasons for this trend. The survey showed that although the number of people who actually decide to emigrate is small, the major reasons why many were doing so was to escape the high cost of living and stresses of life in Singapore. In terms of figures, about 85 per cent said that the cost of living was too high, and 78 per cent complained that life was too stressful. More than 70 per cent said housing and cars were expensive, while 68 per cent said there were too many rules and regulations in the city-state (Straits Times, 16 August 1997). More significantly, those who are able to emigrate and settle abroad are precisely those who have the means and qualifications that Singapore requires to sustain its own high-tech and high-end serviceoriented economy. The trend of educated and professional Singaporeans leaving the country does indeed pose a major challenge to Singapore’s economic future. It is estimated that between 700 and 800 Singaporeans a year give up their citizenship: 761 in 1999, 880 in 2000, and 756 in 2001 (Straits Times, 30 October 2002). Highlighting these concerns, in his 1997 National Day Rally Speech, Prime Minister Goh argued that: In a very mobile world, more Singaporeans will go abroad to work [...] Many of our best now contribute to others’ economies instead of returning to Singapore. They do this permanently, not temporarily. It

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might be alright if we had large numbers of such people to spare. But we have no surplus talent. They should be thinking and worrying about Singapore’s future, making it safer and more prosperous for their fellow Singaporeans. Instead, they are thinking, worrying and creating wealth for foreign companies and themselves. This is not a criticism but a recognition of a new fact of life. It is a facet of globalisation and regionalisation that we need to reflect on and address (Straits Times, 24 August 1997).

The government realized that the steady outflow of Singaporeans leaving the country, and the desire of others to do so were signs that Singaporeans were lacking in emotional and affective commitment to the Singapore nation-state. Prime Minister Goh in his speech in Parliament rebuked: Affluence and prosperity cannot be the only glue holding us together. If Singaporeans are just economic animals, materialistic with no sense of belonging, they will be like migratory birds, seeking their fortunes in other lands when the season changes. They will have no cause to fight for, no community to live for, no country to defend and die for, only the pragmatic desire to get on and get rich. If it ever comes to this, Singapore will not survive as a sovereign nation (Straits Times, 6 June 1997) [emphasis mine].

Goh’s words signal an emerging anxiety about the kinds of citizens Singapore has produced. He sees elite professionals as accumulating wealth to fulfil individual needs without any sense of civic and national responsibility to their compatriots. Goh is anxious that these individuals repay the nation for the success it made possible. In the Work of Nations, Harvard political economist Robert Reich (1993) argues that work in advanced societies falls into three main categories; those he calls routine production services, in-person services, and symbolic-analytic services.14 Reich, who is mainly interested in the symbolic analysts, notes that they are “highly skilled people whose continuously cumulative, varied experience is an asset which makes them relatively autonomous vis-à-vis particular places and organizations” (1993, p. 252). In other words, in the contemporary world, symbolic analysts are “linked to global webs of enterprise” and are “no longer particularly dependent on the economic performance of other categories of people in their national contexts, such as people in routine production services” (Reich 1993). Commenting on the American case, Reich (1993, p. 252) points out that the symbolic analysts “have been seceding from the rest of the nation” and while they may “pledge allegiance to the flag with as much sincerity as ever, yet the new global sources of their

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economic well-being have subtly altered how they understand their economic roles and responsibilities in society”. There is a remarkable parallel in Reich’s description of the symbolic analysts and Goh’s characterization of Singaporeans as “economic animals” and “migratory birds”. Although Reich does not label American symbolic analysts as being opportunistic and materialistic in their pursuits, he nevertheless believes that they tend not to have strong attachments and loyalties to the United States. Similarly, for Goh, the trend of talented Singaporeans migrating overseas in search of economic opportunities poses a threat to the very existence of the sovereign Singapore nation. In spite of Goh’s rhetoric, there are good economic reasons (such as the high standard of living, high employment opportunities, and modern conveniences) to persevere with living in a place that may have nothing to do with a sense of being socially and culturally rooted there. By invoking the nation as the “basic unit of moral economy” (Smith 1991, p. 144), Goh deplores the attitudes of Singaporeans who are driven only by economic and materialistic needs. If Singaporeans choose a migratory existence with no sense of commitment and attachment to Singapore, this would mean a certain end to the sovereign status of Singapore as a nation. He asks in an earlier speech: Can we afford to pursue economic growth, properties, and material well-being, and ignore everything else? Must we not be mindful of our human obligation to our fellow citizens, and remember the intangibles which make us one nation and one united people? If we dissolve as a people, everything is lost […] this island has given all of us a place to live in peace, make a good living and raise a family. It is our home (Straits Times, 10 August 1996).

Goh is trying to invoke a sense of “cultural resonance” embodied in images of the nation, a term coined by Bennett Berger (1971). Images of the nation have strong cultural resonance, according to Berger, if they evoke “deep emotional response, and [are] triggered not by economic self-interest, political expedience or any other purely instrumental considerations, but by their direct appeal (or threat) to “expressive” or “consummatory” values which transcend such immediate interests” (Berger 1971, pp. 4–5). In this instance, Goh calls into question Singaporeans who are acting out of self-interest and only fulfilling their immediate and pragmatic desires to get rich and live comfortably. He feels that they are neglecting the culture of the nation which forms the fundamental basis of identity, community, fraternity and a common

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future. The rhetoric indicates that the government sees this as a kind of “crisis” of the national home. Both in Reich’s (1993) and Goh’s view, it is crucial that the symbolic analysts are made to establish their loyalties and attachment to the nation. By the time of the Singapore 21 report, the government had become aware that a high standard of living could never, on its own, be enough to create any kind of affective attachment to the nation among the population. In this sense, Singapore 21 is about creating a citizenry with both emotional and economic stakes in Singapore, committed to the future of the Singapore national home. That is, the government wants to provide the affective building blocks for home but in a way which doesn’t undermine the nation’s global project. In a sense then, the government is trying to “glocalize” home.

SINGAPORE 21 SOLUTIONS: FROM NEXT LAP TO “HEARTWARE” One of the more colourful phrases the government has coined is the idea of Singapore as Home versus Singapore as a Hotel. This chapter opened with a quote in which Prime Minister Goh suggested that Singapore risked becoming “one of those well-run, comfortable international hotels, where people check in and out”. He said that Singapore had to aim to become more “homely”. Home, he said, is where the heart is. It is where you belong and where you can arrange and decorate things the way you like. The answer, according to the Prime Minister, lay in developing Singapore’s “heartware”: Singapore 21 is about what the people of Singapore want to make of this country. More than a house, Singapore must be a home. The Government can provide the conditions for security and economic growth. But in the end, it is people who give feeling, the human touch, the sense of pride and achievement, the warmth. So beyond developing physical infrastructure and hardware, we need to develop our social infrastructure and software. In Sony Corporation, they call this “heartware”. We need to go beyond economic and material needs, and reorient society to meet the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, cultural and social needs of our people (Straits Times, 6 June 1997) (Emphasis mine).

During his 1997 National Day Rally Address Prime Minister Goh announced that a Singapore 21 Committee would be established to identify new ideas to make Singapore the place of choice to live a fulfilling life, to make a good living and raise a happy family (Goh

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1997).15 The committee would look into ways to strengthen the “heartware” (social cohesion, political stability and the collective will, values and attitudes of the people) of Singapore and address the challenges Singapore would face in the twenty-first century. In essence, the mission of the Singapore 21 Committee was to suggest new ideas to reinforce the notion of Singapore as a home in an age of globalization. The members of the committee were divided into subject groups, each presented with the task of assessing the implications of the following five sets of dilemmas as identified by the government:16 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Attracting Talent vs. Looking After Singaporeans Less Stressful life vs. Retaining the Drive Internationalization/regionalization vs. Singapore as Home The Needs of Senior Citizens vs. Aspirations of the Young Consultation and Consensus vs. Decisiveness and Quick Action

This list characterizes succinctly the problems at the heart of Singapore’s push to go global. Each dilemma comes back to the challenge of staying local yet embracing and benefiting from the global. The first point deals with the issue of global mobility of professionals outlined earlier. To remain competitive in the global economy, Singapore has no option but to import “talent” from overseas. As I will discuss in more detail in Chapter 4, at the same time, Singaporeans feel threatened by this intense competition for better jobs and the lure of better prospects elsewhere. The second point highlights the constant pressure of surviving and competing successfully in the global economy, with much of Singapore’s success resting on a hardworking, highly educated and driven workforce. This very pressure to continually succeed and work harder is driving many educated Singaporeans to leave for greener and less stressful pastures abroad. Both these dilemmas fundamentally relate to the third dilemma — the challenge of maintaining a sense of “Home”, of domesticating Singaporeans, making them feel as though they have a commitment to Singapore, a sense of hope, security and happiness in the face of this global economic competition and the kind of workforce the global system requires of Singapore to survive in it. The last two points also relate to the global/local relationship, in particular in terms of issues of authority and control. With a rapidly ageing population Singapore is faced with the growing challenge of how to care for its elderly. According to a government report more than 10 per cent of Singapore’s population are above the age of 65 (Singapore Facts and Figures 2000, p. 7). In times past, Singapore has relied on its

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young people’s commitment to take up the slack to care for their extended family. Yet with the modern and mobile young population less inclined to take on this burden, the government faces the twin problems of how to pay for the care of the elderly and the threat of younger generations ignoring the authority and social codes of their elders. This has a bearing on Singapore’s need for a conservative and nonconfrontational population in the maintenance of social control. Yet the desire for social control and conservatism or “consultation and consensus” is also somewhat at odds with the kind of entrepreneurial spirit and independent mindedness required of its workforce if it is to compete in the global system. At the same time, the government perceives a strong state and a compliant non-confrontational populace to be key elements in the reproduction of the very existence of the Singapore state and of PAP power. We can see then that each of these points is fundamentally, about resolving the conflict between economic individualism and a collectivist/moral obligation to the community. In another sense, they also relate to the basic dilemma of how to negotiate the competing demands of going global yet staying local. This is especially magnified in Singapore’s case, a city-state with a fragile economy so intimately linked at every level with the global system. The Singapore 21 initiative was specifically designed to reconcile these divergent and seemingly contradictory demands. For a period of more than a year, through group discussions, seminars, and forums, the Singapore 21 subject committees obtained responses and suggestions relating to Singapore’s future from about 6,000 Singaporeans. The subject committees subsequently submitted their report and recommendations to the government. On 24 April 1999, Prime Minister Goh unveiled the findings when he launched the book: Singapore 21: Together, We Make the Difference. In the introduction, Prime Minister Goh reiterated that: As Singaporeans become better-off and more internationally mobile, we must strengthen our community bonds so that we stay committed to Singapore. […] We need to go beyond economic and material needs, and reorient society to meet the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, cultural and social needs of our people. Singapore 21 is about a home for a people, not a hotel.

Clearly the government’s aim is to create affective national citizens who will be committed to Singapore’s future and success. Of course the Singaporean government is well known for creating snappy dichotomies

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to characterize current issues and then inventing equally catchy “dot point” plans to address them. Singapore 21 is no exception. In order to reconcile the five dilemmas mentioned above, the document put forward five ideals to represent Singapore’s vision for the future: 1. All Singaporeans Matter We all know that people are Singapore’s only resource. But for the 21st century, we go one step further. People will matter not only in the collective sense; every Singaporean will matter too at the single, individual level. Every Singaporean is unique. Everyone has a contribution to make to Singapore. 2. Strong Families: Our Foundation and Our Future Strong families give security and meaning of life. They are the “base camp’”from which our young venture forth to reach for high aspirations. They are the conduits through which our elderly pass on their values and lessons they have learnt in life. They ensure that our children grow up happy and well and our elders enjoy respect and dignity. They are an irreplaceable source of care and support when we need it, at whatever age. 3. Opportunities for All Opportunities do not fall from the skies. They need to be created and grasped. Singapore must aspire to be one of the great global centres where people, ideas and resources come together to spark new opportunities. People will be drawn here from near and far. Some will stay for a time to contribute to our development and progress. We should welcome them. Those who share our dreams and are committed to Singapore, should be embraced as citizens. 4. The Singapore Heartbeat: Feeling Passionately about Singapore The more international Singapore becomes in the 21st century, the more must our national bonds be strong. Singaporeans must develop a stronger sense of belonging and commitment to this country. Whether we live in Singapore or overseas, we must embrace a common vision of the country as a place worth coming home to and if need be, fighting and dying for. We need to feel passionately that Singapore is where we identify with, where our roots are and where we feel is home, wherever we may be around the world. 5. Active Citizens: Making A Difference to Society At present, Singaporeans already play important roles in nation-building. We work hard, contributing to the economy. Male citizens defend the country through National Service. Some volunteer time and resources to community associations and welfare organizations. But many of us still remain content to let the government, or others take the active role in community and civic affairs. This has to change.

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PUTTING SINGAPORE 21 INTO PRACTICE The goals sketched in the five-point plan were subject to a range of profile-raising events, seminars and conferences and are being implemented at all levels from grassroots activities to major national initiatives.17 For example, many grassroots activities such as public exhibitions, social and recreational activities have been organized to promote volunteerism, strong families and “active citizenship”. They include, for example, the establishment of a National Volunteer Centre in 2000; the launch of “National Volunteer Week”, “National Kindness Week”, “National Family Week” and ‘Senior Citizens Week”; “Steering Your Way — Your Ride to Volunteering 2000” (an exhibition to promote volunteerism); “The Corporate Community Games 2000” (aimed to encourage corporate participation in community bonding); and “Senior Citizens and Family Fair 2001”. In addition to promoting participation in civic life, the Singapore government has also provided economic and material incentives to its citizens, issuing New Singapore Shares and a S$250 cash top-up into their Central Provident Fund in 2000. The most recent strategies, developed in the 2003 Remaking Singapore committee’s report which builds on the goals developed under Singapore 21, take this home and citizen building programme to even greater levels18 (Straits Times, 12 June 2003). The recommended activities span several areas including: promoting grassroots voluntary and community organizations, enhancing a heritage programme identifying significant “memory” sites around the island, and developing a series of social and cultural history museums, in particular a “museum of everyday life” which would document the various quotidian lifestyles of Singaporeans through the nation’s history. The committee also recommends promoting the use of national symbols by everyday Singaporeans, especially the display of the national flag; developing a pledge of shared values and allegiance to be made in citizenship ceremonies and by school children; and that HDB dwellers would have communal land surrounding their apartments transferred from government management to self-ownership and self-management under strata-title by the residents themselves. The aim is to develop a greater sense of ownership and pride in communal spaces, and to promote increased community participation and involvement. A culture of recreation and leisure is also to be encouraged, with recommendations that the civil service lead the way with the reduction of work hours from a five and a half day week to a five-day week, and a push to get Singaporeans to play more sports, especially water-based activities. There is also a series of recommendations to

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strengthen and refocus the welfare safety net with social and civic organizations playing a bigger role in service provision to the needy in the name of promoting a gracious and compassionate society. This latest set of recommended strategies has one striking connection. They are all citizenship-building strategies centred on the idea of place connection, participation, community-building and ideas of reciprocity. What these things have in common, I argue in the next section, is that they represent an attempt by the state to manufacture what Ghassan Hage has termed the “affective building blocks of home” (Hage 1997).

UNHOMELY ANXIETIES, GLOBAL CITY DILEMMAS As I have argued earlier, going global poses some very complex dilemmas that the government has attempted to deal with in the Singapore 21 policy. It is clear that the Singaporean state is caught in a conundrum. As a small nation Singapore has no option but to link into the global economy, yet for state viability it also needs committed citizens. The anxiety surrounding emigration signals the importance of “home” and “homeliness” in domesticating the citizens of Singapore and maintaining people’s commitment to the nation. As I have shown, the rhetoric of “home” emerges repeatedly in government speeches and policies. The government’s vision to transform Singapore into a global city, while strengthening its boundedness as a locality and national space, has led to the invocation of the metaphor of the nation as home. I will argue in this section that this metaphor is now a key ideological tool employed by the government to “localize” the transnational space of the global city. How real are these home-oriented concerns of the government? What is it about going global that so fundamentally complicates the creation of a national home in Singapore? How might we read the strategies put forward in the Singapore 21 report? A useful approach to these questions is to examine what it is that makes up a sense of homely belonging.19 Home runs much deeper than simply “identity” or “national identity”. Following Hage (1997, p. 100), we can think of “home” as made up of a series of affective building blocks, blocks of what he calls “homely feeling”. For home to come into being, these blocks need either in themselves, or with others, to provide four fundamental feelings: security, familiarity, community and a sense of possibility. Together these things provide a sense of homely belonging. This applies, Hage argues, to a sense of national belonging as much as it does to the sense of being at home in the private realm. At a national

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level these things together can give citizens a sense of participation and control (Hage 1997). Security, Hage argues, is that feeling that derives from the ability to satisfy our basic needs and the absence of threatening or harmful otherness. It goes deeper still when “we have a sense of empowerment to seek satisfaction of those needs, where we are subject to ‘our law’, where we are able to be a ‘wilful subject’ in our own home” (Hage 1997, p. 102). Familiarity relates to what Bourdieu has termed a “well-fitted habitus”, that state of being that arises when one has a sense of familiarity, maximal know-how, and a sense of spatial and practical control (Hage 1997, p. 103). Community relates to recognizing others as “one’s own” and that recognition being reciprocated. It is a feeling stemming from shared symbolic forms, shared morality, values and language. It is a space where at least “some people” can be morally relied on for help (Hage 1997, p. 103). Similarly, a sense of possibility signals the importance of hope, of the capacity to move into the world from a safe and homely place. Home is that shelter that allows us to explore opportunities, spring into action and return again, a space that is open enough to achieve personal growth, whether that be in terms of social mobility, emotional growth, or the accumulation of symbolic or monetary capital (Hage 1997, p. 103). These building blocks should be seen as ideal types. As Hage argues, homely structures are more an aspiration, an ideal goal. Homes are “homely because they provide intimations, hints of those feelings, and the possibility for more” (1997, p. 104). In his most recent book Hage (2003) characterizes citizenship as a form of gift exchange. In his view, healthy citizenship involves reciprocity between the members of the society and their nation-state. Hage argues that it is only when people feel well taken care of that they are capable of extending this gift to others (2003, p. 147). The kind of relationship that the Singaporean state is seeking to establish is one based on the ethic of social exchange where individuals feel some kind of genuine need for reciprocating the gift of social life which it provides. I will explore the nature of the gift exchange relationship between the Singaporean state and its citizens in more detail in Chapter 5. Hage’s model has much resonance in the government’s rhetoric about home. For example in a speech to Parliament, Prime Minister Goh described the Singapore 21, new vision to create a national “home”: Singapore 21 is about a Home for a People, not a hotel. A Home where we feel comfortable with ourselves, where we look after one another, where everyone makes the country succeed. Our vision for Singapore is

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not houses of bricks and mortar, but homes with hearts and dreams. People who feel confident and secure. People who believe in Singapore and its future (Straits Times, 6 June 1997).

Goh’s speech uncannily echoes the themes of security, familiarity, community and a sense of possibility that Hage outlines. In some sense, it implicitly suggests that the government’s earlier policy of homeownership and asset-enhancement have failed to create the affective dimensions of homely belonging to the nation. Understanding these building blocks of homeliness therefore allows us to see the challenges Singapore faces in embracing globalization, and the government’s keen awareness of those challenges. As I discussed in Chapter 1, at the time of independence the Singapore government was faced with the arduous task of integrating an immigrant population whose national allegiance was to their respective homelands. The population therefore were “products of several interlocking histories and cultures, belonging at the same time to several “homes” — and thus no one particular home” (Hall 1993, p. 362). We can see the anxiety surrounding this and the extent to which it relates to the “homely” issues outlined above, in statements such as George Yeo’s, the then Minister for Information and the Arts: Almost everyone here has roots in a diaspora, either Chinese, Indian or Malay. They all got here by the British empire. But if we are just diasporic peoples, then Singapore is no more than a hotel, a way station, for everyone to come and to refresh themselves before moving on. […] what endures for Singapore? This is a problem we’re confronting all the time. So on the one hand we welcome foreign talent, and on the other hand we encourage Singaporeans to see the world as their oyster. But at some level people must take national service seriously and be prepared to die here. […] Unlike Israel, where there’s a sacredness, a holy history, we don’t have that here. Yet we’ve got to make Singapore sacred. It will take a long time. (Cited in Zachary 2000, p. 235)

The minister’s words draw heavily on affective imagery, a desire to make Singapore sacred, a place for which Singaporeans are prepared to die. It is clear that defining membership to an imagined community (the nation), developing a sense of place, and maintaining a bounded national culture based on affect and belonging has become, in the government’s mind, the central problem facing Singapore. We can also see echoes of Hage’s schema around “possibility” and “security” in the economic goals of Singapore. Without doubt, the

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government’s vision of healthy economic growth that benefits all Singaporeans is a key aspect of its conceptualization of “homeliness”. As Quah (2000, p. 78) argues, economic success has provided Singaporeans with the material foundation for enhancing their commitment to Singapore. One of the earliest and most significant home-oriented state projects was the development of Singapore’s home-ownership scheme. At present, more than 85 per cent of Singaporeans own their homes, which is a significantly higher home ownership rate than in most developed countries (Bernick and Cervero 1997). The government believed that by ensuring home ownership, Singaporeans could be given a stake in the country and that this would give citizens a sense of belonging and commitment. However without the other affective building blocks, economic success alone would not be enough to anchor Singaporeans there, as evidenced by the number of Singaporeans emigrating every year and wishing to emigrate. As I have pointed out earlier, Singaporeans are not generally leaving the city-state for political reasons, fear of persecution or poor living conditions. Rather it is because of the limited sense of possibility that Singapore as an island home provides. That is to say, a “home has to be a space open enough so that one can perceive opportunities of a “better life”; […] the opportunity of advancement, whether as social mobility, emotional growth, or in the form of accumulation of symbolic or monetary capital” (Hage 1997, p. 103). Singaporeans fantasizing about emigration perceive that they can achieve a higher standard of living elsewhere along with a less stressful lifestyle. As we will see in Chapter 5, they feel that much more is demanded of them in Singapore in return for their high standard of living than would be required of them in Western countries overseas. The price of success and upward mobility is seen as much higher in Singapore, always linked in government rhetoric and policies as hinging upon the performance of the Singapore economy. Individual success is always framed in terms of the responsibility to Singapore and by an ever present sense of survival anxiety. As I discuss in Chapter 5, the constant sense of anxiety around Singapore’s future and the demands placed on individual Singaporeans clearly impedes this sense of homely possibility for some. Reflecting on Hage’s scheme, the use of the “home” metaphor and the need to build what the government terms the “heartware” of Singapore is by no means surprising. The four affective building blocks of home are very clearly reflected in the concerns of the government and the strategies it has set in train since the late 1990s.

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ANALYSING THE SINGAPORE 21 “HEARTWARE” SOLUTIONS: STRATEGIES TO CREATE MORE HOMELY CITIZENS In light of this government-driven homemaking enterprise, the expressions of mutually opposing terms such as “hotel/home” and “hardware/ heartware” which appear regularly in speeches, and the deliberate construction of contradictory trends found in the Singapore 21 report are useful starting points for understanding how the Singapore political elite is grappling with and managing the global/local tension. Although there is a degree of crisis engineering, these binary oppositions are not merely ideological constructions, but point to some very real contradictions in which a globalizing Singapore finds itself.20 The strategies developed by the government in Singapore 21 and the subsequent related Remaking Singapore report are extremely interesting because of their creative focus on negotiating homeliness within a global frame. Underscoring all the practical suggestions in the reports is the more abstract idea of creating the committed national citizen to live in the new global city. Of course, the strategies outlined in the Singapore 21 five-point plan were impelled by more instrumental motives. For instance, the greying population and the declining fertility rate have raised concerns about the country’s ability to provide for aged care (Chan 2000). This explains the calls for strong families. The other rallying calls; “All Singaporeans Matter” and “Opportunities for All” are about balancing the need to attract “foreign talent” (which the government deems necessary for Singapore’s economic survival) with the interests of Singaporeans themselves. The remaining rallying calls, “The Singapore Heartbeat” and “Active Citizens” are to encourage Singaporeans overseas to stay connected and committed to Singapore and to encourage local Singaporeans to participate in civic activities.21 However, these ideals serve not only economic ends. They also tie in with the government’s ongoing project of creating affective ties to Singapore among the national citizenry. This is especially apparent in the recommendations in Remaking Singapore (Singapore Government Press Releases, www.gov.sg/sprinter/ 12 June 2003). If we categorize these in terms of the reciprocity model sketched above, we might, for example, be able to read the move to enhance the social security safety net, the celebration of heritage and the “museumizing” of Singapore’s social history, and the emphasis on greater leisure time through a decrease in working hours as “gifts from the nation”. In turn Singaporeans are encouraged to reciprocate through becoming involved in grassroots community organizations, in voluntary

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activities, in the development of communal spaces and in proudly displaying the national flag. Moreover, the “gifts” offered by the nation are frequently directed toward place-oriented and the affective. For example, Singaporeans are encouraged to relate to heritage sites which evoke memories for them. Indeed, one of the Remaking Singapore suggestions for the social history museum was to display public housing interiors from times past. The report refers to the museum as a “family album” for Singapore. Singaporeans are also encouraged to play sports, swim, and enjoy the environment, and breathe Singapore’s air. They are encouraged to relate to the flag and the Merlion emblem (the national symbol) through the pledge to nation. All of these are strategies designed to evoke an affective commitment to and relationship with the place which is Singapore. Together they represent strategies to develop the sorts of building blocks of homeliness that Hage describes. In addition, the suggestion to develop so-called “community activities” which focus on volunteerism and public campaigns such as “Kindness Week” represent efforts to instil a sense of community and trust among citizens. They are also about a substitute welfare system, engendering a sense of security, a sense whereby citizens can rely on one another for support in times of hardship. The consultation processes are aimed at giving a sense of security especially with regard to the importance of foreign talents coming to Singapore, easing people’s fears of competition for employment. These consultations are also aimed at offering a sense of hope and possibility, a sense that citizens are “wilful subjects” in their own nation. The affective building blocks of familiarity and community flow are also featured in many of the suggestions outlined in Remaking Singapore report. Shared symbols of “we-ness” are also promoted through the celebration of everyday memories, symbols of nationhood, shared values and moral codes. In the government’s view, these strategies collectively offer the affective structures of homeliness, offering hope and possibility to Singapore’s citizens.

THE USEFULNESS OF “FOLK”: APPROPRIATING SINGAPORE’S HEARTLANDERS In the quote at the beginning of the chapter, Goh Chok Tong raised the spectre of “Hotel Singapore”. This metaphor express not only a fear about losing “the best and brightest” but also the conceptual view that “real cosmopolitans are regarded as never quite at home again, in the way real locals can be” (Hannerz 1996, p. 110). This perception surfaced

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when Prime Minister Goh in his 1999 National Day Rally speech pointed out that as Singapore becomes more international, two broad categories of people will emerge. He noted that one category consists of “cosmopolitans” referring to those whose outlook is international, who are highly educated, skilled and mobile, and the other consists of the “heartlanders” with very “local” orientations and interests, less mobile and bounded to Singapore. The challenge for us, according to Prime Minister Goh is to “get the heartlanders to understand what the cosmopolitans contribute to Singapore’s and their own well-being, and to get the cosmopolitans to feel an obligation and sense of duty to the heartlanders” (Straits Times, 23 August 1999). The heartlanders are the taxi-drivers, stallholders, shop owners, production workers and contractors, and so on. They are useful for more than practical ends. For the Prime Minister, “heartlanders play a major role in maintaining our core values and our social stability. They are the core of our society. Without them, there will be no safe and stable Singapore, no Singapore system, no Singapore brand name” (Straits Times, 23 August 1999). Heartlanders allow the government to cultivate an educated and cosmopolitan elite while maintaining a sense of locality, a sense that Singapore has a domesticated “folk”. The traditional view of the nation is that a national culture has boundaries within which resides a unique “folk”, characterized by some kind of sameness. Of course in the global age this is patently untenable. In Singapore’s case, the “Heartlander” can be appropriated to act as Singapore’s locality and its boundaries, while the cosmopolitans represent the ability to connect beyond those boundaries. Together they represent, to borrow a phrase from Prime Minister Goh, the “Singapore Brand”. At the same time, the government recognizes that it is this mutual obligation that is essential to create a sense of home through community and citizenship practices. It is through the productive and reciprocal exchange between the heartlander and the cosmopolitan, the local and the global, that the government hopes to pursue national survival into the 21st century. To quote Goh Chok Tong again, “if cosmopolitans and heartlanders cease to identify with each other, our society will fall apart” (Straits Times, 23 August 1999). The question remains however, do Singaporeans feel any debt to Singapore, or do they feel that the nation is taking more than it gives? They may feel the government dominates a system which works them too hard and that they may have to give less if they went elsewhere. The question remains therefore as to how successful the state has

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been and can be in terms of distilling a sense of affective citizenship among the population.

SYNTHETIC HOMELINESS AND THE LOGIC OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN SINGAPORE The Singapore government has made a concerted effort to invest the nation with a patina of homeliness in response to its perception that Singapore was at risk of becoming nothing but a hotel, a place of temporariness and transit, without character or attachment, impersonal and cold. In this concluding section I draw on a number of examples of Singapore 21 in practice, to argue that there is a fundamentally instrumentalist logic at the heart of these home-building efforts. The logic of economic determinism overrides all other aspects of home in the Singapore 21 policy. For example, in the opening lines of the quote with which we opened this chapter, Prime Minister Goh forthrightly states that “we need the resources from a sound, competitive economy to build a world-class home, and we need a world-class home to anchor Singaporeans to create a first-world economy for Singapore”. In this topdown, state-driven discourse, all other “homely needs” are seen as subordinate to this fundamental requirement, and their fulfilment is seen as arising out of it. It also highlights that the government is aware that its own legitimacy rests on its economic record. In many ways, it has become a victim of its own success. As Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Brigadier-General Lee Hsien Loong (Lee Kuan Yew’s son) emphasized in a 1999 press interview, “while priorities will be given to education and to making Singapore 21 a reality, the overarching objectives for Singapore in the millennium are still economic” (cited in Chan 2000, p. 261). The projects developed out of Singapore 21 are permeated with instrumentalist logic. For example, in practice, the Singapore 21 “Active Citizen” ideal, which outwardly aims to create more civic minded citizens, to a large extent represents government efforts to minimize welfare expenditures. The Singapore government has one of the lowest per capita expenditure on social security and welfare with as little as 5 per cent annually compared to an international average of around 30 per cent. (Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion 1998: http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/ Case.) Beyond public housing, education, mass transportation and health care, the government provides little social welfare; instead relying heavily on voluntary efforts and associations (Chua 1998c). The self-help groups

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established during the 1990s, such as Mendaki, SINDA, and CDAC (discussed in Chapter 2) which cater to the needs of individual ethnic communities, are both racialized and community specific. Without a national institution with welfare programmes designed to assist lowerincome families, regardless of ethnicity, the government recognized that it is difficult for a communal civic mindedness to emerge. As I pointed out earlier in the chapter, while there have been efforts to expand organizations beyond ethnic lines since Singapore 21 and to encourage broader national involvement in civic activities such as volunteerism, charitable works and so on, they remain largely focused on filling the large gaps in state social security and welfare. Another area in which Goh Chok Tong has tried to distinguish his style of government from the Lee Kuan Yew regime is through an emphasis on consultation. He has demonstrated this through The Next Lap policy committee through to the initiatives of Singapore 21 and Remaking Singapore. However, a kind of synthetic homeliness pervades the government’s notion of “consultation”. It too is subjected to the instrumentalist imperative. While there are certainly consultations at grassroots level, they are invariably organized and regulated by the government. The information gleaned from them is filtered and steered according to the government’s economic and social goals. Even the heads of these various policy committees are members of the government. A classic example of the government’s inability to embrace a truly consultative process appears in another of Goh Chok Tong’s speeches: Singapore will always be like a boat shooting the rapids. Those who have done white-water rafting would understand my analogy. They will understand the importance of the steersman as the boat negotiates the rocks in a fast-flowing, frothy river. The government is like this steersman or captain. I have experienced the thrills and dangers of white-water rafting in New Zealand. Once in the boat, I put my faith in the captain and did what he told me to do. Consultation took place before I stepped into the boat. Once I was in I had to play my part as a member of the crew. Do not think that Singapore is sailing in calm waters and therefore we can take risks. Or that we are freer to rock the boat because we now have a sturdier boat and each one of us is equipped with a safety helmet and life jacket (Straits Times, 14 October 1999).

Despite the apparent move toward a more consultative approach in Singapore 21, the government is still clear about defining the kind of topics appropriate for public discussion. The government has coined the term “Out of Bounds”, or as they are more commonly known “OB”

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markers, to refer to the limits of political discussion. “OB” markers are those issues the government considers to be too sensitive or potentially destabilizing to public order (Ho 2000, p. 439). Examples of “OB” issues are religious and racial issues and issues that threaten “national security”. Out of the Singapore 21 policy came an initiative in September 2000 to set up a “Speakers Corner” in Hong Lim Park, central Singapore — akin to that found in Hyde Park, London. According to the government, “Speakers Corner” would be a forum where “people can say what they want — within the law” (Singapore Bulletin, October 2000 ). Despite the appearance of offering a fresh new forum to facilitate freedom of speech, speakers are in fact required to register for a license at the police post in the park. Potential speakers have to be Singaporean citizens and must have their topic for discussion approved by the police before being granted permission to speak. Licences are granted so long as the key “OB” markers of racial and religious harmony and national security are not crossed. What exactly falls within and outside of these markers however remains fluid and subject to government whim. As Chua (1998b, p. 200) has argued, “under such conditions, allegiance to the state is perhaps one of pragmatic convenience”. The sense of pragmatism that dominates Singaporeans’ relationship with the PAP state in turn has been interpreted by the government as a sign of a lack of affective relationship with the nation. I will explore this issue in Chapter 5. Unsurprisingly, after the initial novelty wore off, Singaporeans lost interest in “Speakers Corner”, although it remains for the government a valuable symbol of its “commitment to consultation and civic participation”. Another peculiar aspect of Singapore’s home-building policy is the notion that “heartware” and an affective sense of home can somehow be created from the top down. While certainly elements of the affective building blocks of homeliness can be created through government policy, the most powerfully affective elements are formed organically and so cannot be engineered. Such attempts seem a somewhat perverse and ironic inversion of modernism’s rational efficiency. As Habermas reminds us (1984), modernity tends to be dominated by instrumental reason. According to Habermas, the function of instrumental reason is to attain efficiency through the optimum calculation of the best “means” for an already given end. In the context of contemporary economic demands under globalization, these ends are most often given already by the capitalistic environments “whose goals are perceived as imperative and non-negotiable” (Outhwaite 1998, p. 206). Moreover, for scholars such as

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Parsons, modernity is characterized in part as a form of social organization in which neutral rational and instrumental reason dominates over emotional, or affective forms of action (Holton 1998, p. 101). Clearly the realm of “home” and affective attachment lie with the latter. However the perversity of the Singapore government’s gaze can be seen in its attempts to appropriate this organic, affective realm in the very pursuit of rationalist economic modernity. Even the term “heartware” is an industrial one appropriated by the government from the Sony Corporation who use it to refer to their social infrastructure, software and human resources. Clearly Sony recognizes the benefits of a happy workforce for business success, as does the Singapore state vis-à-vis its own citizens. It is as if even emotional attachments have to be manufactured and managed to achieve the greatest economic effect. It evokes images of the “software” that makes the nation’s “hardware” function. It does seem the government is determined to manufacture a sense of civic belonging, rather than allowing this to develop organically through a healthy, participatory, democratic culture.

CONCLUSION As I have shown throughout this chapter, at the heart of this desire for home-building and the strategies put in place to achieve a sense of home, is the difficulty signalled by the dichotomized problems presented at the beginning of the Singapore 21 report. How to attract talent versus looking after Singaporeans; how to achieve a less stressful life while retaining the drive to succeed; how to be internationalized while also being a home; how to balance the needs of the elderly with the aspirations of the young. These basic tenets of the Singapore 21 policy all signal the central dilemma the government faces; how to go global while remaining local, how to be open to the world, how to be a global city, while being a home to its citizens and keeping them committed to and focussed on the success of “their” nation. And as Harper (1997, pp. 261–62) so rightly puts it, “at the core of the public doctrine of modern Singapore lies a belief that, born in adversity, the nation demands an active and intense commitment from its citizens and a strong and vigilant government”. Harper (1997, p. 264) goes on to suggest that “Singapore is a minilaboratory for the study of globalism and its ambiguous belongings”. The processional development of national culture, identity and a rooted citizenry in Singapore is clearly not entirely a product of internal factors. As Prime Minister Goh pointed out:

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We are a small city-state, a tiny speck on the map. In Asia alone, there are hundreds of cities with a bigger population than Singapore’s. We do not have the advantage of a hinterland, unlike Hong Kong and Shanghai, which serve two different regions of China. We could be just another “ordinary” city in Asia, with a vision limited by our geographical and population size, or we could become an international city of excellence, growing beyond our physical and demographic limitations. The choice is clear (Straits Times Interactive, 11 May 1999).

As Singapore aspires to position itself beyond “Asia” and instead akin to global cities such as New York, London, and Tokyo, it is apparent that its national cultural identity is becoming ever more responsive to global economic and social conditions. The state’s reconfiguration of Singapore’s identity in strategic ways through its interventions to generate an emotive, affective and situated sense of belonging is intended to safeguard and maintain what it perceives as the changing character of Singaporeanness. The Next Lap, Singapore 21 and Remaking Singapore policy strategies embody, in the words of Harper (1997, p. 262), “the demands of globalism and the desire for authenticity”. They betray a deep anxiety based on the state’s desire to make Singaporeans feel at “home” rather than living as utilitarian “hotel guests”. However, as we will see in the next chapter, one of the central aspects of going global is to create a cosmopolitan sense of place, populated by cosmopolitan Singaporean subjects. If, as Hage argues, homeliness is in part derived from a sense of practical and spatial familiarity and control, then a cosmopolitan place will create subjects whose sense of home is not necessarily confined to the boundaries of Singapore. Or put differently, the cosmopolitan can only be at home in the transnational space of the Singaporean “hotel”. In the next chapter, I will examine the government’s efforts to make Singapore a world-class home through place making and cultural programmes as a further means of resolving the issue of emigrating Singaporeans as well as making Singapore attractive to “foreign talents” — global professionals.

Notes 1. Singapore’s dramatic economic transformation as it is well-documented has been largely engineered by the PAP government (Rodan 1985, 1989, 1997). According to Heyzer and Yao (1989, pp. 69–70): The internationalisation of the economy … has to be explained not only by the structural response of foreign capital, but also by the active official policy.

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The PAP government had always intended that multinationals should form the base of the Singaporean economy. It was hoped that the internationalisation of the economy, foreign expertise and resources would be harnessed to serve Singapore’s national interests. … In contemporary Singapore society, the changing social formation results not only from external economic factors, but also from the dialectical interplay of factors emanating from the top (i.e. the state) and from factors pushing from below (i.e. worker’s participation) with factors at the top tending to dominate increasingly.

In the 1960s, the government adopted an export-oriented industrialization programme based on advice from the World Bank and a United Nations Industrial Survey Mission headed by Dutch economist, Albert Winsemius. By introducing fiscal concessions and other incentives, and providing cheap labour, Singapore was able to encourage direct foreign investment and shape its comparative advantage in the production of labour-intensive manufactures. The export-oriented industrialization programme was highly successful as foreign investment in manufacturing rose from S$157 million in 1965 to S$3,054 million in 1974. However, Singapore was heavily hit by the 1974–75 global recession, resulting in sizeable investment cutbacks and job losses. The government quickly responded by introducing a new economic strategy which encouraged high value-added, technology-intensive and human-capital intensive investments (that is, electronics, computer, chemical, aerospace and machinery industries). The Singapore economy was also further diversified extending its commercial and manufacturing role to include financial, marketing, technical and other corporate services to its network. Foreign companies were given new tax and other incentives to make Singapore their operational headquarters (see Rodan 1997; Perry, Kong and Yeoh 1997). 2. Haley and Low (1998) argue that since the 1970s both policy makers and academics have touted Singapore as a regional model for its economic growth; economic zones; public housing and town planning; technological upgrading; public transportation; traffic and environmental management; successful demographic transition; cleanliness; absence of corruption; efficiency, bureaucratic transparency and freedom of red tape; magnificent airport and national airlines; and strategic direction. 3. The regionalization drive led to the establishment of industrial parks and manufacturing operations in China (provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiansu, Liaoning, Shandong, Yunnan and Sichuan), Indonesia (Riau islands, Batam and Bintan), Vietnam and India. This concerted attempt to more fully integrate Singapore-based enterprises with regional economies is an attempt to transcend the limitations of a city-state economy. 4. Singapore’s per capita income or Gross National Product surged from a low S$1,168 in 1965 to S$22,645 in 1990. By the late 1990s per capita income was more than S$35,000, the second highest after Japan in the Asia-Pacific region (Grunsven 2000, pp. 100–101). The continuous high economic growth

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that Singapore has experienced has been attributed to the government’s deliberate and on-going strategy of restructuring Singapore’s economy to maintain its international competitiveness (Grunsven 2000). This transformation has been supported by government and international reports which assert that Singapore has a global presence as a major commercial and financial centre as well as a significant location for the regional headquarters of major multi-national corporations. For indicators and ranking of Singapore as a world city see, for example, Murray and Perera (1996), Perry, Kong and Yeoh (1997), Menkhoff and Wirtz (1999), Baum (1999), Forbes (1999) and Yeoh and Chang (2001). According to Yong (1992b, p. 27) the government deemed that “the struggle despite a resource-poor base in Switzerland was relevant to Singapore’s experience and identity. The same could be argued for Switzerland’s preference for pollution-free, high values industries; its practice of multilingualism; its defence posture both on the home front and against external predators; its stature as headquarters for many international organizations and multi-national business concerns”. The idea for The Next Lap vision plan was first mooted by Goh during a Parliamentary committee meeting in 1989. After two years of private and public discussions among various government and private groups, the document was unveiled to the wider public. The careful and deliberate planning of the urban landscape of Singapore was envisaged in the Master Plan which came into effect in 1959 (subsequently reviewed every five years). The Master Plan, as Perry, Kong and Yeoh (1997, p. 193) point out, provided the statutory basis for controlling and coordinating private and public, physical developments within the country, regulating land values and the levy of development charges. It also stipulated the zoning of sites for appropriate developments such as housing, commercial, industrial and social needs of the country. The Concept Plan was a guide for long-term public development that took into account the projected population and catering for their various social needs. The first Concept Plan introduced in 1971 envisaged a Ring Plan for the city whereby transport networks circumvent the island allowing for the dispersion of the population away from the city-centre into satellite towns. Complementing these developments was the conceptual realization of the Garden City. The idea behind the “Garden City” plan was literally to introduce flora into the city to produce a tropical aura. See, for example, Perry, Kong and Yeoh (1997) for a historical overview on urban and environmental planning in Singapore; Chua (1997b) for a review on urban development and the Concept Plan; Wong (1989) and Savage (1997) on the Greening of Singapore. Over the last three decades Singapore has enlarged its total land area through various land reclamation projects. By the end of 1999, it had reclaimed 2,768 hectares of land around the island. The work to upgrade old Housing Development Board flats commenced at

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11.

12.

13. 14.

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the beginning of 1993. The first six precincts to undergo upgrading were Marine Parade, Kim Keat, Ang Mo Kio, Lorong Lew Lian, Clementi and Telok Blangah. The upgrading project involved enhancing the external façade of the apartment blocks, and construction of utility rooms, balconies and new windows. Other improvements included lift lobbies, more landscaped areas, multi-storey car parks, barbecue pits, an exercise area and covered walkways (see Straits Times, 4 February 1993). For detailed accounts on the economic indicators, developmental approach and status of Singapore’s economic programme refer to Murray and Perera (1996), Haley and Low (1998), Menkhoff and Wirtz (1999), Savage (1999). Some of the prime indicators of Singapore’s world city status can be found at the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network website www.1boro.ac.uk/gawc. See, for example, Murray and Perera (1996) and Menkhoff and Wirtz (1999). According to Reich (1993, pp. 174–78) routine production services are generally undertaken by blue-collar workers; in-person services include the jobs of retail sales people, waitpersons, janitors, secretaries, hairdressers, taxi-drivers and security guards. The symbolic-analytic services are carried out by research scientists, various kinds of engineers, investment bankers, lawyers, any number of consultants, corporate head-hunters, publishers, writers, musicians, etc. Towards the end of 1997, Prime Minister Goh appointed Teo Chee Hean, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence, as Chairman of the Singapore 21 committee. The Chairman then appointed ten members to the committee — all of them PAP Parliamentarians. In keeping with the government’s “consultative” approach to policy-making, the subject committee focusing on one dilemma met with some 6,000 Singaporeans from all walks of life including members of Parliament, volunteers in welfare and community organizations, lawyers, unionists, businessmen, technicians and teachers to seek their views and suggestions. A diary of Singapore 21 events and activities can be found on the official website at www.singapore21.org.sg. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong announced the idea of setting up the government-sponsored Remaking Singapore committee during his 2002 New Year’s Day message. A committee comprising Ministers, PAP Parliamentarians, civil servants and professionals was established in February 2002. The Remaking Singapore Committee was sub-divided into two subject committees. One was called the Beyond Condo Subject committee and the other Beyond Cars Subject Committee. The subject committees were tasked to identify through consultation with members of the Singapore public, new ideas that would enhance the sense of belonging and ownership among Singaporeans beyond the material stakes such as condominiums and cars. The recommendations of the committee are subject to government approval and

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will be debated in Parliament in late 2003 (Singapore Government Press Releases, www.gov.sg/sprinter/12 June 2003). 19. There is of course a huge and rich body of academic literature on the concept of home. This can be divided into two fields: one involves the theorization of “home” in relation to experiences of displacement and deterritorialization (for example: migrants, exiles, diasporic subjects, cosmopolitans, transnational communities, travellers etc.); the other involves dealing with the consequences of a range of processes (colonization, modernity, globalization etc.) that are said to unsettle traditional conceptions of a stable “home”. For discussions on home from the perspective of the experience of migration and mobility (see for example, Olwig 1997, Rapport and Dawson 1998 and Fortier 2000) and for the unsettling and disruption of “home” by the forces of globalization (see Appadurai 1996, Massey 1994, Allon 2000 and Morley 2001). In both instances, the concept of “home” has come to be conceived as radically altered, fluid and always evolving. 20. The term “crisis-management” coined by David Birch (1993) describes the way in which the Singapore government presents an issue as a social problem facing the nation and goes about resolving this problem through the media. Some recent narratives of national crisis include “the crisis of reproduction” (Heng and Devan 1992), “the crisis of tradition” (Birch 1993) and “social behaviour crisis” (Clements 1999). The “crisis of reproduction” (see Heng and Devan 1992) was staged in the early 80s when the former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, concerned over the fall in the fertility rate and a rise in the number of unmarried women in Singapore, disclosed that this would have dire implications for Singapore’s future economic prosperity. Following this revelation, the government implemented a series of measures to resolve the crisis, encouraging and providing incentives to educated and in particular Chinese women to get married. The “crisis of tradition” is yet another example. It was staged in the late 1980s as government officials feared the loss of tradition through Westernization. This then led to the introduction of religious studies, Confucian values and moral education in schools, finally culminating in the passing of the White Paper on Shared Values. More recently as Clements (1999) has highlighted a “crisis of social behaviour” is being staged in view of poor and unpleasant social behaviours displayed by Singaporeans. Efforts are underway to correct, educate and discipline Singaporeans. The aim is to create courteous, gracious and civicminded Singaporeans. Basically such exercises serve two purposes. First, they are a self-reflexive exercise whereby the nation’s attention is turned on itself by presenting a threat to its cohesiveness and long-term survival. Second it reinforces the role of the state as the facilitator and ultimate guarantor of that cohesiveness. Government officials then communicate this crisis on various occasions in order to justify the formulation of particular socio-cultural policies.

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21. The “Singapore Heartbeat” ideal aims at reaching out to Singaporeans at home and abroad. One policy initiative developed to bring overseas Singaporeans into the national fold was the Singapore International Foundation, set up by the government to assist Singaporeans overseas. The foundation set up clubs in various parts of the world where there are large concentrations of Singaporeans. The government argues that the overseas clubs serve to bring together fellow Singaporeans living overseas to keep them in touch with happenings in Singapore. Since the launch of Singapore 21, the government has organized several Singapore International Foundation overseas conferences and online chat forums in an effort to link overseas Singaporeans with the local Singaporean community. However while these initiatives represent clear efforts to embrace Singaporeans overseas, when it comes to more formal means of recognizing their citizenship from afar the government has been somewhat more reticent to relinquish control. Despite the increasingly large number of Singaporeans working, living and studying overseas, the Singapore government has been reluctant to introduce overseas voting. Nonetheless, in keeping with the Singapore 21 “Singapore Heartbeat” ideal, the government raised the possibility of allowing overseas voting for the first time in Singapore’s history. In a speech at a Ministerial Forum on 30 January 2001, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pointed out that the government is looking into this matter given that there are about 100,000 Singaporeans are living, working and studying overseas. A bill was tabled during the April 2001 seating of the Parliament. Following the Parliamentary debate, a motion was passed to amend the Parliamentary Elections Act to provide for overseas voting. It was stipulated that overseas voting would be conducted in the next General Election at five of Singapore’s diplomatic missions, namely Washington, London, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Canberra. The selection of limited overseas voting venues was justified on the grounds that there are significant numbers of Singaporeans living in America, Europe, China, Hong Kong and Australia, and that these missions have enough staff to conduct the elections. However following the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, the Singapore government announced that overseas voting would not go ahead due to security and safety concerns.

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian 4. Re-Branding Singapore articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg > 119 Studies. Individual

4 RE-BRANDING SINGAPORE: Cosmopolitan Cultural and Urban Redevelopment in a Global City-State

Yes, in the 21st century, Singapore will be a great cosmopolitan city. A vibrant economy. Good jobs. Cultural liveliness. Artistic creativity. Social innovation. Good schools. World-class universities. Technological advances. Intellectual discussion. Museums. Night-clubs and theatres. Good food. Fun places. Efficient public transport. Safe streets. Happy people. This is not a hotchpotch of images concocted to tantalise you. It is a vision within our reach. (Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Straits Times, 20 December 1996.)

INTRODUCTION Once again, Goh Chok Tong’s colourful and tantalizing image of Singapore in the new millennium has all the hallmarks of the PAP’s developmentalism, efficiency, and orderliness written over it. At the same time, it also speaks of a new kind of Singapore which is lively, innovative, fun, and exciting. The idea of Singapore as “cosmopolitan city”, although not new, is an interesting proposition as a national response to globalization.1 In Chapter 3, I discussed the first distinct policy aimed at developing Singapore into a global city, The Next Lap. That policy was generally confined to the material dimensions of going global: finance, transport, expertise and so forth. However, by the late 1990s the government clearly realized that becoming competitive globally also required a shift in cultural terms. The new global economy demands entrepreneurial and creative workers with the social skills to succeed in a transnationalized workforce of professional cosmopolitan elites. And cities wanting to attract global capital in this new economy, and the professionals who come with it, have to be interesting and attractive enough places. In this chapter I investigate the Singapore state’s cultural policy strategies.

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This chapter begins by examining the idea of “cultural development” and the government’s management of “culture” in the Singapore context. I define cultural development quite broadly, to include not just arts policies but also urban development policies and certain public education programmes. I want to argue that the government has pursued cultural development especially in the early 1990s with two key goals in mind. The first was to promote Singapore as a Global City for the Arts and Culture, and the second was to move towards enhancing the quality of life of Singaporeans. In the late 1990s however, the government began employing the term “cosmopolitan Singapore” in promoting the city-state as well as in its nationalistic discourse. The idea of a “cosmopolitan” Singapore has become further linked to three additional objectives. It seeks to create a “Singapore brand” to attract global capital; it is addressed to Singaporeans wishing to emigrate to encourage them to stay; and aims to persuade skilled foreigners to come and live in Singapore. Following my discussion of these three objectives, I then consider some recent cultural policy strategies outlined by the government, to make Singapore a cosmopolitan city, in particular, The Renaissance City Report (2000) and the national Speak Good English Campaign (2000). This is followed by an examination of how the concept of the cosmopolitanism has been politically appropriated to reinvent and “re-brand” the Singapore citystate as a cosmopolitan global city in an increasingly globalized world. In light of these reflections, I advance two main arguments in this chapter. First, while in Western contexts the term “cosmopolitanism” is used to describe the characteristics and outcomes of free-flowing, interconnected transnational relationships, in Singapore it has been harnessed by the state in the pursuit of economic success and hegemony. It is therefore, a tool to contain globalization, to manage it, rather than a description of some natural outcome of it. The second important argument is that there is a fundamental contradiction in the state’s promotion of Singapore as a “global city” on the one hand, and its nation-building aims on the other. Singapore is at once a world city and a nation-state. Can the government make Singapore a cosmopolitan, exciting and fun world city and produce a “global” sense of place for its citizens but nevertheless bind them to the nation? What implications does this have for Singapore’s broader nation-building aims? Chapter 4 closes by reflecting on the paradox associated with Singapore’s vision of creating a cosmopolitan city. I argue that the particular form of cosmopolitanism for which the government is striving is also one which fundamentally undermines the unique place-orientation

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of Singapore, and possibilities for an organic Singaporean national “we-ness” to emerge.

CULTURE AND THE STATE In 1980, Singaporean academic Koh Tai Ann noted that having achieved spectacular economic success as one of the newly industrialized countries with the highest income per capita and the highest growth in real Gross National Product (GNP) in the region, Singapore has turned its attention increasingly to “cultural development” (Koh 1980, p. 292). In Koh’s view, “cultural development” in Singapore is dictated by and coincides with the idea of economic development. Koh (1980, p. 292) argues that “because commitment to rapid growth and hence to more technology necessitates far-reaching changes in Singapore’s whole way of life, ‘cultural development’ becomes the provision of a form of supporting and stabilizing, yet counteracting force”. For instance, the government’s emphasis on moral and religious education in schools, and the formulation of a national ideology and support for “traditional arts” in the 1980s were efforts to combat the “supposed deracinating effects of Westernization and ‘Western values’ ” (Koh 1980, p. 292). The ultimate purpose of such cultural development policies according to Koh is the creation of a “national culture”. Though the function of a “national culture” is not clearly or consistently defined by the state, Koh believes that it serves to engender the following objectives: To provide a framework of values supporting the collective effort towards continuing economic progress and, therefore, national survival. To express a national cultural identity by including as its sources, yet transcending, the separate ethnic cultures. Such an identity, besides serving as a means of and expression of “cohesion” among all the races, also by preserving “traditional Asian values” and “roots” militates against the dangers of “deculturalization” or deracination endemic in a too thoroughgoing Westernization consequent upon modernization. To mitigate, through the arts (especially the “traditional arts”), the effects of an exclusively and therefore coarsening materialistic ethos created by concentration on economic gain — or, to use the official term for it, “moneytheism” (Koh 1980, p. 292).

This threefold approach to “cultural development” necessitates an investigation of how the term “culture” itself is understood by the government in Singapore. Sociologist Geoffrey Benjamin (1976) offered

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one of the earliest contributions to the study of the constitutive role of culture in the national context of Singapore. He observes that: “Culture” as an object of public discussion in Singapore almost always means a traditional, ethnically delimited culture, a Golden Age to which each “race” can look back separately for inspiration. “Singapore culture”, on the few occasions when that term is used, refers normally not to any new Singaporean synthesis or innovation but simply to an agglomerate formed of the separate Chinese, Malay, Indian, and European cultural traditions. Each “culture” remains unchanged and unmerged with the others. This, at least, is the standard Singaporean model (Benjamin 1976, pp. 120–21).

Although Benjamin made this observation in 1976, the notion of “culture” that he identifies in Singapore continues to underpin the ideology and official practices of multiracialism today. It is not my intention here to offer a further discussion of Singapore’s multiracial policy, as it has been extensively critiqued elsewhere in the literature (see also Chapter 1).2 What remains to be said here is that “cultural development” in this area is very much about preservation, retaining cultural traditions and authenticity.3 The representation of multiracialism in official practices plays an important role in maintaining the presumed cultural uniqueness of each “race” and in perpetuating a repertoire of cultural symbols attached to the respective racial groups. At the same time, however, the notion of multiracialism in terms of “cultural diversity” or otherwise more commonly referred to as “multiculturalism” is frequently invoked to promote and describe Singapore as an Asian cosmopolitan consumer “paradise”. Another sociologist, John Clammer (1985, p. 162; 1998), observed that the employment of the concept of “culture” in Singapore can mean several things. One is the equation of culture with a fixed and reified notion of ethnicity, as suggested by Benjamin. Another is the equating of culture with “high culture”. Here, the use of the term culture refers at times to a “Singaporean culture” that does not yet exist but lies somewhere in the yet unrealized future. Clammer argues that a third definition of culture, which closely relates to the second, is that (inevitably since Singapore culture does not yet exist) the “man-in-the-street [sic] does not have a culture, or if he [sic] does, it is a shaky and unstable structure, always threatened by the winds of modernization and westernization and therefore always in need of being shored up by the wise Mandarins” (Clammer 1985, p. 162). This view was exemplified in the promotion of Confucianism and Asian Values in the 1980s and early 1990s by the

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ruling elite to safeguard the citizenry from becoming, in the words of Clammer, “deculturated”. Finally, Clammer points out that this confusion of meanings in the official use and conception of “culture” reveals that “it is yet another entity to be manipulated, to be somehow increased, diminished or to have its direction changed, in short to be engineered as a means always to some other end” (Clammer 1985, p. 162). This explains many of the contradictions in cultural policy in Singapore. For example, in the case of the Asian values push during the 1990s, cultural policy was premised on a simplistic equation between race, ethnicity and a rather static, bounded notion of Asian culture. The Asian values concept took no account of the ongoing, everyday production of culture among Singaporeans, instead assuming that Singaporeans were becoming Westernized and somehow “deculturated” from their Asianness. The recent emphasis on cultural development which relates to achieving something often described as the “quality of life”, connected sometimes with the “finer things in life” (Koh 1989).4 Basically, cultural development in this area is multi-layered. By promoting this development the state aims are to mitigate the effects of excessive materialism, create more “refined” and “cultured” citizens, and more importantly enrich the national cultural life of Singaporeans. Yet at the same time, the government’s approach to improving the “quality of life” and creating an enriching national cultural life through the arts was always secondary to material goals. As Dhanabalan, then Minister for Culture in 1983 pointed out: We often talk of improving the quality of life in Singapore as distinct from improving the standard of living. We have concentrated, and rightly so, on improving the standard of living of Singaporeans […] Without better standards of living — more jobs, more housing, more education, better health — one cannot hope to improve the quality of life (cited in Kong 2000, p. 413).

So economic prosperity was officially viewed as paramount in Singapore, with cultural policy viewed as secondary. Together, the work of Benjamin (1976), Clammer (1985) and Koh’s (1980 and 1989) work highlights the fact that the official use of the concept of “culture” in Singapore is suspiciously totalizing, which assumes that there is always, at the end of the cultural processes, the achievement of a whole and coherent “society” or “community” (Frow and Morris 1993, p. ix). Moreover, they suggest that although the official use of the notion of culture is complex, there is a sense that “culture” can be changed or developed to serve a particular set of outcomes. The

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government’s view of culture as something yet to be achieved forms the background to its cultural policies which are aimed at harnessing the “best” of global culture, while managing or minimizing the perceived negatives. Thus, the Singapore government plays a significant role both in determining and encouraging various cultural activities to foster the creation of a national culture.

DOMESTICATING SINGAPOREANS AND ATTRACTING TALENTS FROM OVERSEAS Since the early 1990s the government has emphasized the area of cultural development pertaining to promotion of the arts and a quality of life. It has produced a high-profile state discourse about developing Singapore into a world-class cosmopolitan global city (Forbes 1996 and 1999).5 Apart from the economic gains from such developments, the government has explicitly acknowledged that cultural policy is an integral part of Singapore’s nation-building effort (Kong 2000; Chang 2000; Yeoh and Chang 2001). More importantly, there is also a further reason why cultural development encompassing the development of the arts and lifestyle pursuits has become a priority for the government. While the political sphere has remained relatively stable and consistent since its independence as a nation-state, Singapore society has been rapidly transforming in all other areas. Rodan (1996a, p. 19) articulates the view of many commentators that “however remarkable Singapore’s economic transformation may be, it has been accompanied by equally remarkable social dynamics. In particular, the economic process has generated changes in class structure and level of affluence which are manifesting in new lifestyles, cultural patterns and political expectations”. Scott Baum’s (1999) statistical study shows that what is emerging is a substantial and expanding professionalized occupation structure and a growing middle-upper income group. In an earlier article, Garry Rodan (1993b) speculated that the new middle class in postcolonial authoritarian regimes, including Singapore, would be a formidable force that would bring about democratic changes to the political system. However, in Singapore at least this has not been the case. So what seems to be happening, as I discussed in Chapter 3 and what is most troubling for the government, is that Singaporeans are becoming increasingly “restless”. An indicator of this restlessness amongst

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Singaporeans can be found in the growing number of Singaporeans wanting to emigrate. A recent Straits Times (14 October 1999) survey suggests that an average of 2000 Singaporeans a year are applying for a Certificate of No Criminal Conviction. This certificate is sought by those who are applying for permanent residency overseas. Interestingly, applicants are asked to furnish details on why they are seeking this certificate. Those applying under the category of migration are required to state the reasons for choosing to do so. The choice of answers provided are: high cost living in Singapore; Singapore is too regulated and stifling; better career or business prospects overseas; better and less stressful education for your children; prefer a more relaxed lifestyle; to be united with close family members who migrated earlier; do not want your son/s to serve national service; retirement abroad; marriage to a foreign national; and the uncertain future of Singapore. Thus it may not come as a surprise that the government is closely monitoring the movements of its citizens and the reasons why they are leaving Singapore. According to Rodan, while the members of the Singaporean middle class are increasingly seeking to assert their preferences, aspirations and greater autonomy from the PAP state in an attempt to take more direct control over their lives, to a large extent, this has involved “autonomy as consumers, especially of cultural products rather than autonomy to challenge the distribution of social and political power in Singapore society” (1996a, p. 19). This is largely because of the exceptional control and influence the PAP elite wield in the political sphere. As such as Yao (1996, p. 350) argues, this ideological climate has produced “a tendency among Singaporeans to believe that whatever the social problems — the government can and should be able to “fix things”, even those which normally lie outside its responsibility”. The official recognition of the changing consumer demands and aspirations of the middle class is therefore reflected in its present efforts to develop the arts and culture (broadly defined as quality-of-life goals). The trend of Singaporeans emigrating thus has a strong bearing on why the government has begun to emphasize “quality-of-life” and lifestyle policy issues. Even though they do not amount to a direct political challenge, the PAP government is nevertheless beginning to take comments such as those above more seriously and thus have identified them as a “worrying trend”. The government’s assumption is that without a loyal and committed citizenry, its own legitimacy may come under threat. Moreover, if Singaporeans themselves do not display a strong sense of

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attachment to Singapore, simply because it is a regulated, stressful and demanding living environment, then the chances are that “foreign talents” will not wish to come to Singapore either. Post-independent Singapore has always been an anomaly in the eyes of Western scholars, commentators, and travel writers. Its economic success, stable government, social and urban planning and management are highly regarded (see, for instance, Bernick and Cervero 1997; Baum 1999; Grunsven 2000). At the same time, it is also a place often referred to as a simulation, a hyperspace of high capitalist accumulation, and high consumption culture (Lim 1995). Western writers like Reginald Berry (1986), Kim Dovey (1993) and William Gibson (1994) in their travel writings, remark that Singapore is an authoritarian, sterile, boring, too clean, orderly and sanitized city. It lacks the exotic charm, unruliness, and mysticism found in other Asian cities. Australian travel commentator, Gary Walsh (1998, p. 31) put it in this way: How can one be polite about this? Singapore can be pretty dull — for an Asian city it can seem strikingly un-Asian and sterile, although the government is trying to bring back some of the colour drained away by zealous redevelopment and sanitisation of raffish places like old Bugis Street. The very things that make it attractive to many — such as the neatness and orderliness — make it anathema to true Asiaphiles. You can’t chew gum, spit or jaywalk for fear of substantial fines, which is probably no great loss.

The idea of transforming Singapore into a global city has thus been accompanied by a substantive repositioning of Singapore as a culturally vibrant and “cosmopolitan” city. In 1999, the Asian edition of Time magazine, in a cover story on Singapore promoting itself as a fun and exciting city, asked, Can this really be Singapore? The “nanny state” that has banned the sale of chewing gum and racy magazines? The country that liked to regulate how often you flushed the toilet? Without a lot of fanfare, Asia’s small corner of conservatism is loosening up, transforming society in ways that until recently seemed impossible (Time, 19 July 1999, p. 19).

Commenting on this Time article Goh Chok Tong in his 1999 National Day Rally Speech lamented: Singapore should be a fun place to live. People laugh at us for promoting fun so seriously. But having fun is important. If Singapore is a dull, boring place, not only will talent not come here, but even Singaporeans will begin to feel restless (Straits Times, 22 August 1999).

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On another occasion, Goh Chok Tong pointed out that Singapore’s aim will be to “benchmark ourselves against the best places in the world where Singaporeans would like to live” (Straits Times, 5 November 1999). The assumption here is that if Singapore is transformed into a “cosmopolitan” place then Singaporeans are less likely to want to emigrate. Another important area of anxiety around globalization was how to generate enough educated, knowledge, management and technology professionals to fulfil the demands of the new global economy in Singapore. This led to a policy to import so-called “foreign talents” from overseas, which in turn led to the need to make such people palatable to the Singaporean public. Singapore has been accepting immigrants (under the professional and business migration scheme) from overseas since the late 1980s and into the 1990s, with a special emphasis on attracting and recruiting “talents”. The policy of attracting “talents”, especially from other Asian countries, to Singapore was first spelt out in The Next Lap policy vision statement. It was part of the government’s strategy to offset the problem of migrant outflows, recurring labour shortages and the declining fertility rate.6 Though The Next Lap document does not provide a definition of what the government means by “talents”, the term was used officially to refer to foreigners with highly specialized technical, business, and intellectual skills who can do jobs that Singaporeans cannot do or provide additional human resources where there are simply not enough Singaporeans to fulfil a task (Singapore 21, www.singapore21.org.sg). However since the late 1990s, the government has sought to attract talents not just from Asia but also across the globe. According to the 2000 census, the number of foreigners working in Singapore is around 755,000 (Singapore Statistics Board, www.singstat.gov.sg). The “foreign talent” issue still remains contentious and many Singaporeans worry about competing with foreigners for jobs. (see Yeoh and Chang 2001; Quah 2000).7 For instance in 1997, a television poll found that although 72 per cent of respondents agreed foreign talents had contributed to the country’s success and that more were needed, however six in ten respondents were worried that these foreigners would pose more competition for their children and saw them as an unwelcome source of competition in the job market (Straits Times, 7 September 1997). Despite the growing discontent expressed by many Singaporeans regarding the foreign talent recruitment policy, the government has generally responded by pointing to the economic benefits of their presence in Singapore. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong argued that:

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We can build the best home for Singaporeans only by tapping the best talent from around the world. To have world-class universities for our children, we must attract the best students and professors here. To have good jobs for our workers, we must attract the best employers — which means the most talented professionals and entrepreneurs, and the strongest companies in the world. Attracting talent is essential for creating the best for Singaporeans (Straits Times, 24 August 1997).

This official rhetoric states that Singapore has no choice other than to recruit foreign professionals to make its economy run. It is therefore not only about Singapore’s economic survival. It also determines to some extent the character of the “the best home” that the Singapore government has sought to create. The best home in this instance is characterized by better education, and employment strategies to appeal to an elite cosmopolitan lifestyle. The government has therefore consistently argued that foreign professionals are critical to Singapore’s survival. In 1999, the government established an agency called “Contact Singapore” which has set up offices in many countries to attract foreigners to work, live and study in Singapore as well as to help Singaporeans overseas retain their links to their home country. As Prime Minister Goh noted, “to sustain our growth and vibrancy, we have to be a global talent capital, an oasis for talents and a cosmopolitan city-state. We must therefore ensure that the living environment in Singapore is attractive enough for us to attract and retain talent. Our objective must be to make Singapore one of the top cities in the world not only to work in, but also to live and play in” (Straits Times, 5 May 2000).

COSMOPOLITANIZING NATIONAL CULTURE: RECENT CULTURAL POLICY TRENDS IN SINGAPORE Thus far, I have outlined important developments in Singapore in the later part of the 1990s, in particular the perceived problem of an “absence of roots” among professional Singaporeans and the need to attract “foreign talents”. I now turn to some of the cultural policy strategies developed by the government. James Donald (1999) reminds us that the city constitutes an imagined environment, akin to the idea that the nation is an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983). He argues that “what is involved in the imagining — the discourses, symbols, metaphors and fantasies through which we ascribe meaning to the modern experience of urban living — is as

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important a topic for the social sciences as the material determinants of the physical environment” (Donald 1999, p. 427). Central to the Singapore government’s commitment to globalization is a new focus on cultural and arts development. Following Donald, it is important to investigate the discourses drawn on by the Singapore government in re-imagining Singapore as a cosmopolitan world-city, that is, to investigate what kind of imagined environment is envisioned by the state. Singapore’s first serious turn to cultural policies came only in the late 1980s. In 1985, when Singapore was in the midst of an economic recession, the government convened an Economic Committee to chart the future directions for growth (Kong 2000, p. 413). The committee proposed various diversification strategies including the development of the arts (cultural and entertainment services), as a potential growth area. These services were defined to include the performing arts, film production, museums and art galleries, and entertainment centres and theme parks. The recommendations of the Economic Committee, according to Kong (2000, p. 413) were based on the recognition that such services have economic potential. These services would further enhance Singapore as a tourism destination; improve the quality of life and help people to be “more productive and contribute to a vibrant cultural and entertainment scene which would make Singapore more interesting for foreign professionals and skilled workers, and could help attract them to work and develop their careers here” (Kong 2000, p. 413). These recommendations represented the first explicit acknowledgement by the Singapore government of the economic potential of culture and the arts. However, it was only following the Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts, produced in 1989, that the government began to give serious attention to the systematic development of arts and culture. This report has been hailed as the blueprint for cultural policy in Singapore (Kong 2000). It assessed the role of culture and the arts for the national community and recommended that the “thrust of Singapore’s cultural development is to realize the vision of a culturally vibrant society by 1999. A culturally vibrant society is one whose people are well-informed, creative, sensitive and gracious” (Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts 1989, p. 25). This Report thus paved the way for the establishment of statutory bodies such as the National Arts Council, the National Heritage Board and the National Library Board, and the development of cultural infrastructure such as the Singapore Arts Museum, the Asian Civilizations Museum and the construction of a new performing arts centre in the

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CBD. In addition, a commercially articulated vision of this idea gained currency as the Ministry of Information and the Arts and the Singaporean Tourism Board initiated a marketing strategy: Singapore — Global City for the Arts in 1995. The Global City for the Arts marketing initiative was an invitation to foreign artists, professionals and specialists in various fields of the arts to make the city of Singapore their base. The government’s strategic thrust for the arts industry was to promote new businesses in: auctioneering; museum ownership and management; show production and management; professional services (e.g. art consultancy, authentication, valuation and finance); and support services (e.g. freight, insurance and restoration). The government also promoted the idea of attracting and staging Broadway musicals, opera, films, popular music concerts, dance and theatre. The Festival of Arts, a biennial event since 1977, was renamed the Singapore Festival of Arts in 1999 and became an annual event. The three-week Festival attracts various international and local performing artists and groups. Since the Global City for the Arts and Culture promotion was launched in 1995, many international arts and cultural events have been staged in Singapore. They include mega-events like Tresors (an International Arts and Antiques fair); Volume and Form (the world’s largest exhibition of environmental sculptures from the Asia-Pacific); blockbuster exhibitions like Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Museum (1996), The Origins of Modern Art in France (1998) and Monet to Moore: Millennium Gift of Sara Lee Corporation (1999); Cirque du Soleil (1999); the world premiere of the “mega-opera” Aida; the staging of West End and Broadway hits like Les Miserables, Cats, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera and Saltimbanco; as well as Western and Asian popular music concerts (Ministry of Information and the Arts 2000). These events along with the Singapore Arts Festival, World Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD) Singapore festival, Singapore International Film festival, International Comedy festival, Nokia Singapore Art and Singapore Writers’ Festival are now a regular feature on Singapore’s art calendar.8 Also the long-awaited performance arts complex at Marina Centre, Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay was completed and officially opened on 10 October 2002.9 In addition, the government has also unveiled an urban redevelopment plan called the Concept Plan 2001. At the launch, the Minister for National Development, Mah Bow Tan pointed out that: For the 21st century, we are looking beyond what we envisaged a decade ago [i.e. the 1991 Revised Concept Plan — see Chapter 3]. But more than that, in the new millennium, we aim to be a thriving

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world-class city. One that is dynamic for work and business, distinctive in heritage and identity and delightful, where we can build our homes. (Urban Redevelopment Authority, www.ura.gov.sg/conceptplan2001/foreword)

Apart from the usual housing, recreation, and business redevelopment, a new focus of the Concept Plan 2001 is identity. According to the report, “as Singapore develops, we want to retain a sense of identity in our physical landscape and encourage a sense of rootedness to our country” (Urban Redevelopment Authority, www.ura.gov.sg/conceptplan2001/ identity). It points out that special emphasis will be given to conserving heritage buildings to preserve the character and collective memory of places, and new towns to be built will be smaller and town centres will be planned around existing natural and built landmarks to give them an added character.

Visions of a Renaissance City In this section we briefly explore Singapore’s most recent cultural policy initiative, The Renaissance City Report (2000) and other accompanying official rhetoric, which emphasizes the need to reinvent the city-state’s image as a culturally vibrant cosmopolitan global city. Following this section, I reflect more broadly on the nexus between Singapore as a global city and Singapore’s nation-building aims. Ten years after the publication of the 1989 Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts — described as a watershed in the development of the arts, heritage and cultural scene in Singapore — the PAP government announced a similar policy vision report — Singapore: The Renaissance City.10 This report articulates a vision of Singapore as a world-class city supported by a vibrant cultural scene and outlines the strategies required to take Singapore there. The Report outlines two aims: To establish Singapore as a global city of the arts and a cultural centre in the globalised world. The idea is to be one of the top cities in the world to live, work and play in, where there is an environment conducive to creative and knowledge-based industries and talent. And where Singaporeans can develop as creative and well-rounded individuals. To provide cultural ballast towards the nation-building efforts and strengthen Singaporeans’ sense of national identity and belonging, and inculcate appreciation for artistic and cultural heritage of Singapore (The Renaissance City Report 2000, p. 1).

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To realize this vision, the Singapore government pledged S$50 million over the next five years for the arts. In addition to the funding made available for this project, three cities, Glasgow, Hong Kong and Melbourne, were chosen for benchmarking.11 These cities were selected because they offer better comparability in terms of population size and cultural development. The benchmarking was based on comparative expenditure on the arts and the numbers of events these cities organize.12 In comparing Singapore with these other cities, the key indicators examined were the number of professional art practitioners, arts facilities, arts activities and attendance, and arts funding. In the final analysis the report proposed six strategies: 1. Develop a strong arts and cultural base. This would involve further funding for arts education in schools, developing tertiary arts education and setting up of a Singapore studies programme at the National University of Singapore. 2. Develop flagships and major arts companies. Provide substantial state support for professional and leading local art companies. 3. Recognize and groom talent. Provide scholarships, awards and other incentives for upcoming and established art practitioners. 4. Provide good infrastructure and facilities. 5. Go International. Allocation of funding for local artists to perform or exhibit at overseas venues. 6. Develop an arts and cultural “renaissance” economy. Investment in the arts and culture would enhance Singapore’s position as an international hub of the arts, help create jobs, attract more tourists and contribute to Singapore’s economy. While the recommendations found in The Renaissance City Report are fairly straightforward, the ultimate aim is to make Singapore’s cultural offerings akin to New York and London. To cite The Renaissance City Report (2000, p. 11): What is it that makes London and New York special? On a very basic level, the answer could be that there is so much happening every single day of the year. The sheer numbers and variety of cultural activities contribute greatly to the non-stop buzz of London and New York. This in turn is a function of their positions as cosmopolitan cities that embrace (and attract) large numbers of people from different parts of the world for business, leisure, education and creative pursuits.

The kind of place which the Renaissance City Report seeks to promote and achieve is a “buzzing cultural city” so as to complement Singapore’s

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aspirations to be a hub for business, financial services, telecommunications, information, tourism, travel and education. The emphasis on developing “culture” is explicitly linked in the report with the economy and issues of national culture. The term “Renaissance”, the report states, “is not an attempt to replicate the conditions of post-medieval Europe. Rather, it is the spirit of creativity, innovation, multi-disciplinary learning, socio-economic and cultural vibrancy that we are trying to capture” (The Renaissance City Report 2000, p. 21). The idea of a Renaissance city is not unique to Singapore. The importance of the arts and culture as contributors to urban economics and place-making has been widely acknowledged (see Law 1992). The European Cities of Culture which include places such as Glasgow, Athens, Brussels and Amsterdam, have been revitalized as they deploy the arts to fulfil new economic goals and overcome existing local problems (Chang 2000).13 Clearly the government’s aim is to replicate this success. Yet there are some important differences between these cities and Singapore, not the least of which is the fact that Singapore is at once a world-city and a nation-state. I discuss the implications of this significant difference in the final section of the chapter. First, I turn briefly to another key element in Singapore’s recent cultural policy; the push for citizens to speak proper English.

SPEAKING PROPER ENGLISH The internationalization of English has been well documented and there have been many debates on its role in cultural globalization (for example, Crystal 1997). Equally, many scholars have documented the fact that many countries are voluntarily promoting English as a second language as a means to engage with and benefit from the global economy. At the same time, English is often indigenized or reterritorialized in these places, taking on its own local character (see Short and Kim 1999, p. 78). Given the importance of English as a global language, the Singapore government has intervened with its own policies on these matters, especially on the place of “Singlish” in Singapore’s global future. Singlish is a local version of English spoken by the majority of Singaporeans. It combines mainly Chinese dialects and Malay and is unique to Singapore. Singlish, though often cited as a “hybrid” language and representative of Singapore’s intermixing of cultural traditions, has never been favoured officially. Prime Minister Goh in his 1999 National Day Rally Address first raised the importance of speaking standard

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English. He pointed out that if Singaporeans continue to use Singlish, the rest of the world will have difficulty understanding Singaporeans. He added that “speaking good English is crucial if the country is to achieve its goal of becoming a first-world economy and a world-class home” (Straits Times Interactive, 22 August 1999). Goh Chok Tong announced that an annual Speak Good English campaign would be launched as part of the government’s effort to expand the use of standard English and discourage the use of Singlish. On 29 April 2000, the Singapore government officially launched the Speak Proper English Movement. In his speech, Goh pointed out that Singaporeans, especially the younger generation who are better educated: Can speak good English and should be encouraged to do so. They should not take the attitude that Singlish is cool or feel that speaking Singlish makes them more “Singaporean”. They have a responsibility to create a conducive environment for the speaking of good English. If they speak good English, others will follow suit. If they speak Singlish when they can speak good English, they are doing a disservice to Singapore! (Straits Times, 29 April 2000) [emphasis mine].

As an immediate measure, Singapore’s television broadcaster MediaCorp self-censored the use of Singlish in its programming. Some other examples of the implementation of this policy include the establishment of night classes to teach “better English”, the establishment of a “Good English” education campaign in schools, including a revision of the English syllabus to include a stronger focus on grammar. The campaign also included a campaign to encourage parents to speak only standard English to their children, a push to engage various grassroots community groups to implement “Good English” activities and programmes, and a campaign to encourage the media in general to “set exemplary standards” in English. Perhaps the most curiously Singaporean initiative was a direct request from the Prime Minister to one of Singapore’s most popular sitcom stars (whose character Phua Chu Kang was famous for his use of Singlish) to enrol in night classes and make a commitment that his TV character would in future use only standard English rather than Singlish. The Prime Minister commented that the producers of the sitcom have spoken to “Phua Chu Kang” (PCK) and that he has agreed to enrol himself for the next English night class (Straits Times, 23 August 1999). As I will show in the final chapter of this book, Singlish is embraced by many Singaporeans for whom it represents an affective symbol of real Singaporean-ness. Indeed, it is Singlish that was invoked most often

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by those I interviewed as the main thing that identifies them and which they identify as being uniquely Singaporean. Again, the Singapore government is faced with the central paradox which lies at the heart of all its nation-building efforts; the dual and competing aims to both embrace the global (which Standard English represents) for economic survival, while maintaining, producing and reproducing a nation of Singaporeans who identify with Singapore and without whose commitment the state could not survive. Ironically, Singlish represents one of the strongest popular strands of a uniquely Singaporean identity emerging spontaneously from below and it gives Singapore local colour that is appealing to outsiders, yet it is seen by the government as something that must be overcome in order to compete in the global economy. My aim thus far has been to map some of the key government strategies and initiatives in the area of cultural development. As I suggested earlier, the area of cultural development especially pertinent to the improvement of quality of life, the arts and lifestyle cultures, has been high on the government’s agenda since the early 1990s. It is a national response intended to make Singapore an attractive place that mirrors the major cities of the world. It is an attempt to position Singapore not only as a global financial and commercial hub but also as a cosmopolitan city in cultural terms.

MANAGING AND BRANDING: EVALUATING SINGAPORE’S VISION FOR A COSMOPOLITAN GLOBAL CITY In this section I consider how Renaissance City and similar policies fit with Singapore’s broader aims to become a cosmopolitan global city. I begin with an overview of how the notion of the cosmopolitan world city has been defined in the literature. I then evaluate Singapore’s vision in reference to this definition as advanced in Renaissance City, in its other urban cultural policies and in political rhetoric. Out of these reflections I argue that Singapore’s version of the cosmopolitan world city has two distinctive characteristics; the first is what I call the “managed” nature of the government’s vision and implementation of cosmopolitan cultural strategies; and the second is that rather than some organic form of cosmopolitanism, it is very much about deliberately “branding” Singapore as the kind of place that would attract global capital and cosmopolitan elites. In the final section of the chapter I return to the implications of the contradictions this raises for managing “going global” while “staying local”.

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World or global cities, as Knox (2000) points out, are nodal points that function as control centres for the interdependent skein of material, financial, and cultural flows which, together support and sustain globalization and they characterized by a complex array of relationships, cultural landscapes, concentration of people and different kinds of emerging urban politics. Along with these characteristics global cities are also the proscenia for materialistic and cosmopolitan lifestyles (Knox 2000, p. 67). In global cities like New York, Paris and London, cosmopolitanism is often equated to three phenomena: first, the presence of a mobile and “rootless” population; second, the proliferation of, and availability and access to a wide range of material cultures; and finally, the multiculturalization of the demography — essentially made up of a dominant majority population with many immigrant minority groups. Simply put, this is cosmopolitanism understood as a sociological phenomenon or as Hebdige (1990) points out an “aspect of day-to-day life”. Here cosmopolitanism comes to symbolize the encounters and experiences of the meeting, mixing and juxtaposition of diverse and remote cultures. Cosmopolitanism, in this sense, means “pertaining to the world or free from national limitations” (Short and Kim 1999, p. 85). In other words, cosmopolitan culture is not locally bounded. Furthermore Short and Kim (1999, p. 86) argue that: Cosmopolitanism, at least in terms of consumption, has become such a characteristic of world cities that cities seeking to proclaim their city status emphasize their range of urban experiences. Cities now boast of their range of cuisines, ethnic festivals, and mix of races and ethnicities. Cities that lack the cosmopolitan feel are considered provincial, narrowly national in an increasingly global world. An important function of city reimaging, by both public and private agencies, is to foster the sense of a cosmopolitan city rather than a regional or national city.

This dimension of place-making where, by necessity, “places” are being forced into repositioning themselves beyond the national space suggests that their fate rests upon their global viability. What then is the nature of the cosmopolitan world “city-ness” promoted by the Singapore government? Authors Yeoh and Chang (2001) argue that Singapore is a contemporary world city in the making because of the major role played by four social categories of people as identified by Hannerz (1996).14 The four social categories are transnational business, Third World populations, expressive specialists (those involved in the creative arts), and tourists.

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First, Singapore hosts numerous global businesses and transnational corporations and has been steadily recruiting high-waged, highly skilled professional, managerial and entrepreneurial elites from overseas usually associated with finance, banking and business services. The term that has been used in Singapore to describe this category of people is “foreign talent” or “global talent”. Second, Singapore also relies heavily on lowwaged unskilled or semi-skilled contracted labourers from the region. The term that has been used to describe this category of people is “foreign workers” who mainly originate from India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Burma and China. Domestic workers mainly from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and India are also included in this category. Thirdly, the presence of expressive specialists, who participate in the cultural scene in areas such as the arts and other creative fields, is most visible through various international arts festivals and art events hosted by Singapore. Finally, Singapore is a popular stop-over destination for tourists and is seeking to develop into a tourism business centre and tourist hub in the Southeast Asian region.

Managed Cosmopolitanism In analysing these issues however, it is important to differentiate between the actual lived reality of the world city (to which authors such as Friedman (1986) refer) and government and commercial representations of it. The cosmopolitan world city is characterized, as I pointed out, by the presence of a mobile and “rootless” population, by the availability of and access to a wide range of cultural products, and the multiculturalisation of the population. However, the clear and defining characteristic of Singapore’s engagement with the global, and which is personified in official rhetoric and cultural policies, is a notion of cosmopolitanism which is on the one hand romanticized but on the other hand has to be managed. This is not to say that other cities such as New York do not seek to “manage” the global through policy interventions, rather that the Singapore government’s interventions have a particular character. Examples of this ‘managed’ version of the cosmopolitan global city are present across the range of government cultural and urban development strategies I have discussed earlier. For example in one speech, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong pronounced that:

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Singapore is where East meets West, and we can create an outstanding, refreshing cosmopolitan society. For the young, there must be enough fun places where they can let their hair down, within the law, of course. We will give them more space to do their own things, and encourage more street life and performances. We should encourage roadside portrait artists, calligraphers and open-air performances. We should bring back exotic crafts like snake-charmers. We can do with more spontaneity and creativity, and more interesting night life. We will allow neon-light and liquid-crystal advertising to brighten up selected entertainment areas (Straits Times Interactive, 20 December 1996).

The Prime Minister’s speech is rich with celebratory prose, invoking images of an exciting, lively and creative Singapore, meshing the best of cosmopolitan world cities such as Paris or New York with the vibrant exotica of Asia. It is a speech clearly aimed at young Singaporeans, and is very much focused on encouraging cosmopolitanism through commodification and consumption, and a strategic mingling of East and West. Compared to the late 1980s and early 1990s when the government was preoccupied with the fear that young Singaporeans were becoming too “Westernized” (Chapter 2), its present agenda certainly signals a change in attitude. However, the speech highlights one other uniquely Singaporean tendency: the need for creativity, fun and excitement, “within the law”. A city at once engaged, creative, and cosmopolitan, but also created, controlled, and managed by the state. This is truly a vision of “managed” cosmopolitanism rather than organic. Cosmopolitan world cities are also generally characterized by immigration and the multiculturalization of the population. However, in Singapore we can see clear differences from other cosmopolitan world cities. Singapore’s clearly demarcated racial policy separating Indians, Malays, Chinese and “Others” into bounded categories each with an official “mother tongue” and cultural practices to match undermines the symbolic intermingling which can produce the freeflowing manifestation of a “cosmopolitan” Singaporean-ness. Moreover, even when they emerge, these hybridities are never recognized in official representations (Chua 1998b). Equally, if we take, for instance, Singapore’s immigration policy we can find a very discriminatory system that favours foreigners with professional qualifications, specialist skills and technical expertise over those who are semi-skilled or unskilled (Ministry of Manpower (2003), www.mom.gov.sg). While Singapore relies heavily on foreign workers to undertake menial and monotonous labour, their role and contribution do

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not figure in the government’s notion of a cosmopolitan city. The foreign talents on the other hand are a privileged group who are invited to partake in the national cosmopolitan project. The former are not permitted to settle in Singapore or bring their families, and even marriage to a Singaporean does not entitle them to automatic residence status in Singapore. The latter, however, are encouraged to stay and work in Singapore for an extended period, bring their families to Singapore, take up permanent residence and are even encouraged to become Singapore citizens. Foreigners who take up employment in Singapore must have a valid work pass. The work pass is structured on a two-tier system: Employment Pass and Work Permit. An Employment Pass is issued to foreigners — generally regarded as “foreign talents” — who hold an acceptable degree, professional qualification or specialist skill and whose monthly basic salary is above S$2500. A Work Permit is issued to semiskilled or unskilled foreigners — regarded as “foreign workers” — to work in Singapore, generally for a period of two years (Ministry of Manpower (2003), www.mom.gov.sg). Certainly Singapore is cosmopolitan on the consumer front. However, the kinds of cultural practices and products Renaissance City Report seeks to promote are still subject to Singaporean nationalist managerial intervention. For example, in the speech I quoted earlier, Prime Minister Goh made comments such as “there must be enough places where the young can let their hair down, within the law of course”. Similarly, managerialism is expressed in his statement that “we can do with more spontaneity and creativity … and we will (therefore) allow neon-light advertising”. And again: “Having fun is important”. The heavy, directive hand of the state is also to be found in censorship in the arts, usually surrounding the so-called “OB” markers (as discussed in Chapter 3) of race, religion and national security. Theatre groups have to submit scripts to the Public Entertainment Licensing Unit for approval and content rating. For instance, in 2000 Talaq, a play in English depicting the story of an Indian Muslim woman and her experiences of abuse, marital rape and divorce, had its license to perform revoked after vocal complaints from an all-male local Islamic group protested that it was blasphemous and that it gave a wrong impression of Islam (Singapore Bulletin December 2000). Moreover, Singapore’s cultural policies are clearly aimed at not just developing the arts and culture. Their aim is to create a certain kind of Singaporean citizen as well; citizens who are culturally primed for success in the new global economy. Such citizens are creative thinkers,

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entrepreneurial spirits and will be “cultured” enough to impress the most cosmopolitan of the world’s elite business professionals. For example, The Renaissance City Report itself actually spells out in numbered form what the “Renaissance Singaporean” will and should be and what “Renaissance Singapore” must become. For instance: “The Renaissance Singaporean recognises that he is not a mere actor in a vast nameless play, but a co-writer of the Singapore Story” (2000, p. 22) and again; “Culture and the Arts are mobilised to animate our city because we recognise that surroundings that reflect a low or commonplace taste have a debasing and dehumanising effect on the human spirit” (2000, p. 23). Moreover The Renaissance City Report (2000, p. 22) suggests that: “We envisage a Singaporean who is well-rounded, has an inquiring and creative mind, a passion for life, and is a civic-minded citizen. He [sic] appreciates and cherishes his heritage. His [sic] graciousness is underpinned by a fine sense of aesthetics”. All of these statements highlight one thing. While cosmopolitanism traditionally evokes a sense of free and spontaneous identity which emerges from unique intermingling, exchanges and worldly experience, in Singapore’s case, cosmopolitanism has become government policy, measured by a dot-point checklist of characteristics which the state has determined will be most useful for nation-building and future economic success. In this section, I have argued that the Singaporean state views culture as something which ought to be controlled and managed to the benefit of the economy. This means that culture is never allowed to develop its own pattern and logic. Spontaneity and creativity are seen as a necessity and can be manufactured through the animation of the city by mobilizing culture and the arts. And even fun has to be managed!

Branding Cosmopolitan Singapore Related to the managerial cosmopolitanism just outlined, the second characteristic of the Renaissance City vision and the government’s rhetoric on cosmopolitanizing Singapore is that it falls very much into what might be called “branding” — where select attributes are chosen to promote a certain cosmopolitan image of the city. As it is outlined in the Renaissance City Report (2000, p. 21): By positioning Singapore into a global arts hub that welcomes international and regional collaborations, and by promoting Singapore as an ideal base for international arts businesses interested in touring

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arts events to Asia, we can reinforce the concept of Singapore as the Gateway to Asia, not only in the area of culture, but in all other fields as well.

This “marketing speak” is of course common among most cities wanting to promote themselves as having “world city” status. Along with branding is a predisposition to deliberately emulate what the government sees to be the best characteristics of the world’s most famous and successful global cities. While the strong state focus on shaping a particular kind of society and individual is somewhat unique to Singapore, not so exceptional is Singapore’s marketing of itself as a world city. Zukin (1995) has coined the term “symbolic economy of the city”, referring to the fact that cities are increasingly placing great value on the aesthetic realm in marketing themselves as important economic metropolizes. This involves both moulding public space to create certain kinds of social interaction, and most importantly, constructing and marketing a certain visual representation of the city. In further developing this idea, Short and Kim (1999, p. 105) have identified four key themes that are nearly always present in world-city marketing campaigns around the world. These are: the promotion of the historic feel: emphasizing historic connections of the city or particular neighbourhoods; the festival package: which highlights frivolity, resorts, shopping malls, sporting events, and convention centres. Then there is the clean and green theme: which puts emphasis on the post-industrial nature of the city, on easy access to the “natural” world, access to clean air, good beaches, active recreation facilities such as sailing, fishing, swimming or biking, and finally the package of pluralism: which plays up the cosmopolitan mix available, such as a rich ethnic experiences to be had in ethnic restaurants, carnivals, shopping and so on. While these themes are almost universal to the promotion of any global city in the world, Singapore’s policy documents and marketing campaigns very clearly embrace each of these four key themes in its own self-promotion as a global city.15 For example the government website, “Contact Singapore” aimed at attracting “foreign talent” to work in Singapore, reads: Picture this. Wind surfing or sailing along the eastern coast of the island; touring the museums downtown; trekking through a nature trail and bird watching or mountain biking in the offshore islands; relaxing in a luxurious spa; or golfing on some of the most luxuriant greens in Asia. Dining by candlelight along the riverside, sipping a glass of chilled

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white wine, or stopping over at Starbucks for a cup of Café Latte are becoming a commonplace in Singapore, all part of the cosmopolitan lifestyle in this global city. If that’s not enough, how about shopping in bargain bazaars, major department stores and designer boutiques in mega shopping malls; or riding the tram through the world’s first Night Safari and communing with nature and wild life; or dancing the night away at the coolest discos. Hard-working Singaporeans and expatriates find endless ways to relax, enjoy, and have fun. (Contact Singapore, www.contactsingapore.org.sg)

In this text, which reads like a blurb from a tourist brochure, Singapore is branded and imagined as a cosmopolitan global city full of trendy leisure and consumption opportunities. It highlights Singapore’s ethnic mix, and the availability of shopping and fine dining. It highlights the “clean and green” nature of Singapore, promoting itself as the garden city and emphasizing the high-tech nature of Singapore and its industries. After more than a decade of sustained critique of Western modernity, and persistent reaffirmation of a distinctively Asian identity, the Singapore state is now determined to inscribe a different sense of national culture and identity, which is aimed not just at tourists but towards a particular class of highly educated, highly skilled and mobile class of people: the cosmopolitan elite of the new global economy. Moreover as Featherstone (1991, p. 96) argues cosmopolitan cities are “strong in cultural capital in terms of the extent to which they are centres of cultural production, housing not only the arts (still an expanding sector), but also the mass culture industries of fashion, television, cinema, publishing, popular music, tourism and leisure”. For Featherstone, the employment of the term cultural capital (using Bourdieu, 1984) in this context is to point to “alternative sources of wealth other than economic (financial and industrial) capital whose value may nevertheless be redeemable and re-convertible back into economic value, through a whole series of direct and indirect routes” (Featherstone 1991, p. 96). The economic significance of creating cultural capital is also well-reflected in the Renaissance City Report. As the report outlines: “our arts and culture have the potential to help project Singapore’s “soft power” in the global marketplace. Described as the halo effect, a high reputation in one area can create a halo for other attributes, giving a nation a perception of advantage” (Renaissance City Report 2000, p. 20). Following Featherstone’s observation, it can be argued that the government’s interest in developing its so-called cultural industries is as much about accumulating cultural capital as it is about enhancing and creating alternative sources of wealth for the nation.

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For Singapore, the question becomes how to emulate those global cities perceived as flourishing in the global economy. How does Times Square in New York look, what performers and cafés might we find in Paris? How can we replicate that into the Singapore context without “losing control”? Which elements will be useful in advancing Singapore’s economic success in the future? What we have here is a strategic cosmopolitanism, a kind of “cosmopolitanism from above”. It stems from a view that assumes that certain cultural formations (i.e. “buzz”) will emerge simply by providing the necessary infrastructure. New York’s cosmopolitan nature arises from a complex set of social dynamics — migration, cultural interaction, and all those things which have arisen spontaneously and organically, good and bad, out of the messy reality of daily existence, interchange and struggle in such places. In looking at and seeking to emulate New York and other global cities, the Singaporean state is more focused on the aesthetic and structural realms. We can see this rhetoric of emulation or simply establishing the necessary facilities to create “culture” arising repeatedly in official speeches. During the National Day Rally Speech 1997 titled “Global City, Best Home”; Goh Chok Tong revealed that: When we look at other major cities, we find that each has a series of distinct areas for different activities. Each has a prime financial district — Wall Street in New York, Fenchurch Street in London. In Singapore we have Raffles Place. Each city has a high-quality shopping mall — Fifth Avenue in New York, Oxford Street in London. We have Orchard Road. Each city also has a major cultural centre for the arts — the Lincoln Centre in New York, The South Bank centre in London. By the turn of the century we will have The Esplanade: Theatres on the Bay. But we lack a distinct entertainment area, like Times Square in New York, Piccadilly Circus in London or Shibuya in Tokyo. That is why we are creating an entertainment area in the Bugis District. It will have a critical mass of entertainment activities — cinemas, theatres performance venues, music and dance, thematic shopping and dining, neon signs, vibrant street life (Straits Times Interactive, 24 August 1997).

According to Goh, the defining features of cultural life in global cities can be found in their various districts such as financial, shopping, arts and entertainment. Goh proclaims that on “What Singapore lacks” is the last missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle — a distinct and renowned entertainment district — that would complete Singapore’s status as a truly cosmopolitan global city. Indeed the government is confident that by simply building the necessary facilities, whether it is a concert hall or a theatre, the local cultural scene will improve.16 Much of the Renaissance

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City vision, then, is aimed at emulating the vibrancy and success of other cities by transplanting certain elements to Singapore. They believe that by benchmarking expenditure levels with other world cities, building similar entertainment districts, establishing major arts festivals and so forth, they will automatically create a cosmopolitan Singapore. However, while the government is keen to emulate those things which will give life to the city, attract foreigners and capital, and which will produce more creative and entrepreneurial citizens, it does not want to lose control completely. A good example is the Bugis district development Prime Minister Goh refers to above. Bugis Street was traditionally a red-light district dating back to colonial times, and was mostly characterized by its population of drag queens and transvestites who would parade the street (Leong 1997, p. 531) and work in local brothels and night clubs. Due to anxieties about decadence and seedy disorder, Bugis Street was “cleaned up” by the government during the 1980s. Leong (1997, p. 531) argues that “it represented everything that the state authorities in Singapore wanted to eradicate, and was at odds with the orderliness and control the state wanted to project”. An official “cleanliness” campaign was launched to “cleanse the city of the ‘dirt’ in social life, represented by informal economic activities which included prostitution, open-air food stalls, night bazaars and vibrant street cultures”. The “sale of pirated cassettes, stalls selling pig-intestine stew or turtle soup and sexual deviances” were in the official eyes, “dirt” and by 1985 plans were afoot to demolish Bugis Street (Leong 1997, p. 531). With the economic downturn of the mid-1980s, the government found it needed to rely more on tourist dollars and the street was saved from demolition but it was “cleansed” of the excesses of the street’s early days. By the late 1990s the government had decided that such pockets of decadence might in fact give character to the city and add to a sense of a cultural vibe. However in bringing Bugis Street back into being, the government made sure it was made pristine and rendered “museumized”. Once vibrant and pulsing with life, its original spirit has been disrupted and removed of any “messiness”. As Goh Chok Tong declared: … we are creating an entertainment area in the Bugis District. It will have a …cinemas, theatres, performance venues, music and dance, thematic shopping and dining, neon signs, vibrant street life. I am not sure what activities will take off, but Bugis will certainly offer more than the Boom Boom Room and Kumar [a famous Singaporean transvestite] (Straits Times, 24 August 1997).

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With Singapore’s strict codes on sexuality, the government was faced with a dilemma — they needed the transvestites to create the vibrant aesthetic they were after but did not want to be seen to be condoning such sexual “deviance”. The solution they came up with was to have women dressed as men dressing as women. That is, they hired female performers to dress as transvestites and drag queens to roam the Bugis Street district and perform in its venues. The motivation to revive Bugis Street was not so much meant to rediscover and regenerate a piece of Singapore’s history but arose out of comparison to other cities. The government decided that Singapore needed its own version of New York’s Times Square, which is the role Bugis Street will be given to fill. They are in the process of erecting a giant neon sign board akin to that found in Times Square which will come into its own for occasions such as the New Year count down. Despite the focus on the arts and creativity and cultural hybridity, the lived reality of Singaporeans is never acknowledged (Chua 1998b). Instead, “ethnic districts” are “museumized” and monumentalized — almost frozen in time — preserved to demonstrate how “cosmopolitan” Singapore is and how “tradition” is able to exist side-by-side with modern Singapore. As this advertisement suggests: Singapore — City of Diverse Cultures, The Garden City, The Fun City, City for the Arts and Gateway City — offers visitors a destination where they can “live it up” and indulge themselves… Ethnic districts in Geylang Serai, Arab Street, Chinatown and Little India portray Singapore’s rich ethnic, cultural and historical heritage. The religious monuments, quaint shophouses, wonderful array of traditional food and ethnic goods provide an interesting insight into the cultural fabric of Singapore (ASEAN Tourism, http://www.asean-tourism.com/aseancountries/singapore).

While multiracialism still remains the fundamental building block of Singaporean society, today the promotion of cultural diversity not only speaks about the unique Asian cultural traditions of Singapore but is also invoked as a feature of Singaporean “cosmopolitanism”. In other words, as the above advertisement suggests, Singapore’s visual cultural landscape contains all the metaphors of urbanism, modernity, internationalism and at the same time the exotic and otherness (see Chapter 2 on “New Asia”). Another very suggestive example of the kind of “museumizing” of Singapore’s ethnic quarters is the Far East Square in the Chinatown

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district, which opened in 1997. It is an example of what is termed in Singapore as “adaptive re-use developments”, integrating traditional Chinese shop-houses beneath a glass and steel shopping centre canopy. The result is a kind of theme park shopping centre, removed of all its traditional character, except for the garishly painted yellow and red shop fronts unsympathetically set against an imposing tubular steel structure. All the original tenants were removed to be replaced by mallstyle shopping. This quest to emulate the “best there is” of other world cities also often extends to sanitizing some sites and buildings which have important historical value and place memories for Singaporeans. A good example is Singapore’s quest to build “world-class Botanical Gardens”. The existing gardens have been expanded to incorporate a “premier botanical research institution” and a “leading park for Singapore” (Straits Times, 24 March 2001). The Ministry for the Environment stated in 2001 that it would pull down the Taman Serasi hawker centre to make way for a $35 million revamp of the gardens. The Taman Serasi food centre, however, was one of the oldest and most fondly remembered of Singapore’s much loved food hawker centres. Many Singaporeans would travel some distance just to visit there to enjoy a “roti john” or a “putu piring” bought from their favourite hawker, many of whom held stalls there for more than forty years. One of the stallholders told a reporter that “it is really sad that we have to vacate … as this stall holds many memories for us. It has been passed down for two generations already” (Straits Times, 11 September 2001). Another example is Singapore’s old National Library Building, an unremarkable 1960s structure that nonetheless is held dear in many Singaporeans’ imaginations, evoking childhood memories of visits there. Just about every Singaporean child would have made regular visits there when growing up. When the government slated it to be demolished in 1999 there was a large public outcry arguing against its removal. A public symposium was convened by the Singapore Heritage Society (a local non-government organization) which resulted in a book entitled National Memories and the National Library (Singapore Heritage Society 2001). To give an indication of the level of sentiment attached to this building, the promotional blurb for the book reads: Love or hate the building’s red-brick façade, you cannot deny its charms have worked on a generation of Singaporeans who have grown up in its surroundings here in Singapore. It reveals a bond that extends beyond race as people from different races come together to pour out

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their unified abhorrence of the very idea of demolishing the building. …That a building, only 41 years young, has inspired a book to be compiled is proof it is no ordinary building. … It is a collection of memories that have transcended the boundaries of being a brick-andmortar building to being one with a soul — it has human characteristics.

Despite the public distress at its proposed demolition, the government pushed ahead with its removal to make way for an underground tunnel and the Singapore Management University. The government had deemed it essential for any world city to have an important university in the CBD and, despite people’s fond memories, the library site was considered to be the most suitable location for it. The Singapore Management University would also extend onto the Bras Basah Park, a place which conjures similarly nostalgic memories among Singaporeans. Journalist Chua Lee Hoong bemoaned the proposed loss thus: Bras Basah Park and the National Library are integral to my memories as a Singaporean. … [to keep the library and park]… would be one small way to narrow the generation gap…if there are symbols and icons to be shared across the age groups. Keep the park, keep the library and keep Singapore memories sweet (Straits Times, 18 March 2000).

Not discouraged by this unfavourable public reaction, the government pressed ahead with the redevelopment of land for the university and even linked its existence to the newly restored Bugis Street — offering the neighbouring locations as a good example of a creative urban centre for students. There are plans afoot to build student hostels for the Management University’s students in the heart of the Bugis district. The quarter of the district housing the hostels will, in the spirit of world-city branding, be named “Harvard Square” (Urban Redevelopment Authority, www.ura.gov.sg). Clearly then, the use of metaphors such as “World-Class City”, “Global City for the Arts”, “Renaissance City”, and “Cosmopolitan City” found in the government’s cultural policy visions and official discourse, is an attempt to capture and market a new sense of cultural imagining of the city. These metaphors invoke a cultural landscape which goes beyond a specific sense of national locality. One effect of this self-promotion, as Massey (1994, p. 117) argues, is that it robs “places in a certain measure of their individual specificity”. She argues that the effect this has on place-making is that virtually all causality is somehow assigned to an unlocatable level of the “global” (Massey 1994, p. 117). While these strategies are seemingly about place, they are non-place specific, and

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have little reference to existing place-identities in Singapore. They are about creating a vibrant sense of place in Singapore, yet they are “worldly” images which evoke a kind of cosmopolitan “anywhere-ness”. The Singapore brand of cosmopolitanism and its projection of being a cosmopolitan global city is essentially a selling pitch to lure international flows of capital, professional elites and tourists. At the same time, such a representation has a nationalistic purpose. We have to remember that Singapore, despite its claims as a global city, is also a nation-state. This, according to the government, is a problem and paradox that needs to be addressed and resolved. In the next section I consider in more detail some of these contradictions and how they relate to the broader nationbuilding project.

NATIONHOOD AND THE DILEMMAS OF THE COSMOPOLITAN CITY-STATE By way of conclusion, I want to return to some of the dilemmas surrounding Singapore’s competing needs, as it seeks to benchmark itself against other major cities. As I have argued in this chapter, the aim to become a cosmopolitan global city has several objectives: (1) To attract global capital and to be seen as the kind of place that can do business creatively and well in the new global economy; (2) To produce a class of cosmopolitan and creative professional Singaporeans who can operate successfully in the global economy; (3) To attract the best “foreign talents” to come and work in Singapore; (4) To attract more tourists; and (5) To create a place of identification and affective attachment among Singaporeans, especially the cosmopolitan professional class. So we can see then that, although on the face of it Singapore’s recent cultural policies, especially Renaissance City, are about re-invigorating culture and the arts and branding Singapore for international eyes, they are also about place-making for its own citizens. Not just place-making, but creating the kind of “aliveness” in the place that will ensure affective attachment to Singapore, a sense of belonging, “home” for cosmopolitan professional Singaporeans and “a place to be” for “foreign talents”. The question remains, however, given Singapore’s clear anxieties about creating affective attachment and identification with the Singapore nation-state, why would a cosmopolitan sense of place and locality be the most desired form of place-identity for Singaporeans themselves?

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Being a city-state and wholly dependent on international trade and foreign direct investment, Singapore’s relationship to global processes is inseparable from its nationalistic visions and policies. Under these circumstances, Singapore’s cosmopolitan world city aspirations have required an endorsement of a new kind of cultural representation that epitomizes “the essence of transnationalism while at the same time remaining a ‘home’ distinguished by a strong sense of local identity and community” (Yeoh and Chang 2001, p. 1025). This apparent tension between the “global” and the “local” can only be staged and envisioned through the metaphor of the cosmopolitan global city. The notion of cosmopolitanism is seen as having the capacity to mediate these, to create a bridge between the global and the local. However, as I have shown, the way that the government has chosen to create “the local” in many ways undermines its own goals. If an aspect of the “local” is perceived to be a threat to success in the global economy, it is filtered, controlled or simply bulldozed and the “global” wins out. Recent efforts in globalization studies have concentrated on examining the kinds of disparities and conflicts that are emerging in such places. As Holston and Appadurai (1996, p. 189) point out “the transnational flow of ideas, goods, images, and persons tend to drive a wedge between national space and its urban centres […], there are a growing number of societies in which cities have a different relationship to global processes than the visions and policies of their nation-states may admit or endorse”. For instance, Holston and Appadurai (1996, p. 189) argue that “London today is a global city in many ways that do not fit with the politics of the United Kingdom […] and Los Angeles may sustain many aspects of a multicultural society and economy at odds with mainstream ideologies of American identity”. They suggest that cities have always been stages for politics of a different sort than their hinterland (Holston and Appadurai 1996). While it is still early to predict the gulf that may emerge between Singapore’s national space and its cosmopolitan world “city-ness”, the challenge for the government would be to ensure that Singapore remains a nation as well as a world-city. However as I have shown, the government cannot rely on the promotion of a parochial identity to shore up national identification, whereas other global cities still have the luxury of a parallel identification; at once parochial and cosmopolitan. You can be a New Yorker or Londoner as the same time as being American or English. While world cities such as New York or London are at once global cities with identities in their own right, they are nonetheless still connected to (if somewhat different from in many respects) the broader U.S. or

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British nation-state. These cities do not have to play the role of being a nation; nor need they play the role of producer of national identity. In contrast to this more usual scenario, the most obvious anomaly that exists in the case of Singapore is that it is a city-state which does not have a hinterland. It is at once a nation and a world city. The government has tried hard to create a sense of identification with the Singaporean nation, but the current phase of nation-building connects cosmopolitan “cityness” with Singapore’s identity. The important question then is what implications does this have with respect to Singapore’s efforts at achieving a sense of national homeliness? As I showed in the previous chapter, one of the most interesting trends in official speeches in recent years is that the concept of the nation (as an imagined community) has been replaced or equated with the notion of “home”. Nation as imagined community is popularly understood to be reproduced in part through an emphasis on a sense of “we-ness” which is usually premised on a kind of us/them imagining against the Other. As Molloy points out, the “exclusionary logic of state sovereignty is such that the territorial borders of the state, which separate inside from outside, the here from the there, map out and seek to contain identity, wherein identity is measured against difference” (Molloy 2000, p. 3). However, in Singapore, such a sense of distinct “we-ness” remains elusive because of its status as a global city, its diasporic roots and short history. For this reason, the government is instead taking the approach of trying to create attachment, not through collective symbols of “we” in the usual sense as tied to ethnicity, identity and difference, but instead through creating a sense of “home” through the notion of the cosmopolitan place. It is through these forms of place-making that the Singaporean government is attempting to domesticate its citizenry — especially educated, professional Singaporeans who are perceived to be potentially rootless and without commitment to the nation. However, as I showed in the previous section, many of the “cosmopolitan” elements are also key themes in the campaign regimes of most “wannabe” world cities. Added to this is the extent to which a sense of homeliness is continually undermined by government interventions to “museumize” ethnic differences and districts, to remove and sterilize “memory places”, and to undermine the sorts of organic “we-ness” that emerges with hybrid cultural products such as Singlish. This perhaps implies then that these strategies can never really create a sense of Singaporean-ness because the kinds of urban lifestyle promoted by the Singapore government, as it were, can be found in any number of global

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cities. The question is, can these strategies really bind Singaporeans to the nation? Can they function as markers of identity? Can these things also function symbolically for an imagined national community? Can cosmopolitan world “city-ness” ever successfully offer a sense of national identity and imbue a sense of home for the domestic population? According to Ang (2001, p. 89) “what grounds the community of the global city is its firm orientation towards the ‘here’, the local, this place. […] The world or global city formation epitomises at once a cultural space constituted by endless flows and the production of a spatial order unlike any other”. The unique character of a world city, in other words, has to do with the specific configurations of flows in that place and how they combine with other elements such as the demographic characteristics and government policies of varying kinds. Importantly, however, in Singapore this identity is not officially premised on the free-flowing cosmopolitanism most popularly perceived as emerging from world city spaces. There are several factors which mitigate against any idealized notion of new cultural forms of community emerging. In Singapore every aspect of the global is managed: immigration, the highly segmented multiracial policies, and even, as we have seen, policies surrounding arts and culture. All act as filters on the various global flows that intersect within Singapore. Even given the reality that, despite these constraints, Singaporeans do mix and intermingle and inevitably will organically produce locally unique, hybrid cultural forms, these are never recognized officially as the campaign against Singlish demonstrates. The cosmopolitan world city discourse can only work if it promotes the city as enough of a “non-place” (Augé 1995) so that the world can be at home there, but at the same time possessing enough local flavour to be interesting, and to keep its population identifying with it. However in Singapore’s case, the idea of local flavour is complex. Since the government perceives that a Singaporean national identity has yet to be realized, which is popularly embraced, and something beyond individual ethnic groups, then the local flavour is simply “Asian”, or is related to particular districts within the city such as Little India, Chinatown, or Kampong Glam (Malay Village). In many ways then, as a world citystate and a nation, even the “local” element of the world city is still transnational, opening beyond the borders of the Singaporean nation. Even given the unique local flavour these districts develop, they are nonetheless transnational in the world’s imagination. Chinatowns and Little Indias can be found in Singapore but also in London, Paris, New York or Sydney.

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Nonetheless, it is not possible to say if any of this will ultimately undermine Singapore’s nation-building goals. What we can say however is that there are some important contradictions and paradoxes in the latest phase of cultural policy development. Cosmopolitanizing a worldcity that is also a young and multicultural nation requires a fine balancing act between going global and domesticating the local. While the promotion of a homely Singapore encompassed in all those things the government has neatly termed “quality of life” may well be a source of comfort, their “anywhere-ness” also means that cosmopolitan Singaporeans may well end up feeling at home not just in Singapore but in many other similar places. Furthermore, as one Singaporean, Tan Yuen Lee pointed out in the Forum page of Straits Times, 2 May 2001: By allowing the demolition of buildings and places that form the bedrock of our memories of growing up and the Singaporean identity, the government is in essence eliminating the social memory of our community. […] More recently there was the decision to demolish the National Library. Then Taman Serasi Hawker Centre was added to the hit list. In one stroke, the community spirit at Taman Serasi built over the years will vanish. […] The fact that only months ago, the review committee of the URA Concept Plan [2001] stressed at length the importance of preserving our identity makes the irony even more acute. […] If we continue to be indiscriminate, there will be nothing meaningful in our surroundings, no memories — and no identity. We might as well be the migrant population that our forefathers once were. Everything that makes Singapore unique, that holds memories for so many, that are markers of our identity and history, and that cannot be replaced anywhere else, is being thoughtlessly removed. […] If we are left with only the malls and food courts, structures that are almost indistinguishable and can be replicated anywhere else in the world, living in Singapore or any other country makes no difference at all [emphasis mine].

Equally, the more Singapore globalizes, the more cosmopolitan Singaporeans it will create. These individuals are the most likely to emigrate, yet it is precisely these very individuals the government needs to stay and be committed to Singapore and its economic survival. Moreover, while many cosmopolitans, as we will see in the next chapter, are leaving due to a sense of being stifled, a feeling that the “government is always breathing down your neck”, the Singaporean government seems to be locked into a kind of state hyper-managerialism. Similarly, on the everyday level, those things which might well be the basis for a true Singaporean identity such as Singlish, are paradoxically perceived

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by the state as threatening to Singapore’s engagement with the global and are actively discouraged. As I have shown throughout this book, the Singapore economy has benefited greatly from the international flow of capital. Once a small British trading post, it now boasts the title of one the most globalized places on the globe. In his writing on Hong Kong on the eve of its return to China, Akbar Abbas (1997, p. 4) pointed out that: Hong Kong has up to quite recently been a city of transients. Much of the population was made up of refugees or expatriates who thought of Hong Kong as a temporary stop, no matter how long they stayed. The sense of the temporary is very strong, even if it can be entirely counterfactual. The city is not so much a place as a space of transit. It has always been, and will perhaps always be, a port in the most literal sense — a doorway, a point in between — even though the nature of the port has changed. A port city that used to be located at the intersections of different spaces, Hong Kong will increasingly be at the intersections of different times or speeds.

Like Hong Kong, much of Singapore’s population are immigrants who came in search of better opportunities. Unlike Hong Kong, the Singapore government has endeavoured to create a stable nation out of its transient population and has been somewhat successful in doing so (Quah 1990; Mutalib 1992). But if we take into consideration the recent trend of one in five Singaporeans wishing to emigrate and the claim that one in four Singaporeans is a foreigner, Singapore may well become, like Hong Kong, a city of transients. Considering that a decade ago, Singapore was one of the most vocal champions of Asian values and Asian modernity, the present cultural self-re-imagining as a cosmopolitan global city seems to suggest that the contradiction between being “modern” and “Asian” is no longer an issue. This has also meant that the Singaporean official nationalism now embraces “cosmopolitanism” without the obvious creation of a significant external antagonistic other. In adhering to the demands of globalization, the new imagining of Singapore is being forged through the creation and representation of itself as a “global city”. I have argued that the cosmopolitanizing of Singapore is about representing Singapore as a place in itself where the reference to the idea of the nation and its cultural locationality is constructed through the instrumental logic of the global city (Castells 1996). In other words, as a locality Singapore’s very uniqueness is now defined in terms of its particular form of

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globality.17 In essence, this uniqueness ironically is neither authentic nor distinctively Singaporean. It can be reproduced and replicated anywhere else in world. The question remains, how are Singaporeans themselves responding to this new phase in the state’s nation-building effort? So far in this book I have concentrated on the response of the state to globalization. In the final chapter, I wish to invert this perspective and draw on the views of Singaporeans surrounding a number of the issues that have been raised. Through interviews and surveys with a range of Singaporeans both in Singapore and those who have emigrated, I consider questions of national identity, national belonging, attachments to Singapore, Singapore as a global city and so forth, from the perspective of the people, as opposed to official state discourses.

Notes 1. The term cosmopolitanism, derived from the Greek words, kosmo-polites means “world-citizen” or “being citizen of the world”. Originating in the Kantian moral-political philosophy, the term cosmopolitanism primarily “designates an intellectual ethic, a universal humanism that transcends regional particularism” (Cheah 1998, p. 22). In this sense, cosmopolitanism means a way of being in the world detached from “the bonds, commitments and affiliations that constrain ordinary nation-bound lives” (Robbins 1998: 1). From this philosophical notion, there have appeared numerous other interpretations as a way of theorizing and understanding the practices, sensibilities, aspirations, experiences, allegiances, moral responsibilities, identifications, and politics of individual subjects within the context of globalization (Hannerz 1996: 102–11; Cheah and Robbins 1998; Robbins 1999; Tomlinson 1999; Breckenbridge et al. (eds.) 2002; Vertovec and Cohen (eds.) 2002). In this chapter, I address the idea of “cosmopolitanism” associated with the “cultural mood” or the excitement of modern urban life in global cities (Berman 1992). 2. It has been argued that multiracialism is derivative of the British divide and rule policy (Benjamin 1976); that it fails to address the complexities of differences (Clammer, 1985 and Siddique 1989); that it represents a compartmentalizing and policing of identity (PuruShotam 1998) and that it does not recognize the existence of hybrid and syncretic cultures (Chua 1998b). 3. In the context of Western global cities, multiculturalism is often hailed as a positive outcome. For instance in Australia, the ethos of multiculturalism serves as a kind of cultural capital which the nation-state can celebrate and articulate the enriching qualities it brings to its national culture (see, for

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example, Hage 1998). However beyond that, state-sponsored multiculturalism that operates in Australia has two fundamental values. The first is to allow individuals of different ethnic backgrounds to maintain their own cultural practices and traditions. The second value derives from the belief that allowing this practice of ethnic difference enriches the multicultural society, so that the society will ultimately benefit from the “fruits” of its diverse cultures (Hage 1998). On the contrary, in Singapore, multiracialism is essentially espoused as a first step towards keeping the respective “racial” groups distinct and separate in the name of cultural preservation. Second, cultural diversity is celebrated as representative of richness and plurality, while some of the more problematic aspects of rigidly prescribed cultural difference are ignored. The main difference here is that the promotion of multiracialism as a cultural ideology and official practice works primarily to reinforce the “Asian” cultural origin of Singaporeans and not how it “enriches” Singapore society. As I will show later in this chapter, hybrid cultural formations that have evolved organically as in the case of Singlish, have been censured by the government simply on the grounds that it may jeopardize Singapore’s economic future. 4. Speaking at an Arts conference, Mr Owyang Hsuan, Chairman of the Housing Development Board stated that “In Singapore we have achieved a great deal over the years in terms of improving the quality of life. For that we can take great pride and we must make sure that this will continue. But ‘quality of life’ must mean more than owning a condominium in district ten, or having a Mercedes Benz in the garage, or going abroad twice a year for holidays. For the great majority of individuals there must be a limit to the enjoyment of material things beyond which the law of diminishing returns would start to operate. After all, how many meals a day can a person eat or how many houses can a person live in at one particular time? There is no guarantee that a feeling of emptiness or boredom or frustration would not gradually set in if there is nothing such as art or something else to compliment all that economic success” (Owyang 1996, p. 8). 5. As Forbes (1999, pp. 214–42) observes the representation of Singapore as a world city and hub of an evolving (mega)urban region (and global network of cities) has been often elaborated, with remarkable consistency, and is increasingly a prominent feature in government, business and scholarly literature. He goes on to add that the present projection of Singapore through consciously constructed “imaginative geographies” such as “world city” and “global hub”, and its “attractiveness as a site for regional corporate headquarters”, “is helping to fashion new space economies that reconfigure economic linkages and transcend national boundaries” (Forbes 1999, p. 251). At the same time, Forbes argues that the emphasis of these representations risk neglecting other transient and enduring characteristics of the metropolis. He notes that despite the Singapore government’s

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remarkable success in creating appropriate images for Singapore, both for domestic consumption and to enhance the city’s attractiveness as a hub, a critical reading of the various cultural dimensions of this representation is largely absent in academic literature. 6. In his book, East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia (2000), American sociologist Daniel Bell transcribes an interview with Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew. The interview took place on 18 February 1999 and focused on Asian values, democratic processes in Singapore, “patriotism” and globalization. Bell pointed out that there has been a steady outflow of Singaporean emigrants and that 40 per cent of young people were prepared to consider leaving the country for greener pastures. Lee’s response was: Yes, that’s a problem: Singaporeans must have conviction that this is their country and their life….[an emigrant is] a washout. But meanwhile we have to deal with the facts, so we’ve been replacing emigrants with wealthy and skilled migrants from Hong Kong, mainland China, India, and elsewhere. We also offer attractive packages for skilled expatriates to live and work in Singapore (Bell 2000, p. 263).

The reference to “an emigrant being a washout” was made earlier by Lee Kuan Yew during the 1989 National Day address. Lee was reacting to the outflow of Singaporeans particularly in the late 1980s and labelled those who left as a “washout”. According to Tremewan (1994, p. 122) between 1986 and 1989 approximately 10,000 families emigrated to Western countries. Tremewan argues that this is probably a very conservative figure, as in 1989 alone, it was estimated that nearly 4,700 families (16,000 people emigrated). Lee’s comments are framed entirely in instrumental and economic terms — a problem which can be easily addressed by policy initiatives. Daniel Bell, in turn, made the following observations: But I wonder how many will want to come in the next few years? It won’t be easy to attract talented migrants anymore. A strategy that may have worked in economic boom times won’t work in relatively difficult times. The only other solution is to give people a greater say in political affairs so that they’ll be more motivated to stick with their fellow citizens in the less-than-happy days ahead (Bell 2000, pp. 263–64).

Lee, not at all perturbed by this observation, replied: “wishful thinking. Don’t worry, we’ll find people. Our neighbouring countries are worse off than we are, and they can provide a source of talented economic migrants in the future” (Bell 2000, p. 264). 7. In Chapter 5, I will look at some specific responses from Singaporeans on the foreign talent issue. 8. It should be pointed out that following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, the revelation of the activities of the Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah and arrest of

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9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

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some of their members in Singapore in 2002 and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, most of the cultural and arts activities in Singapore were considerably scaled down. Designed to replicate some of the world-famous performing arts venues like the Sydney Opera House, the Esplanade — Theatres on the Bay is envisaged as Singapore’s premier international performing arts centre and as an instant national icon of Singapore. Among its state-of-the-art facilities are the 2,000seat Lyric theatre, the 1,800-seat Concert Hall and gallery spaces for exhibitions. It was completed at an estimated cost of S$590 million. The Renaissance City Report was produced by the Ministry of Information and The Arts in 2000 as its next vision plan superseding the Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts (1989). As it is pointed out in The Renaissance City Report (2000, p. 1) “While we are in the top league of cities in terms of economic indicators, we fare less well on the cultural indicators, in terms of talent pool, facilities, activities, audience figures and level of state funding for the arts. We should aim to reach a level of development that would be comparable to cities like Hong Kong, Glasgow and Melbourne in 5–10 years. The long term objective would be to join London and New York in the top rung of cultural cities”. For example the government pointed out in an article in Straits Times that on a per capita basis, Singapore currently spends “S$7 per person” on the arts whereas Hong Kong spends S$24, and the Victorian government in Australia spends S$14. The Renaissance City report states that “the long term goal is for Singapore to join London and New York in the top tie of cultural cities. London spends about S$108 per person on the arts and New York S$32” (Straits Times, 10 March 2000). The European Cities of Culture is a European Union programme which was launched in 1985 to open up to the European public and overseas tourists particular aspects of the city, region and country concerned as well as to emphasize wider European cultural affinities. Each year the European commission selects and awards grants to a city to play host as the European Capital of Culture. (http://europa.eu.int/comm/culture/eac/other_actions/ cap_europ/cap_eu_en.html) Reworking Redfield and Singer’s 1954 thesis on the cultural role of cities to develop a present understanding of world cities, Hannerz (1996) points out that four groups of people (transnational business, Third World population, expressive specialists and tourists) play a significant role in the making of contemporary world cities. In Singapore’s case the idea of emulating these global cities is all about striving to achieve a sense of “world-cityness” (that is, global character). See also www.sg (the official Singapore national website), and www.stb.com.sg (Singapore Tourism Board website). This instrumentalist vision is also shared by Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

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For example, responding to a comment that Singapore’s local cultural scene is depressing and not expected to improve in the foreseeable future, Lee argued that “the cultural scene will improve in the future. You’re going to see world-class concerts and plays in Singapore because we’re going to put up the facilities for it, and we’re on the main trunk route. And whether you’re Pavarotti or Placido Domingo or whoever, they have to travel, because Europe has heard enough of them and everybody’s watched them on television. So we are no longer isolated” (cited in Bell 2000, pp. 264–65). 17. Historically, Singapore was born of the “modern age of mercantile capitalism; of steamships and telecommunications, essential to international trade between Europe and Asia; of immigrants from east, south and southeast Asia and from the colonial centres of Europe, not exclusively Britain, all in search of economic opportunities” (Chua 1998d, p. 987). However, the recognition of this process of place/identity-formation or “a global sense of place” (Massey 1994) — the evolution and development of Singapore as a place linked with the wider world — has only emerged in official discourses in the 1990s with the government generated imagining of Singapore as a world city.

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian 5. At Studies. “Home” inIndividual a Globalized City-State? 159 articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

5 AT “HOME” IN A GLOBALIZED CITY-STATE?

For those who were born and bred in Singapore, those who have stayed or migrated, those who come to make a better living — for all these people, Singapore is a convenient and temporary base. The best that Singapore can aspire to is to be a virtual nation, an abstract entity, imagined by a number of people who have had some association with the country, can choose to connect with it whenever they wish, just as in logging on to cyberspace, clicking on to the electronic hypermarket of free-floating identities. (Kwok and Ali 1998, pp. 119–12.)

INTRODUCTION In Chapters 3 and 4, I examined the specific positioning of Singapore within the globalized space of flows and the ways the Singapore government has approached the processes of globalization. The 1990s saw a significant change in the way Singapore articulated its relationship to the rest of the world. Its earlier rhetoric of Asian values and the need to preserve and safeguard the Asian cultural traditions of its people against the penetration of “Westernization” gradually gave way to a more concerted effort to transform Singapore into a global city. This gesture towards a “wannabe global city” in Asia has been fostered by marketing Singapore as a regional hub for international finance, services, telecommunications, tourism and, more recently, in the area of arts and culture. In addressing the social and cultural challenges of globalization, the Singapore government continues to maintain rhetorically the need to make Singapore a world class “home” and a cosmopolitan city. Many of its policy visions are about “place-making” and are associated with the government’s fear that Singapore risks becoming a “hotel”. Spaces void of any local particularity, unhindered by an attachment to community or identity effectively resemble what Augé (1995) terms a non-place. Transience undermines the capacity of the state to rely on its citizenry to identify as a national community and share a common

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identity. A disinterested and indifferent population that has no affective sense of belonging, commitment, and investment in the nation-state would pose a direct challenge to the survival of Singapore. Thus, policy initiatives like The Next Lap; Singapore 21; The Renaissance City Report; and Remaking Singapore, along with other ongoing nation-building programmes have been aimed at building and nurturing a citizenry with affective investment in the nation. However, as I argued in the previous chapter, these recent policies bring with them some important contradictions and difficulties centred on maintaining the fine balance between embracing globalization yet ensuring the continuation of the nation-state as a distinct imagined community. An important question in this respect is how Singaporeans themselves perceive and experience the issues with which the government is so preoccupied. In other words, what is the view from below? What are the views of Singaporeans on the question of national identity and belonging? What do they say about Singapore’s self-proclaimed global city status and their experience of living in a globalized Singapore? These are important questions, especially in light of the hype generated around the challenges of globalization and the need for Singapore to remain a competitive economy. The views of Singaporeans on such issues can help provide a much better understanding of how people’s lives are shaped by state policies and how they negotiate and respond to the diverse processes of globalization and nation-building in Singapore.1 In this chapter, I examine the ways in which Singaporeans articulate their experiences in relation to the state-constructed narratives of national identity. Public debates on globalization and the nation-state in Singapore are limited (see Tremewan 1994; Ho 2000).2 Nonetheless over the last few years, Singaporeans have begun to participate in various News Polls and Internet Bulletin Boards to express their opinions and views. The views expressed in these forums offer an insight into the way in which the participants respond to government policies and rhetoric. It is also worth pointing out that the absolute anonymity that internet bulletin boards provide generates a more candid dissenting evaluation of PAP policies than other media. More broadly, these views are a sample of the current mood, especially of young Singaporeans, on some of the issues that I wish to explore in this chapter.3 I draw extensively on messages posted on the Straits Times Interactive Chat (STIC) discussion board which I monitored between August 2000 and December 2002; reports in the Straits Times newspaper; feedback from fifty participants in an email survey that I conducted between June and December 2001; and interviews

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I conducted with ten Singaporeans between January and April 2002, to examine the question of national identity and belonging.4 The participants recruited for the interviews are presently residents of Sydney who left Singapore in the later half of the 1990s.5 During these in-depth interviews, I asked the participants, who are all in their early to late 30s, about their decision to emigrate, and their relationship with Singapore.6 I want to argue that Singaporeans relate to the “national” question in practical and material terms and as such this mode of belonging is highly individual-oriented and is not conducive to developing a sense of collective identity. This, I argue, is a direct outcome of the government’s approach to nation-building based on economic developmentalism and the ideology of pragmatism. So far the government has attempted to instil and create a sense of national identity and belonging by giving its citizens a material stake in the country. However, despite Singapore’s remarkable economic and social achievements and the government’s impressive record of “delivering the goods” (in areas such as employment, housing, education and healthcare), there still remains a consistent obsession with survival as a small nation with limited resources. And so when national fortune and private destiny are always presented by the state as intimately fused, as Yao (1996, p. 351) points out “the real and imagined dangers to national order inevitably darkens the glow of middle class perfection”. And so, while Singaporeans take pride in and strongly identify with what I would call the “material furnishing” of the nation, given the anxiety over Singapore’s uncertain future, their emotional stake in the nation is somewhat half-hearted. Another key argument I wish to make is that while Singaporean social modernity is characterized by a high level of efficiency, cleanliness and the presence of all modern conveniences within its borders, these elements are not sufficient for Singaporeans to have a deep emotional stake in the country. Without this affective connection, Singaporeans seem more drawn to new opportunities abroad. These desires are as much influenced by the high cost of living in Singapore as the attraction of better opportunities and more pleasant lifestyles offered elsewhere. Herein lie the contradictions of the Singapore nation-state and its social modernity. It is on the one hand very ordered and well managed and on the other too confining, with “no room” to move, both physically and symbolically. These views reflected in the comments of the survey and interview in this study suggest that no matter how hard the government tries to instil a sense of national belonging, the reality is that Singapore’s new middle class population will never be fully contented.

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Unlike the previous generation who came as immigrants and contributed to the development of Singapore, the new middle class aspire to upper middle class lifestyles found elsewhere. In the final analysis, I argue that the structure of mutual obligation that exists between the Singapore state and its people is built upon an ambivalent relationship. In providing the gift of social life to Singaporeans, the state expects in return their commitment and loyalty to the nation. For an ethics of mutual obligation to emerge, the state needs to recognize and honour not only the moral worth and contributions of its citizens but also their mere presence.

SINGAPOREAN AND RELATED IDENTITIES At the start of my field research I was interested in exploring how Singaporeans would describe their cultural identity in order to get a sense of the levels of national identification. In my email survey, I asked the participants how they would choose to describe themselves: “Would this be as: (a) Chinese/Malay/Indian/ Eurasian-Singaporean, (b) Singaporean-Chinese/Malay/Indian/Eurasian, or (c) Singaporean?” The purpose of this question was also to find out how the participants define their identity in relation to the official discourse of multiracialism in Singapore. As I have shown in Chapter 1, the logic of multiracialism is a fundamental element of Singapore’s national culture and it operates by maintaining the idea of ‘race’ as an immutable category of identity. The term “race” is often used interchangeably with notions of “ethnicity” and “culture” in Singaporean discourse. My intention here therefore was to establish how the participants relate to and embrace the term “Singaporean” in their everyday lives. Respondents who selected the first option, i.e. those who described themselves in terms of their culture/ethnicity/“race” followed by their nationality insisted on taking on a dual identity. For instance Karen Tan, a research analyst in her 30s, said that she would describe herself as Chinese-Singaporean. She explained “I see myself as of Chinese origin, which is written all over my face, and secondly as living in Singapore”. She meant by “origin”, ancestry and cultural roots. This is further reinforced by her reference to her bodily appearance (written all over my face). “Chineseness” therefore is an unchanging and reified representational as well as a physical category for Karen. She defines her national belonging in terms of being a Singapore resident. Karen’s response is arguably in line with Singapore’s discourse of multiracialism.

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Race is defined strictly by patriarchal descent and one’s race supposedly determines one’s culture and thus one’s identity. By describing herself first as Chinese and secondly as Singaporean, this respondent has reinforced the inclusive and accommodating nature of Singapore’s multiracialism. In other words, you are always, in the first instance, a member of one of the four official racial groups which make up the Singaporean (multiracial) national identity. The consequence of maintaining an institutionalized racial identity, in Karen’s case, means that being a Singaporean is secondary. Another respondent, Chung Meng, a financial analyst in his late 20s, pointed out that “I always thought of myself as Chinese and Singaporean. Guess it’s due to the fact that when we fill out application forms, we are always asked for this field”. This case further reinforces how Singapore’s official multiracial policy influences individual identity construction. The practice of inscribing a racial identity, especially in official and institutional settings, prevents Singaporeans, regardless of their ethnicity, from simply referring to themselves as Singaporeans. Both ethnicity and nationality are therefore maintained as distinct and separate categories. Respondents who selected the second option of describing themselves — nationalities followed by their ethnic identity — were keen to emphasize their hyphenated identities. The term “Singaporean” serves not only to distinguish one from other kinds of nationalities, but more importantly it rejects and breaks with the traditional diasporic national identities of Singaporeans. In other words, being Singaporean-something is an attempt to locate oneself territorially and specifically within the bounded space of the national imaginary. Susan Lee, a teacher in her 30s explained: I am a Singaporean-Chinese, “because I don’t want to be confused as being from China, and because my race is after all Chinese”. Another respondent Anbarasu Balrasan, a graduate student in his early 30s, pointed out: “Singaporean first and then Indian because I cannot identify myself outside of my memories of Singapore and the formative years of my youth was [sic] built in this country”. The need to emphasize and specify one’s race/ethnicity, it can be argued, is a direct result of Singapore’s multiracial policy which seeks to perpetuate rather than subsume ethnic differences. Official discourse proclaims that the intention of this process is to embrace and celebrate ethnic differences, not create tensions. Tay Lai Cheng, who works as a corporate communications manager said that she would describe herself as Singaporean-Chinese, “that’s because I consider being a Singaporean my main identity — I was born in Singapore, and hold a Singapore citizenship. Being Chinese is a secondary description

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of my identity, a characteristic that differentiates me from Singaporeans of other races”. Lastly Ramu, a management training officer, stressing why he chooses to describe himself as a Singaporean Indian, said: I believe that every individual unconsciously develops a close bond and attachment towards the place where they spent the greater part of their childhood growing up in — which they later come to identify as “home”. It is during this crucial period of their life that their identity is moulded by the environment they live in and they begin to characterise themselves as who they are. As such I characterise myself as a Singaporean Indian.

The respondents who choose to describe themselves as having hyphenated identities expressed the need to stress their connection with Singapore simply on the grounds that it was their birthright. A SingaporeanChinese/Malay/Indian/Eurasian identity therefore is not necessarily a hybrid identity. Rather it emphasizes the specificity of location and locality, and it also works to dissociate and differentiate from ethnic identities such as Indian-ness or Chinese-ness, which are territorially bound, and between racial identities found in Singapore. As evidenced in Ramu’s statement, Singaporean-ness is not an identity associated with an imagined community but rather with the physical environment where he has grown up. And equally, it is an identity one acquires as a result of living in such an environment. Finally, respondents who described themselves simply as Singaporean resisted the logic of multiracialism.7 This small group is generally the exception and seem to be swimming against the tide. Mohamed Shariff, a marketing manager in his early 30s stated rather curtly “I am Singaporean because I was not born in China, Malaysia, India or Europe”. This extract is interesting in that Mohamed rejects Singapore’s racialized or hyphenated national identity and would rather be regarded as Singaporean tout court. The difficulty of not fitting-in with the official discourse of multiracialism has led others to consider themselves as simply “Singaporean”. As Raymond Francis said “I am of mixed ancestry and I find these race labels too constrictive”. This is indeed a problem inherent in Singapore’s multiracial policy. Singaporeans of mixed parentage and inter-racial marriages, the most obvious examples of cultural hybridity, do not fit into the official race categories. In practice, they are ascribed the race labels of their fathers. For Raymond, identifying himself as Singaporean may not be strictly an affirmation of national belonging but rather a way of overcoming the rigid and fixed idealisation of race. Likewise, Dawn Mok pointed out that “I would describe myself as a Singaporean because

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I don’t feel very Chinese (even though I am). My family has had mixed marriages from two generations back. Plus, I flunked Mandarin in school. Without sounding like our pledge, being Singaporean transcends race, language, culture and religion”. Similarly Gerard, in his early 30s and of Indian and Eurasian parents noted that “as it is common for inter cultural/ religious marriages nowadays, it is difficult to define clearly one’s ethnicity. Many foreigners from the West have taken up citizenship [in Singapore] so it is not really fair or accurate to compartmentalize someone in terms of being Indian, Chinese, etc.” These last three responses exemplify the ambivalence some Singaporeans feel towards Singapore’s multiracial policy. The need to define oneself in terms of the official racial categories is seen as problematic. Yet in reference to the survey question, Kamachi Ruthramurthi, a news reporter, indicated that she describes herself as Singaporean because a “Singaporean is a little bit of all of the above”. Though there are some exceptions, the responses to the question of identity suggest that Singapore’s multiracial policy, where individuals are ascribed a racialized identity, remains largely uncontested. It can be argued that the official construction of identity in Singapore is predetermined by a very specific set of criteria. The idea of “race” both as a primordial category and a socio-cultural construct is a powerful signifier for defining one’s identity. Physical appearance, “origin” and “roots” provide not only a way of talking about one’s identity but also a means of differentiating oneself from other racial categories. Although those who identified themselves as Singaporeans followed by their race, strongly asserted their localized sense of identity (of belonging to Singapore and not India, China or Malaysia), they too emphasized the need to differentiate themselves from other Singaporeans in racial terms. One important aspect of these responses is that those who identify as simply Singaporean seemed to do so, not because of their embrace of some positive sense of Singaporean-ness, but rather as a kind of default response because their sense of self, their family or ethnic backgrounds do not fit neatly into any of the official racial categories of Indian, Chinese, Malay or “Other”. To be “Other” does not offer any particular scope for identification, so Singaporean becomes the default option. Mostly these individuals seem to be from mixed race backgrounds as in the case of Raymond Francis or are individuals whose family backgrounds had little focus on reproducing their official ethnic identity, as in Dawn Mok’s case. Ironically, it is those of mixed background — those with no clear belonging in the official multiracial grid — who are most likely to describe themselves simply as “Singaporeans”.

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The government’s approach to preserving the identities of each ethnic community as distinct and separate and developing a national identity in tandem suggests that the latter can only evolve by default. How then do Singaporeans relate to the official visions of becoming a global city and calls to embrace a cosmopolitan identity?

BEING SINGAPOREAN IN A GLOBAL CITY In my email survey, I related to the participants a news article that appeared in Straits Times on 10 January 2001. It reported that a survey compiled by American Foreign Policy magazine and the consulting firm A.T. Kearney had named Singapore the world’s most globalized country according to indicators such as cross-border flows of goods and services and international contacts.8 Referring to this report, I asked the respondents whether they would regard Singapore as a global city. In my study, many respondents concurred with the view that Singapore was a global city. Sumathi in her late 30s argued: I would see Singapore as a global city because it is a centre for international forums, attracts multinationals to set up base here and is a modern city with a high standard of living. [And] … no, I do not see Singapore’s globalisation as being a threat because I believe it is the only way to go for a small country like ours with no natural resources. We have to depend on trade and interaction with other countries, and with it will come diversity of cultures. We need not lose our inherent cultures, they are just being enhanced with more and diverse ones. I believe foreign talents and foreign workers are necessary for the Singapore economy. The Singapore workforce alone is too small to sustain a thriving economy. And local talents are limited. If Singapore wants to make its mark on the world map, it needs to attract the best from all over the world.

It is not surprising that Singapore’s physical limitations and lack of natural resources demand that it rely on other countries. What is interesting about Sumathi’s comments however is the “managerial speak” she employs in reasoning why certain policies are necessary for Singapore. This managerial speak is very similar to that used by government officials to articulate particular constraints and problems experienced by Singapore and to formulate solutions for them. James Lim, a military officer in his early 30s, was excited about the prospect of Singapore becoming a global city: When bench-marked against the above parameters and cities, one could argue that Singapore is already a global city. We are probably one of the

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most globalised cities in the region, if not the world. Our economic/ financial infrastructure is becoming even more world-class by the day… our airport and shipping hub are renowned. And our arts scene has also become more livelier of late… with more original local and international productions… I am watching Miss Saigon in September here. And the new cultural/arts centre alongside Marina Bay is going to be ready soon… the buzz is getting louder.

The sense of optimism and excitement expressed by Sumathi and James about Singapore’s global city status however was not shared by all respondents. Audrey Koh, a business development manager, noted: “I won’t regard Singapore as a global city. Singapore is more like a hub, a port — there is flow of these trading and cultural activities, but they seem to be imported, going through Singapore, rather than being cultivated here. Similarly, our trading activities need to go beyond our shores to be considered ‘successful’ — we are just too small”. Moreover, Susan Lee added, “Singapore is not really a global city because we are too small and young to have as much influence on the global economic/cultural activities as the other global cities are, for now”. In a sense, both Audrey and Susan’s comments highlight the fact that Singapore, because of its small size and limited capacity to influence global economic and cultural activities, is not comparable with other major global cities. More importantly, while Singapore’s strategic positioning as a global city, does instil a sense of pride amongst some Singaporeans, it is not really seen as producing a uniquely Singaporean culture. Despite the differences in opinion over whether Singapore is a global city or not, it is nevertheless clear that Singaporeans embrace globalization as a matter of economic necessity. To further investigate how Singaporeans understand Singaporean identity, I asked participants in the email survey: “Would you regard the term ‘Singaporean’ as being most closely associated with being (a) Asian; (b) Western; or (c) Cosmopolitan and why?” The aim of this question was to gain a sense of how Singaporeans are imagining this identity, given that the Singapore nation-state is considered to be both non-Western and always-already Westernized (Ang and Stratton 1995) and more recently portrayed as “cosmopolitan”. Almost all the respondents stated that the term Singaporean is most closely associated with being “Asian”. Ramu explained that: Singapore is still very much an immigrant Asian society and we are very receptive to Western influences. One must also take into account that all Asian countries are subject to the Western influences today and they sometimes are more ‘Western’ in their behaviour than Singaporeans. As a result of being

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separated from the parent Asian countries, we immigrants sometimes cling on to a more idealistic Asian view of Asian countries (China, India, Indonesia, etc.) While the cultural situation in these countries have changed dramatically over the years. Thus in some ways Singaporeans are more ‘Indian than India Indians’ and ‘Chinese than China Chinese’.

Benjamin (1976) argues that this tendency is an outcome of Singapore’s cultural logic of multiracialism. He points out that, since a Singaporean identity depends on the extent to which an individual is able to claim membership of one of the four races, there is an expectation to conform to a particular racial description and its defining cultural characteristics. These characterizations are derived from an idealized and often romanticized, essentialized and static notion of cultural tradition and heritage to which each respective “race” belongs. Moreover, Ramu’s statements highlight the curious irony of Singapore’s multiracial policy which, unlike its Asian neighbours, rests on cementing in time what it is to be a certain kind of Asian. As he points out, Singapore’s neighbours and the countries from which diasporic Singaporeans derive are fluid and changing. In Singapore’s case, “modernity” is seen as representative of the West and dichotomously opposed to Asian culture, values, and morality, or sold as a harmonious meeting of East and West. In this way, the Singaporean identity requires the maintenance of racial distinction and essentialized diasporic Indian-ness, Chinese-ness or Malay-ness, which form an anchor in the face of Western influences. For a majority of respondents, Singapore’s Asian ethnic make-up and its geographic location in Asia were the primary points of reference for grounding the notion of Singaporean-ness as Asian. For instance, Siti Amirah noted that the term Singaporean is most closely associated with being Asian because “of [the] physical appearance [of most Singaporeans], and also in consideration of Singapore’s geographical location”. It is not surprising that both the physical appearance of Singaporeans and geographical location of Singapore play an important part in how Singaporean-ness is imagined. Even though Singapore is unquestionably a very Westernized country and portrays itself as a cosmopolitan city, its multiracial policy which connects racial characteristics to “culture”, in some way precludes a more fluid and hybrid sense of cosmopolitanism arising at the intersection between “East” and “West”. As one respondent, Susan Lee pointed out: “internally (in Singapore) I/we like to think of ourselves as cosmopolitan, but I think most other countries will still consider us an Asian country. Besides, a country is usually described as part of a geographical region, so first thing that

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comes to mind is Asian”. While the geographically specific and spatially bounded nation-state of Singapore presents itself as having a multifaceted cultural identity (Asian, East meets West or cosmopolitan) and uses any of these labels strategically when the occasion requires, its racialized representational regime and location in geographical Asia tend to subsume all other possible identities. Interestingly, only two respondents described Singaporean identity as cosmopolitan. Kamachi argued that “Singapore is very visibly a mix of Asian and Western influences and the two don’t just exist separately. It is a blend”. Offering similar sentiments, Abdul Razak said, “essentially Singapore is an Asian society built on Western engines in more than just a few ways, incorporating the best of the East and West. That’s cosmopolitan”. Most respondents, however, seemed to view Singaporean identity as Asian, separate to, yet influenced by the West, rather than something entirely new — indeed cosmopolitan — as Kamachi and Abdul do. Many of the respondents’ answers also indicated that the official policy and idea of a cosmopolitan Singapore is not persuasive enough for Singaporeans to take on such a descriptor. At the same time, none of the respondents actually referred to the “Asian” cultural traditions to which they belong, to establish their understanding of a Singaporean identity. For them, and this again reminds us of the discursive power of the connection between race, place and culture, the term Singaporean is unequivocally connected to the geographical location of Singapore and further supported by the presence of a majority Asian population. The cultural fusion of East and West, of modernity and tradition idealized through the government’s coining of the term “New Asian” seems to have had little effect on how Singaporeans characterize their national cultural identity. Singapore may well be en route to becoming more cosmopolitan but a Singaporean identity remains bounded and rooted in “Asia”.

AFFECT, IDENTITY AND THE MATERIALITY OF NATION As I have shown in Chapters 3 and 4, the issue of home arises repeatedly in government discourses of national identity. I was interested in finding out how the Singaporeans relate to and identify with the Singapore nation and indeed, whether they experience the nation as home. By “home” I do not mean the physical or the domestic household but, following Morley (2001, p. 425), home as “spaces of belonging” (and

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identity) at a local and national scale in which people think of themselves as being “at home”. Something more akin to homeland. In response to the question “do you feel Singapore is your home?”, it is not surprising that most respondents suggested that Singapore was home simply because it is their country of birth, where their family and friends are, and where they had grown up and spent most of their lives. However on deeper reflection, a more complex story emerged when respondents spoke about the sorts of factors which contributed to their sense of identity and belonging to the Singapore nation. With remarkable consistency, most respondents in the survey and STIC webchat indicated that Singapore’s economic achievements and progress, its political stability and efficiency as compared to Singapore’s Asian neighbours, its standard of living, and the clean, safe and green living environment, were the factors contributing most to their sense of identification as a Singaporean. These factors without a doubt were a source for national pride. As I read through the hundreds of messages posted on the STIC website, replies from my email survey and interviews, the thing that struck me most was the specific ways in which the respondents talked about their experiences and affective links with the “environment” of everyday Singapore. The experience of home and belonging amongst Singaporeans is largely framed in the materiality and social modernity of everyday life in urban Singapore. These have become homely symbols of the nation. A sense of self and identity is imagined through them; they are what makes “us” as Singaporeans different. Recalling the uncertainties faced by Singapore during the period after the separation from Malaya, and pondering all the achievements of the nation-state since then, one respondent wrote: I’m so proud to be a Singaporean, especially today!! Today marks the 35th year since our country break loose from the Federation of Malaya. Unlike then, when people are struck with fear and uncertainties [of] the future; when our leaders break in tears for the sad announcement, we now rejoice for the birth of a new nation. So what make [sic] me so proud?? Is it due to the stability in our economic situation? Is it due to our stable political structure? Is it due to the high standard of living? Is it due to the high percentages of growth in GDP yearly? Is it due to the low crime rate? Is it because our airport is still no. 1? Perhaps... But what make me really proud is that… this is the only place that I can call it MY HOME!! There will be no country that I will like to be in, ever, since I have almost everything here. (smashing4 — 9 August 2000)

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In this account, we can see that the specific social conditions and experiences of national life form a crucial backdrop to the articulation of national belonging and a sense of feeling at home. Though the questions raised in the above response are rhetorical, they invariably express a high level of identification with and affective belonging to modern Singapore. Another respondent firmly stated that being Singaporean means: The competitive economy, the excuse to speak Singlish (or broken English), the good education system, the chance to meet other races/cultures, the convenience in transport/shopping/eating out/etc, the pleasure of knowing that my country had a dramatic/traumatic history but still emerged a winner in such a short time, the fact that many nations out there envy us to some extent, ... (Layman1 — 19 August 2000)

For both these respondents the “traumatic” history of Singapore serves as an important point of reference for evaluating the present achievements of the nation. The gaining of independence in 1965 is deeply entrenched as part of the national imagining. For Singaporeans, National Day celebrations are not only a triumphant moment but also serve as an official reminder of Singapore’s achievements. Respondents frequently remarked upon Singapore’s comfort, modern conveniences, high standard of living, economic and political stability. I like Singapore because it is a safe small place. It is very easy to go from place to place. Also Singapore rules are strict so it is a good thing to live in Singapore. I am also very proud to be a Singaporean and I think that I am very lucky to be born in Singapore. Singapore is my country, my home and my nest. (xiaofen84 — 5 October 2000)

And according to another respondent, Audrey Quek, a training development officer in her early 30s: Singapore is home because I know of no other. I am used to this place and the people here, I won’t make the neighbouring countries my home as the standard of living is too low and the cities highly unattractive. Even if you have the money it is no point.

The perception that Singapore is a “safe” place to live in and where one can travel with ease suggests that these factors are not to be taken for granted. Here we find that Audrey’s sense of belonging to Singapore is based on material comforts and the standards of living. They are seen as an integral component of being Singaporean and have come to be

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conventionally associated with the idea of “Singaporean-ness”. Yet, another respondent writing to the bulletin board reflected: Well the first thing that comes to my mind is the transport ... I definitely appreciate the transport. Reckon it’s the best. No hassles at all. The second would be the cleanliness and safety I feel when I return home. Apart from that I can’t really say that I have any complaints except that I get annoyed at certain people who complain about everything that goes on I mean there are rules and regulations for a reason and if we haven’t got them then we would probably end up in a mess but then again, that’s just my opinion. (amber78 — 19 October 2000)

The common thread in these responses is the materiality of the things Singaporeans tend to identify with. Questions of home and belonging inevitably relate to the realm of materiality and affect. Yet these important dimensions are frequently overlooked in theorizations of nationhood which often focus on the representational (for instance, Benedict Anderson’s (1983) imagined community emanates through print media representations) and discursive realms (the view that identities are produced within discourses such as narratives and myths) (Hall 1992, pp. 292–99). Australian Cultural Studies scholar Greg Noble argues that while issues of representation and analysis of texts and images evoking nation-ness are important, it is equally imperative to understand that the nation is also “experienced” and “felt” (2002, p. 53). In his view, the capacity to identify with the nation comes not simply from atypical acts of national celebration and rituals such as national day parades or sporting events (see Bocock 1974; Bennett 1992; Spillman 1997; Edensor 2002), but from the “somewhat submerged, half-conscious and ubiquitous experience of nation throughout our everyday lives which makes those moments of national identification possible” (2002, p. 53). Noble builds on Billig’s (1995) work on banal nationalism where the nation is naturalized through everyday talk. Billig makes the point that in addition to the extra-ordinary rituals of nation, there also exists what he calls a “banal nationalism” — the daily reproduction of beliefs and habits — which structure everyday life in modern nations. This is symbolized “less by the waved flag than by the half-noticed flag hanging outside a public building — and provides the basis for the mobilisation of nationalist discourse” (Noble 2002, p. 53 and Billig 1995, pp. 5–7). Extending Billig’s point, Noble (2002, p. 54) argues that “the nation is not only ‘imagined’ and ‘felt’, it is also experienced as ordinary, familiar and natural — indeed as homely”. In this way, a sense of living in a nation is naturalized

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and embedded in habituated routines and materiality. Noble coins the term “nation-ism”, which he defines as “the ways in which an environment has a nationed quality, framing our social experience, our sense of place and the way we see social issues and social relations” (2002, p. 59), to describe this less overt but pervasive experience of the nation. Taking Noble’s argument that it is important to examine how the nation is experienced and felt in everyday life, the responses outlined above signal that it is the lived experience and trappings of Singaporean urban modernity within the spatial environment of the city that serve as a vehicle for Singaporeans to fashion a sense of identity in and belonging to nation. As we have seen in some of the responses above, it certainly appears that Singaporeans have internalized the government’s frequent efforts to statistically measure Singapore’s “successes”. Performancebased indicators (economic, financial, and social) and Singapore’s comparative ranking in the world in terms of trade, gross national product, foreign reserves, busiest sea and airports, and the standard of living are regularly promoted to the public as measures of Singapore’s achievement and status in the world. Singapore’s urban infrastructure and public programmes speak volumes in terms of efficiency, cleanliness, and comfort, of how “world-class” and modern Singapore is. These indicators serve as more than markers of achievement; they have generated amongst Singaporeans a deep sense of pride and provide a point of identification with the practical, material realm of Singapore, which have come to function as symbolic markers of the nation belonging and identity. However, these do not only operate symbolically. They are powerful because they are grounded in everyday material and social experiences. Returning to Noble’s thesis, what is unique in the Singapore case, therefore, is that a sense of nation-ness emerges out of the connection between three important elements. The connection between the actual lived, habituated, experience of this modern city; the government’s constant self promotion of Singapore’s modernity as the prime marker of nationhood; and the extent to which this promotion permeates every aspect of life, from the public to the private realm in endless public education campaigns. This form of belonging to the Singapore nation is all the more powerful because there are few alternative national myths and symbols of identity that transcend racial boundaries. As I pointed out in Chapters 1 and 3, Singaporeans are constantly confronted with official education posters, pictures, and murals on the walls of lift-landings, void-decks and throughout their neighbourhoods.9 Lai (1996, p. 110) points out that these paraphernalia “announce, inform,

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exhort, and remind people, as residents and citizens, of a multitude of things, events and social responsibilities in their daily lives”. These paraphernalia generally proclaim official campaigns (For example, Keep the Environment Clean; Green and Beautiful; Be Courteous), nationalistic slogans (e.g. Stand up for Singapore; We are Singapore; One People, One Nation, One Singapore; Singapore our Home), and announce official events (e.g. Family Day; Community Week; Ministerial Walkabout; National Day Celebrations). It is partly through such encounters and everyday living experiences that the nation is experienced.10 These paraphernalia have a background presence in the daily lives of Singaporeans. Moreover in the absence of alternative symbols of national identity, public infrastructure and facilities provided by the state and its administration together represent the nation. Such things as the covered walkways leading to bus-stops, the landscaped streets and gardens, the constant and efficient public works and urban renewal projects, the high-tech transport system, the clean, and comfortable hawker centres, the contemporary CBD (Central Business District) environment and shopping malls, the modern road system, efficient computerized bureaucracies, the well-funded and high-level educational institutions. These facilities provide comfort, security, a sense of familiarity and the feeling of being at “home”, but have also, as I argued earlier, come to symbolically represent the nation. Since independence (as discussed in the earlier chapters), the Singapore government, in addition to the promotion of national symbols have placed a strong emphasis on developing a material-based national identity — through the promotion of economic development, homeownership, asset-enhancement (shares) and providing a high standard of living and modern facilities. In many ways these strategies have been about creating a social modernity which in turn evokes a sense of Singaporean-ness in practical and material terms. Thus, the cleanliness, orderliness, and efficiency which many Western commentators find too contrived, are the very qualities which the government promotes and which in turn become the unconscious, naturalized background “furniture” of the everyday environment of Singaporean lives. While mostly remaining in the realm of the unconscious background, they can frequently be mobilized as material symbols of nation and a Singaporean modernity. Although there is evidence that the materiality of Singaporean ‘nationism’ serves as a way of connecting with the nation, its focus on

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symbols of modernity lacks the capacity to produce a deeper and more fundamental sense of belonging to the nation as a fully-fledged imagined community. While my respondents indicate that they experience a sense of “weness”, as I have shown, this we-ness is imagined through the materiality and achievements of the nation. It is not “we” in any abstract, primordial sense; it does not invoke a deep sense of allegiance. It is not the kind of passionate or emotional national identity which people imagine they might fight and die for, nor does it summon a strong sense of difference in the face of cultural otherness. As such, beyond the material experiences of nationhood, there is an absence of a uniquely Singaporean national identity. In other words, while it may serve as a solid point of differentiation from Singapore’s less affluent Asian neighbours, there are plenty of other successful modern nations in the West. Moreover as I showed in Chapter 3, despite the government’s significant efforts to create “heartware” through public activities and citizenship campaigns, these have traditionally been dictated by economic goals. Furthermore, as I pointed out in Chapter 4, the version of Singapore as a cosmopolitan, modern global city promoted by the government has a sense of “anywhere-ness” about it, tending to undermine any distinct sense of identity. With Singaporeans increasingly travelling and studying abroad, some express a sense of anxiety that symbols of modernity are not in themselves sufficient to offer a sense of Singaporean-ness. For example, on 21 February 2001 Straits Times carried a news report which examined how young Singaporeans are grappling with the issue of what it is to be Singaporean in the context of a globalizing world. The news report carried several interviews with local university students. Frederick Wong, described as a net-surfing youth plugged into global culture was quoted as saying “I can’t identify something that is unique about Singapore”. Wong added “I can’t tell a foreign friend that I’m proud of Singapore just for our 10-per-cent [economic] growth”. For him economic achievements alone do not necessarily translate into a strong sense of national identity. Interestingly, Wong noted that: Singapore is only a big city that I live in… my close ones and friends live and work here. I will still stay here for them. But if Singapore becomes an economist’s nightmare one day, I don’t know if I would be among the waves of Singaporeans leaving for greener pastures. And if I really leave for financial reasons, I believe that is so only because I’m pragmatic — like any typical Singaporean (Straits Times Interactive, 21 February 2001).

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The Straits Times article revealed that more than seventy youths at a Feedback Unit dialogue struggled equally hard when it came to defining what the journalist called the “Singapore essence”. Noel Tan, 23, said “we want to be proud of being Singaporean, but we’re not sure what to be proud about”. Another undergraduate student, Boo Koh Chin, 22, stated that “I’m proud of Singapore’s growth from a tiny dot on the map to a truly global player in the world, but I can’t think of much else that I would be proud of as a Singaporean” (Straits Times Interactive, 21 February 2001). Supporting a similar view, Adrian Teo, 28, said, “I don’t feel particularly proud of being a Singaporean. The focus of the Singaporean lifestyle is too narrow — work, career — it’s all onetrack. I think I’d feel more proud if we all had a broader outlook of life and did away with the kiasuism”.11 These comments further highlight the fact that while the pragmatic materialism of the nation can function as a source of pride, it can never be a key ingredient for the emergence of a deeper affective nationalism. It can only produce a very limited sense of belonging to the nation. This materialist form of nationalistic expression appears very different from traditional modes of nationalism (which are far more symbolic, idealistic, emotive and highly-charged) and begs the question whether or not it is a sufficient form of connecting and belonging to the nation. Furthermore, this form of nationism, as I demonstrate later in the chapter, is also Janus-faced in the sense that, while the embodied experience of homeliness (comfort, security, safety and stability) is required for the emergence of a sense of nation-ness (Noble 2002), there is also, as pointed out by some respondents, a sense of fragility and vulnerability attached to the Singapore national experience because of the economically driven and determined nature of everyday life, the vulnerability of the Singapore’s economy, and the rising costs of living which become the context for disaffection and disenfranchisement. The broader implication of this form of identification needs further examination, which I explore in the remainder of the chapter.

THE CONTRADICTIONS OF SINGAPOREAN SOCIAL MODERNITY For all the comfort and high standard of living that Singapore can offer, it still remains, in a material and physical sense, a place where people have to compromise or can never afford to realize their material aspirations. This was evident in the responses I received from my

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interviews with Singaporeans presently living in Sydney. Before the interview, I pointed them to the apparent contradiction that while Singapore has a stable and strong government and is a peaceful and safe place in which to live and work, many Singaporeans for various reasons are not committed to making Singapore their “home”. In the present context of globalization where the idea of “rootlessness” — belonging to no one particular place — is in currency, I was interested in examining why Singaporeans have chosen to leave Singapore. Arasu, an Indian age 34 years who works at a local university, arrived in Sydney in 1994 with his family. When I asked him what prompted his family to leave Singapore, he said: It was my father’s idea. He was always thinking of emigrating. I don’t think he ever liked Singapore. Basically my father was sick of Singapore. We [the kids] were not sick of Singapore. My mom wasn’t that keen to leave […] because she was very close to her family. Basically there is a certain Singaporean arrogance, you know, we doing so well in the world[…] There was a sense of adventure, leaving for a new country, escaping the humidity, and having two cars in your garage which you can’t have in Singapore and living in a house.12

This orientation towards material betterment is a result of two crucial factors which limit upward social mobility in Singapore in terms of status, success and lifestyle choices. The first and most obvious constraint is simply to do with the limited physical size of Singapore. Despite Singapore’s highly successful public housing and home ownership programme, owning a house is the exclusive privilege of a few. Private housing is very expensive in Singapore due to the nation’s limited land area. With an average condominium costing over S$1 million and a semidetached house fetching well over S$2 million, it is understandable that only 13 per cent of Singaporeans are able to afford their own home (Chew 2003). By these standards even Sydney’s high property prices may seem an attractive draw card. Due to Singapore’s limited land area (to reduce traffic congestion, pollution, etc.) the government has also enforced a strict quota on the number of cars on the road by imposing heavy taxes and premiums. As a result, private cars are a luxury item in Singapore.13 The second limiting factor is closely linked with the state of social modernity in Singapore and the bourgeoning desires of the Singapore middle class. As it is well documented, Singapore’s remarkable economic transformation since the late 1960s has also been accompanied by an equally remarkable social transformation. In particular, the economic

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process has generated a sizable new middle class — young, Englisheducated, skilled and affluent (Rodan 1993b; 1996a; Robison and Goodman 1996; Yao 1996). Although this is neither a cohesive nor homogeneous category, the new middle class represents a new set of social desires, especially in living standards that include high levels of consumption and a greater emphasis on leisure and lifestyle pursuits (Robison and Goodman 1996). However, the range of lifestyle choices which the new middle class in Singapore aspires to is fairly limited. As a result, the social cost and sacrifices one has to make in terms of lifestyle pursuits outweighs the benefits of living in Singapore. Meow Wong and her husband left Singapore for the following reasons: I think we were there during the good times. I must say that both of us are pretty well paid. And we saved quite a bit of money. Financially, we were well rewarded. My husband keeps reminding us that we have been treated well because the Singapore government really devote to the professionals. We are thankful for that. On second thought, with all these policies … It is hard to keep a car. As the car gets older and you have to pay much more to keep a 10 year old car. I was thinking once you retire you live off your CPF [Central Provident Fund]. If you still want a car, there is no way you are going to be able to pay for it. Obviously then you have to lower your standard of living. Now the notion that you really want to enjoy that kind of standard of living after you retire… you don’t want to go into a debt. Because one should actually reap the reward of your hard work. And so it doesn’t make sense that having owned a car then you have to use public transport. Not that public transport is bad in Singapore but my husband found it difficult to swallow. And of course, I was also looking into aspects like as you grow older you need medical care. Singapore’s medical system is quite good in terms of expertise and so on. But it also costs a lot of money to be able to get that kind of care. I don’t think we were able to handle that.

This indicates that some Singaporeans do appreciate what the government has done for them. Yet this does not translate or give rise to a sense of moral obligation to the nation. For Meow Wong and her husband, the motivation to leave Singapore is primarily dictated by the anticipation of the high cost of running a car and medical care in Singapore. For Robert and Sharon Lim, a couple in their late 30s, the decision to leave Singapore was essentially an exciting prospect. Sharon works as an editor for a children’s magazine. Recalling their decision to emigrate in 1998, she explained: “[It was a] sense of adventure. Wanting to do something new and different. Opportunity arose. We were quite open to

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the idea of living abroad. There was a sense of excitement”. Similarly another couple David and Cindy Goh, when asked whether there was any specific reason for their decision to emigrate replied: We didn’t feel particularly stifled in Singapore. Life was quite all right. But what I did feel was that Singapore is a bit small, physically. It is rapidly running out of space, nature reserves and places where you can go to relax. We enjoy bush-walking and do outdoor activities together. In Singapore we didn’t have that many places to go to. Sydney is a more interesting place for outdoor activities.

Another interviewee, Kadir Aziz who works as a health officer in a local hospital came to Sydney in 1999. He noted that: One reason, I came over here is for better opportunity. We all work hard for a living. But yet, in the process of working very hard, you don’t have time for family, time for leisure and all these things. Here [in Sydney] I do the same amount of work but yet I do have plenty of leisure time, plenty of time that I can relax back … quality of life. And many factors, you know, when you grow older, if you work in this country, you pay high tax but in return when I grow older the society is going to look after me. And I am going to live in a society where that is not going to be much stress. But if I were to live in Singapore, I work all my life and earn as much money as possible. And then I am paying mortgage until the day I die or when I get sick, I still pay until the day I die. There is not much benefit for the people […]

These responses strongly suggest that some Singaporeans are not only seeking greater autonomy in their economic pursuits but are also beginning to assert themselves socially. All of the respondents in my interviews pointed to the frantic nature of daily life and the physical and lifestyle constraints they experienced or felt while living in Singapore. It is clear that these were compelling reasons for their decision to emigrate to Sydney. Rather the prospect of a new and relaxed lifestyle, the desire to experience something different, a new job and career opportunities, and a lower cost of living were some of the driving forces behind Singaporeans emigrating. It can be argued that despite the best efforts of the government to make Singapore a fun and exciting place, it lacks the diverse range of lifestyle choices found in a place like Australia. Moreover, the interviewees also place much importance on the material possessions (such as owning a house and two cars) which are more affordable in Australia compared to Singapore. In other words, while Singapore’s social modernity is highly commended, it still cannot compete, at least for these emigrants, with Sydney’s.

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In my interviews, it became clear that for most of those with whom I spoke, affective ties with Singapore were overshadowed by self-interest. Evidently, there exists an irresolvable tension between the desires and aspirations (for social and upward mobility) of the respondents and the physical and lifestyle limitations and constraints of Singaporean social modernity. This tension may never be resolved if they were to remain in Singapore. Equally the respondents did not see the need to persevere and remain committed to Singapore. The prospect of a “better life” elsewhere (in terms of material wealth, choices and experience) was much more enticing. This however is not to argue that they do not feel any attachment to Singapore. In a study conducted with Singaporeans working in China, Yeow and Willis (1998, p. 20) argued that Singaporeans in general felt a strong bond with Singapore: “encounters with the more disordered, uncertain environment of the other has tended to lead to a retreat into an elevation of self and pride in national systems and the Singaporean way of doing things […]”. The people that I interviewed expressed similar opinions when it came to comparing work attitudes, efficiency, cleanliness, safety, and comfort between Singapore and Australia. But these sentiments emerged more out of nostalgia rather than as a result of being in an uncertain environment. They also strongly identified themselves as Singaporeans and were proud of the fact that they were from Singapore. As Dalgit Singh who is in his late 30s, working for an finance company in Sydney pointed out: I did not leave Singapore begrudgingly seeking greener pastures. Nope, I did not feel that I was stifled by the government (in fact, compared to many other administrations in other parts of the world, they have proved to be efficient and effective. I am genuinely proud of them). The reason why I left was hugely personal. I wanted to see the world. I want to experience and learn about other places, other people and culture. I love the little concrete jungle that I have grown up in (yes, I do like the fact that everything works out properly…How can anyone see that as detrimental?). I still see Singapore as home. After all, my family and friends are there.

What is particularly interesting here is that all of respondents stated that they would only return to Singapore on short visits to see family members and friends. Suzanne Lim, who came to Sydney to pursue her undergraduate studies but later chose to stay because of her relationship with an Australian, stated: At the first hint of a ‘lah’, it is like wow! I really miss speaking Singlish. I miss a lot of things about Singapore. […] But that feeling always comes back,

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when I go back. I am so enthusiastic, the minute I land at the airport, I am so happy but in 2 days… the uncanny familiar, people are so rude… and I can’t wait to go!

Similarly, for Meow Wong, the decision to emigrate was difficult. She pointed out that “I do miss Singapore. I am proud to be Singaporean. I think we have very high standards”. Yet, returning may not be a possibility. She stated that “I’ll probably not, you know, I can’t see myself going back to that grind again. Maybe going there for a short term would be nice”. While emigrant Singaporeans stated that they miss many things about Singapore, the experience of being back home is deeply confronting. The excitement and nostalgia quickly gives way to the reality of Singaporean everyday life. In this way, the Singapore home can be better conceived as a hotel for emigrant Singaporeans who come on short visits and play tourist taking in the things that they have missed about Singapore and leave once the nostalgia fades.

MANAGERIAL SPEAK AND GOVERNMENTAL FORMS OF BELONGING One of the key questions that I have been exploring in this chapter is how Singaporeans construct a sense of home and articulate their sense of belonging to Singapore. So far, I have argued that national identification with Singapore is largely grounded on the material experiences of everyday national life. At the same time, however, the inevitable constraints of living in Singapore (e.g. the high cost of owning a house and car), limited opportunities and lifestyle experiences (jobs, and open spaces) are key factors motivating Singaporeans to look elsewhere. As I have shown, many Singaporeans seem to perceive the nation in very pragmatic terms. Here I want to explore why this might be and what kind of belonging might emerge from this highly pragmatic relationship to Singapore. On this point, I found some of the ideas put forward by Australian scholar, Ghassan Hage useful, in particular his theorization of modes of belonging to the nation. Writing about Australia Hage (1998, pp. 45–46) argues that nationalist discourse involves two modes of belonging to a nation. One is homely or passive belonging. Passive belonging simply refers to a sense of being part of a nation, expecting the right to benefit from the nation’s resources and “feeling at home within it”. The second, more active mode of belonging is governmental belonging, which involves the belief that one has the right to the nation’s management, a right to having opinions as to how the nation

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should be run. The fundamental difference between passive and governmental belonging is that the former entails staking a claim in the resources of the nation, while the latter entails a sense of ownership of its fate. Governmental belonging does not equate to, or derive from, formal state or government power; rather, it should be seen as a sense of everyday entitlement to make managerial or governmental statements about the nation. According to Hage, passive belonging involves inhabiting the national body, whilst governmental belonging is an inhabiting of the national will. People articulate their sense of governmental belonging in times of crisis and impending threat to their national livelihood. Hage’s analysis is very much grounded in the way Australians perceive and articulate a sense of ownership of the nation, and how they experience and deploy their claims to national belonging in everyday life within the context and practice of multiculturalism in Australia.14 He makes the point that it is white Australians who are always worrying about something (immigration, illegal refugees, crime and so forth) and he sees this worrying as an attempt to assert a sense of governmental power over the nation.15 Hage (2003, p. 3) argues that worrying is a kind of affective investment in the nation: “you worry about the nation when you feel threatened — ultimately, you are only worrying about yourself”.16 As I showed in previous sections, passive homely belonging is frequently articulated through contentment with the material furnishings of the nation. It is a form of practical attachment to nation. This pragmatic sense of belonging emerges in the following internet forum posting which sums up well where the priorities of many Singaporeans lie in deciding who to re-elect in the next general election: I think that PAP sucks in many ways. But do you think the opposition can deliver what PAP has done for the past 42 years (since 1959)? All those talk about lack of democracy, freedom, whatever, does not give the opposition a strong stand, plus the fact that talk is cheap. The PAP, which has developed Singapore over the years, has proven with actions. Plus that there are still Singaporeans concerned with bread-and-butter issues and the so-called “more freedom and democracy” does not fill one’s stomach. The utmost concern is still those basic ones: food, water, shelter (housing), jobs, service, cleanliness, corruption-free government, etc. The opposition does not guarantee us that. It is too much of a risk for somebody who has yet proven themselves to take governance over the PAP which has provided what Singapore have now. If we make the wrong move, we may end up like Taiwan and the Philippines, the people got power, too much, but there’s no security. (Teekianhin — 9 August 2001)

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What is most revealing about this posting is that, despite the feeling that the “PAP sucks”, the respondent has clearly taken on board the PAP’s pragmatic approach to nation-building as the most logical, practical and proven course of action for Singapore’s economic survival and security. This is a good example of passive belonging that Hage has described. Returning to Hage, I want to argue that in Singapore, governmental belonging is much more ambivalent. In reading many of the responses to the STIC, such as that quoted above, it is often difficult to differentiate whether the respondents are deploying the managerial speak of the government or expressing their own views on how the nation should be run or managed.17 They rationalize the problems and challenges facing the nation based on the official view that its vulnerability necessitates a sense of urgency in the pursuit of its policies. There is then, a high degree of convergence between Singaporean’s personal views on the nation and the official government survivalist rhetoric. Nonetheless, feelings of resentment are also common. This is clearly evident in the anxieties expressed by some respondents about their experience of living in an economically-driven city-state.18 While most Singaporeans are unhappy with the fact that Singapore’s existence hinges on its economic survival, they nevertheless seem to accept this predicament as beyond their control. Thus their complaints are not of managerial intent but merely expressions of resignation.19 The anxieties of living in an economically-driven Singapore society surfaced over and over again. As this respondent suggested with a spiteful comment: Our existence as Singaporeans is merely an economic one — from decisions to marry or not to marry, to have kids or not, and when we have them, on how they should be raised; to staying in HDB [Public housing] or condominiums; to slogging on a job you don’t enjoy to working freelance which better suits your temperament; to conforming to the social norms of the workplace and society, to risk losing your possessions and wealth to be really you, to those you befriend and those you shun; and your choice of country… these are all merely rational economic decisions. (Ch1nswee — 15 April 2002)

And another: This is Singapore. We are cursed by geography, by location and size to slog and slog for a small plot of “non-land” and then die. We CANNOT escape from this undeniable destiny. If you long for open spaces at cheap affordable prices, leave because Singapore is not for you. If you want a slower pace of life, leave because most if not all Singaporeans cannot afford to “rest”. There

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is no rest, there is only work, study, work. Because, if it is not the Asian crisis, it is the electronics slump or it is China, India coming up, or political crisis in Malaysia or Indonesia. Repeat cycle ad-nauseum until death. Singapore is not in charge of its destiny. We are forever reliant on factors beyond our control. This is the reality folks and unless you find the process I have described as fun [some people like this mindless lifestyle very much and call it ‘a challenge’, or being ‘industrious’, whom I usually find them selfcentred and materialistic] leave, because most if not all will never find the quality of life you are seeking. (Omnipotent — 6 September 2001)

These observations capture well the unique predicament of Singaporean everyday life. It can be argued that this is a direct result of the ways in which the state has implemented and managed public policies. All public policies in Singapore are dictated and predetermined by the state’s single-minded approach to and pursuit of economic growth. The prioritizing of the economic over and above other aspects of social life has invariably led an increasing number of Singaporeans to question as well as seek a way out of this grind. My research findings reveal an important facet that underpins national identification in Singapore. In some ways it certainly supports Chua Beng Huat’s (1998c) reading that national identity construction in Singapore has been largely predetermined by the hegemony of economic discourse. Excluded from this identity construction are the cultural, social and political consequences of capitalist economic development, namely, the anxieties of living under the demands generated by a highly market-driven yet highly state-managed capitalist regime. He argues that: Without irony, these anxieties are mixed with the measures of pride in being part of an incorruptible system which is efficacious in generating economic growth, in improving material consumption for all, maintaining a clean and efficient city and, finally, in maintaining social stability and public security. This pride is reinforced by constant comparison with the “decadence”, “chaos” and “irrationalities” that apparently surround this island of “rational planning”. These comparisons are repeated in the speeches of national leaders, circulated widely by the national media, and in the popular sphere, directly “experienced in their travels”. Indeed, it is with these comparisons that a “Singaporean” differentiates himself/ herself from Others (for instance from neighbouring countries like Malaysia and Indonesia) in terms of level of economic development, and difference in the levels of corruption of public officials and even level of public cleanliness (Chua 1998c, p. 42).

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Despite an apparent sense of resentment, there is also among many Singaporeans an overwhelming sense of pragmatism and acquiescence that there is no other way for Singapore to survive. As this respondent pointed out: Tiny Singapore is always tiny. You cannot blow up the size to resemble, say Australia… I am in PARADISE when our leaders work hard to turn around the economy, put food on every family’s table, provide better jobs for the young graduates, better and cheaper HDB housing, cleaner environment for all to live in and all Singaporeans working and having a bright positive future. Or is this too much to ask for the likes of you who want to see Singapore as the poor man of Southeast Asia (Foreverstrong — 5 April 2002).

So, how do Singaporeans deal with a specific policy undertaken by the government? Hage’s argues that “governmental belonging” in Australia manifests most powerfully in white Australian’s views about migration and migrants. It is white Australians who have the required cultural and national capital to feel a right to make managerial statements about who has the power to have a legitimate view regarding who should feel at home in the nation and “who should be in and who should be out” (Hage 1998, p. 46). The import of “foreign talents” and workers into Singapore may give a clue to the extent and forms of governmental belonging among Singaporeans.

Foreign Talents and Foreign Workers The response to the import of “foreign talent” has been generally mixed. Many respondents were ambivalent about the government’s drive to recruit foreign talents. While many support the idea, deploying the managerial speak of the government, in the same statement they were equally sceptical about its impact on their individual life opportunities. This intermeshing of the official perspective and the respondents’ own feelings further reinforces not necessarily the lack of governmental belonging (that is, the right to have a legitimate opinion with regards to the management of the nation) but the ambiguity underlying such behaviour. It is about how the “coming together of national destiny and personal concerns affects the way the respondents see themselves under the comprehensive influence of the state” (Yao 1996, p. 342) which provides an interesting insight into expressions of governmental belonging.

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As I discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, the government’s drive to recruit foreign talents was conceived to tackle a “brain-drain” problem, the fall in fertility rates and to keep up with the demands of the new economy. The Foreign Talent policy has been construed by the government as inextricably linked to Singapore’s long term economic survival and sustainability in the age of globalization. The “ideology of survival” generated by the state has played a major role in providing legitimacy and support for its public policies. According to a survey conducted by the Singapore 21 committee 76 per cent of those polled were in favour of the government’s policy to attract foreign talents and only 23 per cent were not (www.Singapore21.gov.org). While there is a general public acceptance of this policy, these figures fail to highlight some of the concerns face Singaporeans. As one respondent in my research pointed out: The government is fond of citing the US as an example of a country that has benefited from a foreign influx. What it doesn’t seem to understand is that the US is a really huge country. There is room for more people, talented or otherwise... There are more opportunities. Singapore on the other hand is so small. The more foreigners there are, the more Singaporeans there will be without jobs. Certain sectors have far too many foreigners who are simply robbing us of our right to stay (rosewine — 10 October 2002).

This response highlights the personal consequences of the government’s foreign talent policy. The arrival of foreign professionals means not only greater competition for jobs but it is perceived by some Singaporeans as having the effect of undermining the right of one to “stay” in Singapore. It reflects the fact that respondents are afflicted with a sense of personal anxiety and vulnerability. However for many, there is a distinct sense that while we do not like the personal competition from these foreign talents, we have to “put up with it” because it is in the long-term economic interests of the nation, upon which my own survival and hope ultimately rests. While some are outwardly concerned by the competition foreigners represent, others almost completely mirror the government’s line, demonstrating the hegemony of the state’s survivalist logic. As one respondent, James Lim argued: I welcome the infusion of foreigners into Singapore. After all, we are principally a migrant community to begin with. We should not feel unduly threatened. We should be more worried if people don’t want to come visit and work here. The only other worry is that before granting any of the

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migrants permanent residency or citizenship, they must really feel for the place and want to stay here not because of the economic opportunities per se but also because they genuinely feel that they belong here.

This is obviously a very liberal and cosmopolitan view, except for the demand placed on migrants to demonstrate their sense of belonging and commitment to Singapore. Again, the “speaking style” of the respondent embodies the managerial speak that I alluded to earlier. The formulation of the response is characteristically de-personalized and objective: Singapore must welcome foreigners. But the irony is, foreigners who come to Singapore are attracted to the place because of the economic opportunities and rarely for any other reasons. It is most unlikely that they would develop a sense of belonging to Singapore right from the start. Similarly another respondent noted that: I have nothing against foreigners making a life in Singapore. But they should be worthy people we are allowing into our country, people who really make a contribution. Those maids, cleaners and construction workers are definitely people Singapore needs because no Singaporean would want to do their jobs. There are however, quite a lot of dubious “talented” foreigners. We have heard stories of so-called talented people from China, India and the West working here and taking jobs that should belong to Singaporeans… But as Singaporeans, we must remember that in times of conflict, it will not be these foreigners remaining behind defending Singapore. Foreigners and PR [Permanent Residence] will unlikely want to stay to fight for the nation. They will be happy to make money here and leave at the first sign of trouble. (Suhail3 — 11 August 2001)

Like the previous response, this response also highlights the importance of Singapore welcoming foreigners but there is also an anxiety that they lack an affective commitment to the nation. Although the above two respondents stress that Singapore needs foreigners for economic reasons, neither of them view their presence as culturally enriching for Singaporean society. Instead, Singaporeans see foreigners as economically-driven. They believe that if the economy falters, they are very likely to be the first to leave. At the same time, the arrival of foreign workers, as opposed to professionals or “talents” poses different kinds of “threat” to Singaporeans. Here for instance, Susan Lee argued that: Towards those who are more educated/professional, I have less problems, though it does get frustrating when the government keeps placing them on a pedestal when we are already here having problems finding jobs/land/flats

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etc. Towards the blue-collar workers, I do feel more invaded as they tend to gather in large numbers at certain places, and I don’t feel safe going to those places anymore, and those places tend to get really dirty or messy when they’re around.

Susan’s resentment towards foreigners in Singapore is thus two-fold. First, the government’s enthusiastic embrace of foreign talents (professionals) is generating considerable unease amongst many Singaporeans. In the case of foreign workers (semi-skilled and lowly paid), the resentment arises from the inconveniences Singaporeans experience in their everyday encounters with them. The reference made to the “invasion of foreign workers” stems from the well-known habit of foreign workers to gather in some public spaces on Sundays, their dayoff from work. They gather in large numbers at designated areas to mingle with fellow nationals.20 Singaporeans tend to see this as disruptive and invasive of their public spaces and have frequently raised their complaints in the local press.21 While foreign workers do not pose a direct threat to a Singaporean identity and belonging, their presence in some public areas is considered as disrupting a sense of “place”. Here the sense of place, as we can gather from Susan’s comments, relates to a personal experience of place rather than to a broader notion of “we-ness” of sovereign nationhood. In other words, Susan expresses much displeasure at the sight of foreign workers taking over and contaminating what she perceives as her own space. This is only a small sample of several hundred postings on this issue that have appeared on the STIC bulletin board over the last few years. From these responses, we can gather that the respondents in the first instance are quick to point out that they have nothing against foreigners and in fact welcome the government’s initiative to attract them to work in Singapore. And indeed many seem to have internalized Singapore’s economic predicament and labour shortage. At the same time however, this is not always an unconditional acceptance. First, the respondents are not entirely pleased with the perceived privileged status accorded to foreign talents by the government (on average expatriates may earn more than twice what locals earn and receive many other perks like housing, car, travel allowances and tax incentives). They believe that because of this Singaporeans are disadvantaged by foreign talents when it comes to job opportunities. Second, there is a general feeling that the so-called foreign talents are “over-rated” and because they are from overseas they are automatically considered as “talents” (i.e. more qualified than locals). And third, they worry that the presence of foreign workers

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is contributing to the disruption of their sense of “homeliness”. Many Singaporeans are very sceptical about the loyalty and allegiance of these new immigrants. They suspect that in times of crisis or economic downturn they are more likely to abandon Singapore. The observed ambiguity in my respondents’ behaviour also points to their sense of resignation that the uncertainties of Singapore’s economic future are beyond their control. This in turn has produced a tenuous form of governmental belonging. Singapore’s vulnerability and the PAP government’s paternalistic and interventionist role work together to make it very difficult for one to “perceive oneself as the enactor or the agent of the national will” (Hage 1998, p. 46). As a result, Singaporean citizens have little influence on the national will and it is the PAP that has become the sole reference point and arbiter. The citizens’ inability to represent and inhabit this national will produces a sense of discontentment while at the same time they pin their hopes on the PAP. And so whatever personal feelings Singaporeans may have, they are subjected to and in many cases seem to have internalized the will of the government. The result is an ambivalent form of governmental belonging. Hage’s two forms of belonging to the nation — passive, where one simply feels the right to benefit from the nation and its resources, and governmental or active belonging, which involves the belief that one has the right to opinions as to how the nation should be managed, a sense of ownership of its fate — is complicated in the Singapore case. The success of Singapore’s survivalist ideology means that despite a clear sense of belonging and ownership, individuals tend to express “governmental” personal opinions only in safe areas and often seem to subject their personal desires to the dominant economic logic. They rationalize the problems and challenges facing the nation based on the official view that its vulnerability necessitates a sense of urgency and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of its policies. The government becomes “the reference point in which people cast their hopes and personal wishes” (Yao 1996, p. 350). In this way, Singaporeans demonstrate a distinctly ambivalent belonging to the nation, existing somewhere between passive and governmental modes. It is passive in terms of feeling a sense of practical homely belonging to Singapore and feeling a degree of entitlement to benefit from its resources; active in the sense of having managerial opinions; and ambivalent in the sense that despite an apparent governmental belonging, many of my respondents seemed to have internalized the very logic of the survivalist state. This produces a situation where many Singaporeans perceive that their own hopes for

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homely belonging can only be fulfilled through the economic success of the nation. In this way, individual discomforts or resentments, for example, Singapore’s economic determinism and competition for jobs from foreigners, are repressed by the greater (although deferred) promises national success offers to fulfil. In other words, if as in Hage’s terms, governmental belonging is about inhabiting the national will, in Singapore’s case, the ideology of survivalism has become so ingrained in the national narrative that many Singaporeans seem to have internalized it. It is an ambivalent belonging because while they may be expressing managerial or governmental views in line with “inhabiting the national will”, their views so closely mirror the state’s that their belonging requires them in many cases to repress their individual desires and resentments in the name of national survival. In other words, there is a deep ambivalence among Singaporeans that although they may feel threatened by the presence, for example, of foreign talents, they simply “have to put up with them” for the economic good, upon which is built all those things that make them feel at home in Singapore. As Hage points out, this is similar to Marcuse’s thesis about enjoyment, or hope as he terms it, being subject to the logic of capitalism. You “suffer now in the hope that you might enjoy later without this enjoyment ever really arriving” (in Zournazi 2001, p. 151). Personal hope, in the developmentalist discourse, needs to be deferred and always subjugated to the survivalist imperative. Because of this ambivalence, there emerges a more passive form of belonging emerges because Singapore’s fate is always so uncertain and people feel little control over or personal ownership of, the national destiny.

SINGAPORE AND THE GIFT OF SOCIAL LIFE The responses I gathered on the experiences of living in Singapore and on the foreign workers/talent policy provide an interesting further insight into the affective dimension to the question of belonging. As I have argued the anxieties of living in an economically-driven society like Singapore and the government’s rhetoric of developmentalism and survivalism has generated ambiguous feelings amongst my respondents. On the one hand, they view the government’s strategy as necessary and critical in light of the social and political situations in neighbouring countries as well as within the context of the global economy. On the other hand, it has generated a sense of uncertainty amongst Singaporeans and a state of discontentment with the government’s single-minded goal

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of economic determinism and its effect on life experiences in Singapore. How might we characterize this ambivalent relationship between the citizens and the state? The notion of the “gift of social life” that Hage develops come from Marcel Mauss’s idea of gift exchange and reciprocity is useful to my analysis. According to Hage (2003, p. 99): By living within a family (or whatever other communal form helps us develop and grow), we receive from our parents (or whoever is positioned as such), our sense of communal life: we see ourselves protected and cared for, and we perceive ourselves as part of a historical subject that originates well before us. It is within this imaginary collectivity that we also learn that for what we have received we are expected to give back.

The idea of the social gift is important in that it requires reciprocity. It locks us into a social contract of mutual obligation. Because the state continues to play a dominant role both in providing what Hage (2003) describes as the “gift of social life” and, following Bourdieu, offering Singaporeans the “opportunities to make a life for themselves”, the state itself has become a powerful arbiter in determining the fate of Singaporean society. The nature of gift exchange and social reciprocity that I am interested here is the “vertical relation” that occurs between individuals and society. According to Mauss (1954), gift exchange involves not only the exchange of “things” but also the symbolic exchange of recognition. The Singapore state has been resolute in its commitment to providing and ensuring a good quality of life for all Singaporeans. However, its gift of social life — stable government, security, better-paid jobs, education, housing, and comfortable living environment — in my view, is not a “well-given gift or offered gracefully”. A well-given gift is one that is given out of a sense of obligation and in honour and recognition of the receiver (Hage 2003). This sense of obligation arises not simply out of acknowledging someone for what they have done. Rather, as Hage points out following Mauss and Levi-Strauss, the foundation of all ethical practices and indeed of any “social ethics is relating to the very presence of the other as gift” (2003, p. 151). It can be argued that Singapore’s approach to nation-building based on the need to encourage its immigrant population to stay committed and loyal to Singapore (Quah 1990; Chua and Kuo 1991) has dictated the nature of gift-giving. This in turn has also meant that Singaporeans are expected to express their allegiance to the PAP. If we take, for instance,

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the government’s policy of asset-enhancement schemes (means of distributing the accumulated surplus in the national reserve by upgrading HDB flats and issuing Singapore Telecoms and New Singapore Share to citizens), gift-giving is very much motivated by particular self-serving objectives.22 The act of issuing shares to citizens, however, is not simply about distribution of national surpluses but goes hand in hand with the push for privatization of state-owned enterprises in most capitalist nations. In other words, the underlying aim of this exercise was based on economic calculation and it was neither an attempt to increase social welfare nor give the citizens a control over the company as the government remains the main stakeholder. In the case of the HDB upgrading schemes which commenced at the beginning of 1993, this has become a political exercise to ensure allegiance to a PAP state because it is pegged on the level of a particular neighbourhood’s support for the PAP at the ballot box. When a government deploys such self-serving tactics, cynicism from the citizenry is not a surprise. Thus the gift of social life is not well given or accepted graciously. In other words, you are given this gift in order that you ensure the nation’s economic survival and stay committed to Singapore. For that matter the giving itself is rather calculated. In other words, as Hage (2003, p. 150) points out: In the “mutual obligation” imagined by today’s political class, society gives us social security and other quantifiable economic material benefits and that is enough to ask us to give back not only equally quantifiable labour and productivity but also faithfulness and gratitude.

As this quote from the Minister Lee Hsien Loong illustrates: There is one contribution we do expect of successful Singaporeans. They must feel a commitment to society, an awareness that they have succeeded not just through their own efforts, but because the society helped them and gave them the opportunity to do well. So they should have a sense of obligation and a desire to contribute something back. Else if the successful feel no bond to the less successful, then society cannot hold together (Singapore Government Press Releases: www.gov.sg/ sprinter/30 January 2001).

There is a perception amongst the political elite that Singaporeans do not honour the gift that they are receiving. The government obviously demands that Singaporeans reciprocate the gift of social life it has bestowed upon them. It therefore expects the loyalty and commitment of Singaporeans in return. However, when Singaporeans decide to emigrate

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to the West they have been labelled as “washouts” by Lee Kuan Yew, and “fair-weather” Singaporeans and “quitters” by Goh Chok Tong. From the perspective of the receiver, as a mutual obligation, Singaporeans respond to the state’s gift of social life by re-electing the PAP to power and are appreciative of what it has done for them. But at the same time, there is a perception that what the government gives is never enough, and it takes away through taxes and other fees. Singaporeans are thus well-known for complaining about rises in the cost of living, especially when public transport fares are increased, and new taxes and bank fees are introduced. It appears that from the responses, many of the respondents in my study do not experience an ethical obligation towards the Singapore nation. While they identify with the nation in practical and concrete terms, they are also equally pragmatic about their relationship and have little affective commitment to Singapore. While Singapore may have acquired the national income level of a developed nation (see, for example, Perry, Kong, and Yeoh 1997), it is still saddled with a sense that this can be easily lost if its citizens take a breather or lose the driving energy of the poorer past; thus the language of survivalism continues even as the regime trumpets the country’s economic achievements since independence to remind Singaporeans how lucky they are. The state, therefore requires a very strong commitment by its members to contribute and participate in the nation’s survival. The gifts of developed Singapore are in the future, or if they exist now, they are tenuous. This is well exemplified in the vision statements such as The Next Lap, Singapore 21, Renaissance City Report and more recently Remaking Singapore which represent the promise of the gift of social life to be received in the future. Furthermore, Singaporeans are constantly reminded of the fragility and uncertainty of Singapore’s economic future. So the social contract involved is a very pressured one, where to “slack off” is risking Singapore’s survival. The only way that Singaporeans are able to break out of the necessity to continuously and stressfully contribute to Singapore’s economic survival, sometimes at the expense of personal social upward mobility and also lifestyle experiences, is to emigrate. For Singaporeans who choose to remain at home, their response to the gift of social life can be categorized in two ways. They can accept it graciously with praise and pride, or be burdened by the weight of expectation. The first response is widely articulated in the ways in which Singaporeans frame their sense of belonging and identity with the Singapore nation state. The latter is voiced by those who feel that their

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social upward mobility is limited and who are despondent in the feeling that nothing else matters in Singapore except economic survivalism. For them the possibility of experiencing the fullness of social life, beyond economic determinism is remote. There is another important point that needs to be made here. In all its pronouncements, the government places great emphasis on its own role as the giver and on the importance of mutual obligation. The constant focus on survival and development has reduced the statecitizen relationship to a transaction of social goods such that a broader emphasis on sociality has not developed. The social provisions provided by the state therefore risk becoming akin to a form of “commodity exchange” instead of signifying genuine gift exchange. As Schrift (1997, p. 2) points out “where commodity exchange is focused on a transfer in which objects of equivalent exchange value are reciprocally transacted, gift exchange seeks to establish a relationship between subjects in which the actual objects transferred are incidental to the value of the relationship established”. As we have seen in previous chapters and in some of the Singaporean responses in this chapter, the focus is on what the state gives and what it expects in return. As I have illustrated throughout this book, the ruling PAP elite constantly worries about Singapore’s economic survival and future, the lack of commitment and attachment to the nation amongst Singaporeans, and so forth. Many ordinary Singaporeans themselves, however, do not share or partake in this “national” worrying. Having no sense of ownership of the fate of the nation (factors which are deemed beyond their control) Singaporeans worry about the immediate issues that pose a threat to their own daily life. Whether it is the stress of living in a highly market-driven and state-managed society or stiffer competition for jobs, Singaporeans are effectively left out of the equation on how the nation should run. Moreover, the gift of social life is for the most part instrumental rather than given gracefully. And so, when Singaporeans respond by relating to the gift instrumentally, their faithfulness and gratitude is questioned by the state. Moreover, because Singaporeanness rests so much on the symbolic value of material and urban comforts, economic success, and the accoutrements of modernity, this creates a sense of ambivalence as these things in themselves are not specific or affective enough to tie Singaporeans to Singapore. What this means is that the government has to keep delivering on the material front; if it does not, then the symbolic sense of “we-ness” through material success becomes tenuous — and Singaporeans feel that the

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promise is not fulfilled — the gift is not reciprocated and they look towards elsewhere. Only when the primary determinant and outcome of the gift of social life is dislodged from the ideology of economic survivalism (which seems to me an unachievable wish), can we expect to see a more ethical response on the part of Singaporeans towards mutual obligation.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have examined various responses from Singaporeans on a number of issues connected to national identity, belonging and globalization. I found that at the everyday level, describing or identifying oneself as “Singaporean” rather than Chinese, Malay, Indian or Eurasian only occurs when respondents wish to differentiate themselves from other nationalities or when individuals feel that they do not fit within one of the official racial categories. Singapore’s economic achievements and social modernity are not only indicators of the social wealth of the nation but are typically understood as the defining features of Singaporean-ness. Despite the various transformation in the ways Singapore has been positioning itself within the global context (from a modern society steeped in “Asian values” to a cosmopolitan global city-state), these shifts in the cultural re-imagining of the nation have so far provided very little impetus for the formation of a distinct Singaporean identity. While Singaporeans are mindful of the fact that Singapore must constantly find a niche for itself in a competitive global economy, the experience of living in a city-state driven by survivalism has created an adverse effect on how the individual imagines his/her role in relation to the nation. Singaporeans therefore are split between accepting the material and social goods provided by the government and the constant worry that everything is economically-driven and that the fate of Singapore is beyond their control. In Singapore the state provided gift of social life itself is very much grounded on material well-being and lacks in symbolic gestures of communal solidarity and a sense of broader national sociality. In part, this is due to Singapore’s history as an immigrant society, which then became a nation founded on the ideology of economic developmentalism and pragmatism. Although this approach to nation-building has contributed to the nation-state’s remarkable rise as an economic entity and the emergence of nationalistic pride based on this achievement, it

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lacks the necessary ingredients for the development of a more fullfledged emotive nationalism. Moreover, the practice of gift exchange in Singapore has been both dictated by and dependent on an ideology of survivalism. This has made the act of giving less graceful and indeed less meaningful especially for Singaporeans who are in search of the fullness of social life and who find the possibilities of upward social mobility wanting. As much as the survivability of the nation rests on the ongoing commitment and loyalty of Singaporeans, for such affective ties to emerge and for its members to “experience an ethical obligation” to the nation (Hage 2003), the state must move beyond not only its rhetoric of survivalism but also its demands of Singaporeans to commit to the nation’s future.

Notes 1. All the names of the participants in my study have been changed to ensure anonymity. The message posted to the Straits Times Interactive Chat is followed by the name of the author (this is usually a codename) and the date when the messaged was posted. 2. According to Ho (2000, p. 443), “the conditions of participation imposed by Singapore’s political and administrative elite necessarily limit citizen involvement in political affairs. However, the political system does grant the ordinary citizen several access points through which he or she can directly or indirectly influence policy making; these include through the media, in elections, and through the involvement in interests groups and local organizations” participation in Singapore is still low. This is not to suggest that Singaporeans are inactive and apathetic towards the political process. Rather, as Ho (2000, p. 456) argues “Singaporeans generally believe that their power to initiate or prevent the appearance of a policy item on the agenda is minimal, as there are few access points”. This is a result of a near absolute PAP political dominance, and its paternalistic style of government. Singaporeans are more likely to “jump up and down” and complain when policies “hurt their pockets” (Ho 2000, p. 457). Often select committee members, mainly comprising parliamentarians, civil servants, professionals, community and grassroots representatives and policy makers, partake in such debates. This has been the case with Shared Values policy, Singapore 21 and the Renaissance City Report. In Singapore, there have been no radical challenges to the government’s rhetoric of globalization or any outright resistance to any of its policies. 3. According to a survey conducted by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore in 2000, six out of ten homes own at least one computer and five out of ten had internet access. In terms of users’ profile, the typical

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home computer user is male (53 per cent), below 30 years old (61 per cent) and has polytechnic/tertiary education (40 per cent). There are more than 1.7 million internet users in Singapore and 42 per cent of the population aged 15 years and above are internet users (www.ida.gov.sg). 4. Some authors have suggested that Singaporeans who leave Singapore are doing so in an act of defiance to the state, and this emigration can thus be seen as a form of resistance (Rodan 1992, Tremewan 1994, and Bell 2000). There have been only two studies conducted on Singaporeans emigrating overseas. The first study was conducted by researchers Gerard Sullivan and S. Gunsekaran (1991). They asked 85 principal applicants who had been granted Australian immigrant visas to complete a questionnaire before their departure. Their primary concern was to investigate the motivations for emigration. They concluded that job insecurity, economic uncertainty, pressures on education and demanding work life were the main reasons for Singaporeans going overseas. Yap Tui Meng (1991) carried out the second study. This project again was a survey-based study on 100 former Singaporeans who had emigrated to Perth and Sydney in Australia and Vancouver in Canada. The survey also was concerned with ascertaining the reasons for their emigration. The findings were very similar to Sullivan and Gunsekaran’s. The respondents indicated that the pressures of the Singapore education system on the children, demanding and regimented work ethics, and limited job or business opportunities were the driving forces contributing to their decision to emigrate. These studies were concerned with establishing the reasons for emigration and are important, but often little insight into questions of national identity. 5. In Chapters 3 and 4, I observed that the number of Singaporeans emigrating has been steadily rising. Australia is one of the places where Singaporeans have settled. The 2001 Australian National Census showed that the Singapore-born community is rapidly expanding, with a population of nearly 34,000. Characteristically, the census revealed that of the Singaporeborn in Australia, 26.8 per cent had completed post-secondary qualifications compared with 12.8 per cent of all Australians. The census also stated that 40.9 per cent of Singapore-born Australians were in the occupational categories of professionals, paraprofessionals and managers or administrators. The median age of the Singapore-born in Australia was 31 years in 2001. These statistical figures are indicative of the typical Singapore migrant living in Australia. Most of them are educated, hold comfortable and secure jobs and their fluency in English can be seen as an added advantage for settling in Australia. 6. I was interested in interviewing Singaporeans living in Sydney to find out not only the reasons for their emigration but also whether or not they still identify themselves as Singaporeans and maintain ties with Singapore. While the government acknowledges the dispersal of Singaporeans across

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7.

8.

9.

10.

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the globe, it has yet to embrace their role and contributions to the nationstate. To encourage émigré Singaporeans to stay in touch with the happenings and latest news in Singapore, the government has established the Singapore International Foundation (SIF) to serve as a social and networking centre. The SIF is responsible for the formation and development of Singapore clubs in many countries where there is a sizeable number of Singaporeans. These clubs plan and organize cultural activities for their members such as the National Day celebration and other cultural festivals (for example, Chinese New Year, Christmas, Hari Raya Puasa and Deepavali). There were a few respondents, rather ironically, who noted that they would describe themselves as Singaporeans without stating the obvious. Audrey Koh who works as a business development manager stated that “I am Singaporean. It’s quite apparent physically that I’m a Chinese, so there’s no need to state the obvious”. Similarly, Koh Chai Heng a customer services officer in her mid-30s said, “I am a Singaporean. People can see my race from my skin colour.” And finally Adeline Wong noted that “I am Singaporean, unless it’s not evident enough that I’m Chinese”. These responses are grounded on the assumption that while describing oneself as a Singaporean is the muchpreferred option, it is obvious that they also belong to a particular racial/ ethnic identity. This again suggests that the respondents do not feel that their ethnic identity can be subsumed under a national identity. In the same article, journalist Susan Long interviewed a number of Singaporeans on their views about this ranking. Based on this interview, she suggested that: “shopping, it would seem is the most tangible connection most Singaporeans have with the global economy. For others, the way to globalization’s heart is none other than through the stomach. The true mark of a global, if somewhat gluttonous, citizen, they say, is found in how many different cuisine he [sic] has supped and sipped on — from grilled Australian Barramundi to pan-seared Hawaiian mahi-mahi” (Straits Times, 10 January 2001). The void-deck is the vacant area found on the ground floor of HDB blocks. It is a multi-purpose area. It functions as a foyer with access to lifts and staircases leading to flats. It has a letter-box area, notice-boards and in some cases houses residents’ committee offices, and shops. The space is also used for weddings, neighbourhood community events and funerals. Since the 1990s, in an attempt to create a sense of patriotism amongst citizens, the government encouraged Singaporeans to display the national flag outside their apartment flats in August to coincide with the National Day celebrations. Residents’ committee members made house-calls to sell the flags and also to remind residents to display them. Island-wide competitions were held to determine the most decorated HDB Block and precinct. However within a couple of years after this idea was mooted, Singaporeans did not take much interest in the activity. The word kiasuism is derived from Hokkien, which is one of the local

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13.

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Chinese dialects. It can be defined as the attribute of wanting to be in an advantageous position over others for purely personal gains. The affordability of luxury cars was a hot topic in the STIC website. One respondent said: In Singapore, you pay through your nose for cars and houses. In Australia, a new BMW318 is S$49K and a terrace house with garage is S$150K. Here [Singapore] you drive a Hyundai Atos [Korean car] in hot traffic jams, and live in a filthy flat with criminal neighbours and spit and urine polluted lifts (clean country, think again). You can’t find that in Australia (evensteven 5 April 2002). Another respondent living in the United States replied: Don’t just use the German cars as an example. Try a Honda Civic. An acquaintance in Singapore had one, and she had paid S$80K! Her husband choked on his beer when I told him he could get the same model in the US for S$16–20K! A far better deal, wouldn’t you say. (Thubb 5 April 2002). The car population in Singapore is absolutely controlled by what is known as the Certificates of Entitlement (COE). The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology determines the number of new cars that are admissible every month and in turn invites aspiring car owners to bid for a COE through a tendering system. The COE then entitles successful bidders to purchase a new car. Within four years of its introduction, the COE has moved from S$1,000 to S$100,000 for “luxury” cars. This cost does not include the cost of the car, an import duty of around 150 per cent, annual road tax and licence fees (see, for example, Yao 1996; Chua 1997b). For Hage (1998), the term national belonging must be distinguished from the concept of citizenship. Citizenship is a formal indicator of national belonging. When a non-Australian-born person acquires citizenship he/she is also assumed to acquire nationality. However formal citizenship does not provide a good indication of the practical deployment and significance of nationality in everyday life. This is where the idea of practical nationality or national belonging becomes useful. According to Hage practical nationality is best conceived as a form of national “cultural capital” (using Bourdieu) and can be “understood analytically as the sum of accumulated nationally sanctified and valued social and physical cultural styles and dispositions (national culture) adopted by individuals and groups, as well as valued characteristics (national types and national character) within a national field: looks, accent, demeanour, taste, nationally valued social and cultural preferences and behaviour, etc” (Hage 1998, p. 53). It is through the accumulation of national cultural capital that a group is able to assert their sense of governmental belonging. Hage argues that white Australians who are part of the dominant culture in Australia, given their historical and cultural dispositions, dominate and possess high levels of national cultural capital compared to any other migrant groups. This gives white Australians a greater sense of governmental belonging and cultural dominance within the field. In his second book Against Paranoid Nationalism, continuing with his

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16.

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discussion on the different modes of affective investment in the nation (homely and governmental), Hage (2003) develops two new concepts of worrying and caring about the nation. According to Hage, a defensive society such as Australia (where threats to its sovereignty and identity are seen to be everywhere) creates worrying citizens and a paranoid nationalism. In Singapore the possession of the right to contribute to the nation and its management is highly circumscribed. This is largely an effect of the government’s strict ruling on freedom of expression and free speech (see “OB” markers in Chapter 3). The government has made clear that while anyone is free to challenge its policies, they must expect a response from the government (Goh Chok Tong, Straits Times, 14 October 1999). The “Catherine Lim affair” and a number of defamation and libel suits filed against opposition politicians, reporters and magazines by the PAP government is a case in point. Catherine Lim, a well-known local fiction writer, published an article in Straits Times on 3 September 1994. It was a critical political commentary on the PAP’s consultative style of government. In the article, Lim commented that despite the two different styles of the Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong’s government, the former remains highly influential. Goh immediately responded to her comments stating that he regarded the commentaries as “undermining the authority of his office and repeated the government’s position that those who desire to make such commentaries should join a political party and take public responsibilities for their words” (Chua 1998b, p. 200). Similarly, over the last decade, the PAP government has inflicted several heavy blows on opposition politicians like J.B. Jeyaretnam, Chee Soon Juan, and Tang Liang Hong by suing them for defamation and unsubstantiated allegations that they have levelled against the government. Many critics view the use of defamation lawsuits or the threat of such actions as attempt by the government to discourage public criticism and intimidate opposition politicians (Chua 1998b; Rodan 1996b). The government also imposed restrictions on circulation of Time magazine, The Asian Wall Street Journal and Far Eastern Economic Review in the mid1980s because of their “supposedly” unfavourable and biased coverage of Singapore. A distinctively Singaporean brand of humour, irony, and cynicism has begun to emerge as a means through which counter-narratives to official discourses are being expressed. This humour is not always resistive; it is often characterized by cynicism and resignation. These forms of popular response to the government warrant further theorization. Such expressions are commonly found on various Internet discussion forums, bulletin boards, and websites such as http://www.thevoiddeck.org; http://www.talking cock.com; and http://whathar.150m.com. An interesting way, in which the complaints of Singaporeans have been

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manifested is through deliberate rewording and making fun of national songs, and jingles. For instance the national song “Stand up for Singapore” has become “Fare up for Singapore” and “Count on me, Singapore” has become “Count Money, Singapore”. Another popular example is the rewording of common acronyms used in Singapore. For instance: PAP (People’s Action Party) stands for Paying And Paying; HDB (Housing and Development Board), Highly Dangerous Buildings; PUB (Public Utilities Board), Pay Until Bankrupt; PWD (Public Works Department), Purposely Wants to Dig; MOE (Ministry of Education), Money Only Environment; MOH (Ministry of Health), Money Operating Hospitals; ERP (Electronic Road Pricing System), Eternally Raise Prices and MRT (Mass Rapid Transit), Mad Rush for Trains. 20. Domestic workers (mainly women) from the Philippines predominantly congregate at the Singapore Botanical Gardens and Lucky Plaza Shopping Centre along Orchard Road in the central shopping district. Indian, Bangladeshi, and Sri Lankan workers gather around Little India which is historically an Indian enclave and an officially designated tourist attraction. Thai workers meet at the Golden Mile Shopping Complex. Burmese workers gather around Peninsula Shopping Plaza. These areas in themselves have transformed their businesses and food outlets to cater to the respective nationals. See, for instance, Yeoh and Huang (1998) for a close reading on the public presence of Filipino domestic workers in Singapore. 21. See, for example, Straits Times, 11 March 1992, 19 March 1994, 5 and 15 May 1995, and 30 March 1998. 22. For a discussion on the asset-enhancement schemes and their underlying objectives, see, for example, Chua (1996) and (1998c).

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian 202 RESPONDING TO GLOBALIZATION Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

CONCLUSION

But Singapore is always work-in-progress, always improving, and always striving for new achievements. (Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Straits Times Interactive, 3 June 2003.)

FROM A BARREN PIECE OF LAND TO A THRIVING GLOBAL CITY Just as I was writing this conclusion, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong delivered his 2003 National Day Rally speech on 17 August. In this annual address, which has become a platform for re-assessing the year’s significant events (in this case: the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, the global economic downturn and the worldwide heightened threat of terrorism) and the challenges ahead, Goh pointed out that: In a mere 38 years, we have transformed a small, unpromising island into a vibrant city-state with a first-world standard of living. Those of us who struggled to build up Singapore from our poor beginning will never give up on Singapore. Out of nothing, we have created a miracle. Out of a barren piece of land, we have created a thriving global city. We will never let Singapore return to nothing. We have not come this far to falter now. The only thing that can stop us from achieving our vision is a weak state of mind. Do you believe we can do it? If you say “no”, we will not make it. But if you say “yes”, we will overcome. We have done it before, and we will do it again. […] My destination for Singapore is a country full of activity…it will be a safe and warm home… a place where Singaporeans can always find comfort…it will be a fascinating city, competitive yet compassionate, busy and yet with time to enjoy friendships and recreation. It will be a nation overflowing with laughter, confidence, life (Singapore Government Press Releases: www.gov.sg/ sprinter/17 August 2003).

The gist of this statement is quite simple: what Singapore has achieved since independence is proof that it can do just about anything. It is also

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an expression of determination. Singapore has overcome many challenges in the past and may face many ahead. His government is not going to let all the hard work of the past 38 years be for nothing. Whether it is maintaining a competitive economy, envisioning a vibrant and fascinating global city or creating a comfortable, safe and fun homely nation, its achievements and aspirations reflect both its strength and its vulnerability. The policy initiatives and strategies for achieving this are as much about dealing with the forces of globalization as they are about sustaining a viable nation. They both remain key tasks for the government.

GLOBAL CITY/NATION I opened my book with a quote from Ulf Hannerz (1996, p. 143). In his view, global cities are “beginning to lead lives rather distinct from their territorial states”. He goes on to say that city-states such as Singapore are social forms in their own right and exemplify global city status. In proposing this argument, Hannerz sees global city-states such as Singapore as simply more advanced on the continuum of “global city-ness”, thus conflating to some extent, global cities which are part of a nation, and those which are nations themselves. However, I have argued in this book that Singapore, as a city-state, must be differentiated from those global cities belonging to wider territorial states such as London and New York which belong to wider territorial states. That is, the fact that Singapore is at once a city-state and a nation presents unique global/local problems and paradoxes. In the first phase of nation-building, these problems and paradoxes centred on how to imagine the nation out of heterogeneous diasporic communities. During the second phase — the Asian values phase — Singapore’s shift to becoming a Newly Industrialized Economy and its engagement with the “global” and the West was seen as a threat to its social cohesion. In this phase we witnessed an evolution from a “return to Asian roots” through the promotion of Asian values to “safeguard” Singapore’s cultural traditions to the state-mobilized figure of the “New Asian” in a quest to engage with the global economy while still maintaining a sense of distinct identity against the West. In Chapters 3 and 4, I argued that the state had to undertake a complex balancing act around how to go global while ensuring a rooted and committed citizenry. The need to create a domesticated cosmopolitan class of Singaporeans able to succeed in the global economy presented specific and seemingly

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unresolvable challenges for the creation of a Singaporean home in a global city. For these reasons, and the fact that those in power in Singapore are forced to juggle their nation’s role as both a nation-state and a global city, Singapore makes a particularly interesting case study of the interplay between the global and the national.

THE NATION-STATE IN THE GLOBAL CONTEXT The study of globalization and its implications for the nation-state has been steadily growing over the years. As I pointed out at the beginning of this book, the fate and future of the nation-state has come under increasing critical scrutiny. Some of the key questions that have been addressed in this area include: Can the construction of national boundaries be sustained in a world, now more than ever open to cultural flows? Can a collectivity imagine or be made to imagine itself as a bounded entity when its members are increasingly exposed to a “cosmopolitan cultural regime” through media, travel, and encounters with migrants and refugees? (Appadurai and Breckenbridge 1988, and Foster 1991). There are obviously no straightforward answers to these questions. It is unclear whether globalization will bring about the erosion and decline of the nation-state but what is certainly clear is that the impact of globalization varies in different national conditions and generates varying national responses (Held 1995 and Brah 2002). Globalization can, as we have seen, unsettle nation-states, but it can also reinforce them. Similarly, stable nation-states can enhance and promote globalization (see, for example, Wang 2000). Globalization is transforming the world. Nation-states are not only implicated in this process but are also developing ways to manage its consequences (for example, enforcing strict border and immigration control). As I have argued, however, little academic attention has been paid to how governments actively deal with the challenges which globalization poses for national identity. In this book I have sought to address this question in relation to the Singaporean state. The important insights of scholars such as Ang and Stratton (1996), Gupta (1997) and Gupta and Ferguson (1997) on the need to situate “the national question” within the transnational global context provided a useful starting point for my own research. In adopting this approach, I have tried to develop a new line of inquiry in an effort to avoid the kind of research done by those Singaporean academics who have been very much concerned with the

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national question for “internal reasons” alone. By studying the Singapore government’s ongoing responses to the challenges posed by globalization, I wanted to explore both the shifting and malleable dimensions of stateimagined nationhood as it moulds itself to new conditions and threats and the consequences of these critical shifts in the national imagining of the global as advanced by the Singaporean state. Clearly the founding of Singapore and its formation as modern nation-state were inextricably connected to global processes such as colonialism, migration, the emergence of the postcolonial interstate system (Gupta 1997), capitalism, and so forth. Equally, Singapore’s predicament as a country without any natural resources has meant that global economic conditions ultimately dictate the features and character of the national-form. As we have seen throughout this book, the forces of global capitalism have largely contributed to the reshaping of the Singapore city-state in complex and contradictory ways. In response, the PAP government has employed a range of strategies. Towards the early 1980s, the Singapore government became alarmed that Singaporeans were becoming too “Westernized” and were in danger of losing their cultural traditions and heritage. Thus the Asian values rhetoric was a historically specific response to a particular form of globalization. Too often, the role of the Singapore state and its efforts at social engineering have been regarded by most Western scholars as serving the PAP government’s political expediency. Chapter 2 brought together several other important dimensions to this debate. At the height of the East Asian economic ascendancy, the articulation of a New Asian identity advanced by the state was a way of embracing the “global”. However, the structural changes that were taking place in the global economy in the 1990s (emergence of network economies, regional hubs and global cities) and the Asian economic meltdown meant that Singapore had to abandon its efforts to redefine Singapore’s national identity, national culture and modernity as non-Western (see Chua 1999). Since the early 1990s, Singaporean official discourse and policy shifted to embrace globalization through the restructuring of its economy. Singapore’s economic viability rested on its positioning and promotion as a global hub and global city. As we discovered in Chapter 3, the aim of going global brought with it some new challenges. The problem of emigration and the drop in fertility rate meant that the government had to convince the now more mobile and affluent Singaporean population to stay committed to Singapore and at the same time it had to attract

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“talents” from overseas to meet the various demands of the new Singapore economy. The government policy vision statements: The Next Lap, Singapore 21 and Remaking Singapore postulated a number of strategies ranging from providing material incentives to trying to create emotional stakes in the nation. What emerges then is an effort to create the Singapore home and “a global aestheticized city”, attractive enough to entice foreigners and equally a pleasing and comfortable environment in which its local occupants feel at home (Hage 2003, p. 19). In Chapters 3 and 4, as I argued that the government realized that it took more than economic success to tie Singaporean citizens into an affective commitment to the nation-state, and thus its future economic survival. Though the government’s vision of making Singapore a world-class home, and a fun and exciting place in which to live and work (through the development of the arts and culture and urban planning) may well be easily realized, its instrumentalist policy objectives are not without contradictions. As I demonstrated in Chapters 3 and 4, the government’s home-building strategies and creation of a cosmopolitan global city, continuously rationalized in economic terms reflect its managerial intent rather than allowing for spontaneity. This is not to argue that the government’s policies are inherently dubious or ingenuous but rather that in their overzealous effort to reconcile the global challenges facing the nation, many aspects of Singapore’s national cultural formations that have evolved over a long time have been bulldozed, banned or are simply never recognized. In their place we find a government seeking to engineer a freshly-minted sense of civic-mindedness, affect, belonging and identity. In Chapter 5 we begin to uncover some of the key implications of the Singapore government’s nation-building strategy through the voices of Singaporeans. While Singapore’s economic achievement has provided a solid material base to enable its citizens to identify with the nation, and take pride in themselves, the uncertainty of its future and the government’s rhetoric of survivalism continues to undermine this relationship. Thus the mode of belonging that has evolved between the citizens and the Singaporean nation-state is tenuous and ambivalent. Consequently as Singaporeans aspire to greater social upward mobility and different lifestyle experiences, the material advantages of modernity found in the Singaporean national home may not be sufficient to anchor them there. This does not mean that the pursuit of nationbuilding has been unsuccessful, rather, it only highlights the unique

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predicament facing a young immigrant, resourceless city-state like Singapore which depends on and needs to keep pace with the everchanging global economy. The various national responses to the process of globalization that I have expounded in this book are, of course, not peculiar to Singapore. In a context where economic changes have been driving policy changes, politicians all over the world are struggling with how to manage the forces of globalization, especially economic ones, and their relevance for the nation-state (Latham 1998, p. 13). In this sense, the Singapore case highlights some of the key challenges facing most nation-states today. What is very different about Singapore is the extent to which the state is involved in reconciling the contradictory demands of globalization and the need to maintain national identity, unity and coherence. More importantly as a young nation with very few meaningful binding symbols with which to mobilize its citizens, its achievements and success have become the key reference points for national identification. While Singapore’s international standing as a developed city-state says more about the efficiency and administrative skills of the State, these characteristics do not reflect Singapore’s national character, nor can they epitomize the nation. In addition to exploring particular moments in Singapore’s history and its various responses to globalization, collectively this book points to the broader issue of the ongoing project of the modern nation-state in the current era of globalization. Here I have tried to move away from the more abstract and grandiose interpretations and predictions of the implications of globalization for the nation-state (for example, Ohmae 1995; Appadurai 1996). Following arguments put forward by scholars like Massey (1994) and Eade (1997), I have undertaken a grounded analysis, exploring and evaluating the strategies employed by the Singaporean state. I hope that my research has added a further dimension to existing studies in globalization. I believe that the ethnographic component of my research has provided a much deeper understanding of how people’s lives and aspirations have become increasingly intertwined with the national destiny and its fate. In Singapore’s case, as the results of my research indicate, while the government’s response to reconciling global/local dilemmas has been very quick, the task of creating a committed and affectively-bound citizenry cannot simply be imposed from above. The government can only nurture an ethics of mutual obligation if its “gift” of social life is a “well-given gift”.

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THE UNCERTAINTY AND HOPEFULNESS THAT IS SINGAPORE Speaking at the National Day Rally 2005 — commemorating the nation’s fourth decade of independence — Singapore’s newest and third Prime Minister, challenged Singaporeans yet again to think about its future: What will Singapore be like 40 years from now? I can’t tell you. Nobody can. But I can tell you it must be totally different Singapore because if it is the same Singapore as it is today, we’re dead. We will be irrelevant, marginalised, the world will be different. You may want to be the same, but you can’t be the same. Therefore, we have to remake Singapore — our economy, our education system, our mindsets, our city (Lee Hsien Loong, 21 August 2005).

His words were no different from those echoed by his predecessors, Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew. The challenges facing Singapore whatever its guise may be, whether it is economic, ideological, cultural, SARS, bird-flu virus or terrorism remain the same, always threatening. The relevance of Singapore rests upon its ability to adapt to its ever changing geopolitical, economic and cultural environment. In this, we can argue that the only certainty about Singapore’s future is that it is uncertain. But we should be careful to distinguish between the Singapore economy and the nation, and it is the former which faces the danger of becoming irrelevant and marginalized. Of course, this separation is never made in Singapore. Thus the fragility and the uncertainty of the state of the nation both in economic and cultural/symbolic terms are closely interlinked in political discourse. This ambivalent status has been utilized, as I have argued throughout the book, as a way of policing social ills, for instance, in the use of Asian values or strategically in marketing campaigns to promote the island as a vibrant global city. At the same time, it is also a disposition that has contributed to a social milieu which is regulated, demanding, transient and synthetic. This is an enduring feature of Singapore. The Singapore nation/global city is a powerful symbolic and material force. It offers the social hope of belonging, identity, sense of place, prosperity, opportunities and excitement for its citizens. The fostering of hope is necessary in the context of Singapore where uncertainties prevail. Beyond the types of strategies found in Singapore 21 and Remaking Singapore (improving the material quality of life and building of heartware) as way of dealing with the challenges of globalization, it is critical that the Singapore state endeavours to cultivate both an active sense of belonging and ownership over the nation’s destiny and a sense of hope

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among its citizens. As I argued in the last chapter, most Singaporeans have internalized the anxieties of living in Singapore (also reproduced by the state) negating the social conditions that can activate hope as an enduring characteristic and approach to life (Hage 2003). It is vital that hope replaces, the deep uncertainties that characterize the socio-economic life of the Singapore city-state. For that to emerge the Singapore state must invest in providing opportunities for its citizens not just to benefit from the nation’s economic success but to exercise their citizenship and affective commitment to the nation.

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Bibliography 211 Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

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Wilson, Rob and Dissanayake, Wimal, eds. Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. Winchester, Simon. Pacific Rising: The Emergence of a New World Culture. New York: Prentice Hall, 1991. Wong, A.K. and Yeh, S.H.K. Housing a Nation: 25 Years of Public Housing in Singapore. Singapore: Housing Development Board, 1985. Wong, Lin Ken. “The Strategic Significance of Singapore in Modern History”, in Ernest C.T. Chew and Edwin Chew (eds) A History of Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991. Wong, P.P. “The Transformation of the Physical Environment”, in Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley (eds) Management of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989. Woodiwiss, Anthony. Globalisation, Human Rights and Labour Law in Pacific Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Yao, Souchou. “Consumption and Social Aspirations of the Middle Class in Singapore”, Southeast Asian Affairs. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1996. ———. “Introduction”, in Yao Souchou (ed.) House of Glass: Culture, Modernity and the State in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2001. Yap, Tui Meng. Singaporeans Overseas: A Study of Emigrants in Australia and Canada. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1991. ———. “The Singapore State’s Response to Migration”, Sojourn 14, no. 1 (1999): 198–211. Yee, Shirley and Chua, Beng Huat. “Sociological Research: Following the Contours of Social Issues”, in Chua Beng Huat (ed.) Singapore Studies II: Critical Surveys of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1999. Yeo, Kim Wah. Political Development in Singapore 1945–1955. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1973. Yeo, Kim Wah and Lau, Albert. “From Colonialism to Independence, 1945– 1965”, in Ernest Chew and Edwin Lee (eds) A History of Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1991. Yeoh, Brenda and Huang, Shirlena. “Negotiating Public Space: Strategies and Styles of Migrant Female Domestic Workers in Singapore”, Urban Studies 35, no. 3 (1998): 583–602. Yeoh, Brenda and Willis, Katie. “Singapore Unlimited? Configuring Social Identity in the Regional Process”, Economic and Social Research Council Transnational Communities Programme Working Paper Series, No. 8, 1998. Yeoh, Brenda and Willis, Katie. “ ‘Heart’ and ‘Wing’, Nation and Diaspora: Gendered Discourses in Singapore’s Regionalisation Process”, Gender, Place and Culture 6, no. 4 (1999): 355–72.

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Index Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg > 233

INDEX

A academic literature, 36 affect, 169, 172 affective links, 170 Aida, 130 ambivalence, 61, 62, 71, 73, 88, 165, 189, 194 American Foreign Policy magazine, 166 anti-Communism, 28 Asian Civilizations Museum, 129 Asian economic crisis, 13, 53, 77 Asian miracle, 3 Asian Tigers, 4 Asian values, 3, 11, 53–55, 58, 77, 122, 123, 153, 159, 195 critics, 58, 59, 62 as economic function, 64, 65, 66, 67 as national identity, 67–71, response to globalization, 74 in Singapore context, 56–58, 61–73 as social engineering, 60, 62, 77 see also Confucian values Asian Wall Street Journal, 200 Asianization, 53, 57, 70, 76 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 45, 66 Australia Singaporeans residing in, 14, 18–19, 179 views on migration, 185

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B Barisan Sosialis, 49 belonging active, 189 governmental, 181–83, 189, 190 passive, 181–83, 189 bilingualism, 32, 33 Botanical Gardens, 146 Bras Basah Park, 147 British colony, 23 British East India Company, 21, 47 Business Environment Risk Intelligence (BERI), 91 Bugis Street, 144 C Central Business District (CBD), 174 Central Provident Fund (CPF), 33, 101 Certificate of Entitlement (COE), 199 Certificate of No Criminal Conviction, 125 Chee Soon Juan, 200 Chiam See Tong, 79 Chinatown, 69 Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC), 69, 110 Cirque du Soleil, 130 city-state, 1, 2, 54, 85, 105 CMIO (Chinese, Malays, Indians, Others) model, 30, 31, 49–50

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colonial past, 20–23 communalism, 56 Communists, 28 concept of culture, 122, 123 Concept Plan 2001, 130, 131 Confucian chauvinism, 71 Confucian revivalism, 7 Confucian values, 3, 4, 11, 55, 63, 69, 73 see also Asian values Confucianism, 58, 122 Contact Singapore, 128, 141 cosmopolitanism, 120, 136, 137, 143, 145, 148, 153 cosmopolitans, 108 cultural development, 121–24 cultural homogenization, 4, 5, 24 cultural imperialism, 4 cultural policy, 119, 120, 123, 124, 128, 137, 147 culture and the arts, 129, 130, 132, 151, 159 D deculturated, 123 deglobalizing processes, 16 Dhanabalan, S., 123 doxa, 39 E East India Company, 21 Economic Committee, 129 Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU), 91 education, 32, 33 Emergency, 48 emigration, 82, 93–98, 125, 127, 177, 178, 193 Employment Act, 28 Employment Pass, 139 English language promotion of, 133 Speak Good English Campaign, 120, 134

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Speak Proper English Movement, 133, 134 Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay, 130 ethnic differences, 150 ethnic districts, 145 ethnic identity, 37 F Far Eastern Economic Review, 200 Federation of Malaysia expelled from, 23 merger with, 10 Feedback Unit, 176 foreign talent, 89, 98, 106, 113, 126, 127, 139, 141, 185–88 Foreign Talent policy, 186 foreign workers, 185, 187, 188 G General Election, 27 gift of social life, notion of, 190–96 global city, 3, 82–86, 113, 119, 120, 126, 143, 147, 148, 150, 153, 154, 159, 166, 167, 203 Global City for the Arts, 130 globalization background, 3–5, challenges of, 160, 207 as economic necessity, 167 end of nation-state, 5, 6 impact of, 15 nation states, 1–15, problems of, 70, 71, 76 promotion of English, 133 public debate, 160 search for identity, 72 Singapore’s response, 4, 53, 54, 119, 154, 205 study of, 204 glocalize, 83 Goh Chok Tong, 60, 93–99, 112, 119, 193, 208 cosmopolitan city, 126–28, 137–38

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global city, 143 Hotel Singapore, 82, 107–108 national ideology, 65 Singapore 21, 103–104 standard English, 133 style of government, 110 The Next Lap, 87 gross national product (GNP), 87, 121 Growth Triangle, 66 H Hage, Ghassan, 102–104, 107, 181–85, 189–91 Harvard Square, 147 heartlander, 108 heartware, 97, 106, 112 heritage trail, 91 heterogenization, 5 Hong Kong, 1, 3, 153 Hotel Singapore, 82, 107, 113 see also Singapore: and emigration Housing and Development Board (HDB), 28, 33, 90, 101, 192 see also public housing I identity, and Singapore, 24, 35–43, 46, 52–54, 57, 65–68, 94, 102, 150–52, 154, 160, 161, 163–70, 173, 175, 184, 195 imagined community, 6, 42, 46, 54, 104, 128, 150, 160, 164, 172, 175 immigrant, 3, 127, 153 immigration policy, 138, 151 independence, 10, 20, 171 individualism, 74 Industrial Relations Act, 28 Institute of East Asian Philosophy, 58 Internal Security Act, 28 International Comedy Festival, 130

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Iranian revolution, 71 Islamic movement, 71 J Japan, 66 Jeyaretnam, J.B., 79, 200 K Kampong Glam, 69 L Lee, Dick, 80 Lee Hsien Loong, 109, 192 Lee Kuan Yew, 23, 27, 38, 60, 110, 193, 208 Asian values, 54, 56, 57, 71 individualism, 74 second generation political leaders, 87 Les Miserables, 130 Lim, Catherine, 200 Little India, 69 M Mahathir Mohamad, 54 Mah Bow Tan, 130 Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), 48 managed cosmopolitan, 137 managerial speak, 166, 181, 187 Massey, Doreen, 8, 9 materiality, 169, 172–74 MediaCorp, 134 Mendaki, 69, 110 middle class, 124, 125, 161, 162, 177, 178 Ministry of Information and the Arts, 90, 104, 130 mixed parentage, 164, 165 modernity, 61, 67, 74, 111, 173, 175, 177 modernization, 37, 42, 64 multiculturalism, 122

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multiracialism, 30, 31, 122, 145, 162–64, 168 see also Singapore: multiracial policy museums, 119 Asian Civilizations Museum, 129 Singapore Arts Museum, 129 museumization Bugis Street, 144, ethnic differences, 150 ethnic districts, 145 N Nanyang University, 50 nation-building, 38, 40, 45 nation-state, 37, 41, 44 National Arts Council, 91, 129 national belonging, 161, 162 national campaign, 34, 107, 120, 134, 144 national culture, 121, 162 National Day parade, 34 National Heritage Board, 91, 129 national identity, 37, 44 National Library Board, 129, 146 national service, 33, 34 National Trade Unions Congress (NTUC), 28 National University of Singapore (NUS), 37, 58, 68, 132 nationalism, 10, 26, 176 new Asia, 53, 58, 62, 71–77 new Asian, 73, 169, 203, 205 newly industrialized economies (NIEs), 13, 54–56, 72, 77, 85, 203 New Singapore Shares, 101, 192 Newsweek, 72 New World Order, 71 Next Lap, The, 85, 87–90, 119, 127, 160, 193, 206 key elements, 92, 93 Nokia Singapore Art, 130

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O operas, 130 out of bound (OB) markers, 110, 111, 139 P Pancasila, 57 People’s Action Party (PAP), 2, 12, 23, 74, 194 assertions from middle class, 125 developing Singaporean identity, 56, 57 English-educated leadership, 32 nation-building, 26–29, 35–41, 52, 86, 89, 90, 152, 183 paternalistic role, 189 political dominance, 59, 62 relationship with Singaporeans, 111 Youth Wing, 65 performance-based indicators, 173 permeable borders, 16 Phua Chu Kang, 134 Political Study Centre, 28 Port of Singapore Authority, 28 promotion of economic development 29, 30 Public Entertainment Licensing Unit, 139 public housing, 33, 177 see also Housing and Development Board (HDB) Public Utilities Board, 28 R race categories, 164 racial identity, 163, 164 Raffles, Thomas Stamford, 22, 47, 48 Rajaratnam, S., 83–87, 92 Reich, Robert, 95–97 Remaking Singapore, 83, 101, 106, 107, 160, 193, 206, 208

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Renaissance City Report, 131–33, 139, 140, 142, 160, 193 renaissance city, Singapore as, 131–34, 140, 144, 147, 148 Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts, 129, 131 Revised Concept Plan, 88 Rukunegara, 57 S Saltimbanco, 130 Sang Nila Utama, 47 second-generation political leaders, 87 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), 202, 208 sexual deviances, 144, 145 shared values, 57, 58, 61, 63, 64, 68, 69, 77 shrinking space, 16 Singapore city-state, 1, 2, 54, 85, 105 colonial past, 20–23 concept of culture, 122, 123 cultural development, 121–24 cultural policy, 119, 120, 123, 124, 128, 137, 147 culture and the arts, 129, 130, 132, 151, 159 education, 32, 33 emigration, 82, 93–98, 105, 125, 127, 177, 178, 193 foreign talent, 89, 98, 106, 113, 126, 127, 139, 141, 185–188 foreign workers, 185, 187, 188 General Election, 27 gift of social life, 190–96 global city, 3, 82–86, 113, 119, 120, 126, 130, 131, 134, 141, 143, 147, 148, 150, 153, 154, 159, 166, 167, 203 Gross National Product (GNP), 87, 121

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identity, 24, 35–43, 46, 52–54, 57, 65–68, 94, 102, 150, 151, 152, 154, 160, 161, 163, 164–70, 173, 175, 184, 195 immigrant, 3, 127, 153 immigration policy, 138, 151 impact of globalization, 15 impact of Westernization, 12, 14 independence, 10, 20, 171 middle class, 124, 125, 161, 162, 177, 178 multiracial policy, 165 see also multiracialism national belonging, 161, 162 national campaign, 34, 107, 120, 134, 144 national culture, 121, 162 nationalism, 10, 26, 176 promotion of economic development, 29, 30 renaissance city, 131–34, 140, 144, 147, 148 response to globalization, 4, 53, 54, 119, 154, 205 Revised Concept Plan, 88 sexual deviances, 144, 145 standard of living, 87 state legitimacy and control, 10–13 symbols of the state, 37 as tourism destination, 129 and United Nations, 45 White Paper, 13, 57, 61, 69 world city rank, 91 Singapore Arts Museum, 129 Singapore Botanical Gardens, 146 Singapore brand, 108, 120, 135, 140, 142, 148 Singapore Civil Service, 28 Singapore Democratic Party, 79 Singapore Festival of Arts, 130 Singapore Heartbeat, 106, 118 Singapore Heritage Society, 146

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Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA), 69, 110 Singapore International Film Festival, 130 Singapore International Foundation, 198 Singapore Management University, 147 Singapore Press Club, 83 Singapore Telecoms shares, 192 Singapore Tourism Board (STB), 130 Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (STPB), 28, 72 Singapore 21, 82, 97–99, 101–103, 106, 109–12, 127, 160, 186, 193, 206, 208 five ideals vision, 100 Singapore Writers’ Festival, 130 Singaporeans of mixed parentage, 164, 165 Singlish, 133, 134, 150 Sony, 112 South Korea, 3, 66 spaces of belonging, 169 Speakers Corner, 111 Speak Good English Campaign, 120, 134 Speak Proper English Movement, 133, 134 standard of living, 87 state legitimacy and control, 10–13 Straits Times, 14, 94, 125, 152, 160, 166, 175, 176 Straits Times Interactive Chat (STIC), 160, 170, 188 Straits Settlements, 22 symbols of national identity, 174 symbols of the state, 37

U United Nations, 45 University of Singapore see National University of Singapore (NUS) Urban Redevelopment Authority, 131 V Vision 1999, 87 W Westernization, 57, 76, 121, 159, 167, 168 impact on Singapore, 12, 14, 62, 138 Western values, 53, 62, 64, 74, 121 White Paper on Shared Values, 13, 57, 61, 69 Winsemius, Albert, 114 Work Permit, 139 Workers’ Party, 79 world city, 91, 141, 149 World Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD), 130 World War II, 64 Y Yeo, George, 75, 104 Youth Wing, PAP, 65

T Taiwan, 3, 66

08 Nation_Culture Index

Talaq, 139 Taman Serasi hawker centre, 146, 152 Tang Liang Hong, 200 Temasek, 21 Teo Chee Hean, 116 third cultures, 16 Time magazine, 126, 200 Trade Union Act, 28 transnationalism, 149 transnationalization, 43 tourism destination, 129

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Reproduced from Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore, by Selvaraj Velayutham (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Selvaraj Velayutham is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia. His area of research interests are globalization, transnationalism, migration and Tamil cultural studies. He has published on the topic of affect and moral economy of migration among South Indians. He is currently editing a book on Tamil Cinema: The Cultural Politics of India’s Other Film Industry.

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