Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Singapore Management University

Series

Culture

Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Exhibiting Transnationalism After Vietnam: The Alpha Gallery In Pursuit Of An Authentic Southeast Asian Art Form, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei Sep 2022

Exhibiting Transnationalism After Vietnam: The Alpha Gallery In Pursuit Of An Authentic Southeast Asian Art Form, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines how the Alpha Gallery, an independent artists cooperative established by Malaysians and Singaporeans, curated and staged art shows in the 1970s that advanced its project to unearth and promote an intrinsically Southeast Asian aesthetic. The cooperative pursuit a transnational vision of inter-regional connections between the Bengali Art Renaissance of the early twentieth century and Balinese folk art. It also harbored ambitions of sparking a cultural renaissance in Southeast Asia, though these were ultimately unfulfilled. Importantly, as this essay shows, the cooperative’s transnational vision mirrored the racist thinking and paternalism of Euro-American colonial discourses about civilizing the region’s …


Religion, Environmental Guilt, And Pro-Environmental Support: The Opposing Pathways Of Stewardship Belief And Belief In A Controlling God, Kimin Eom, Tricia Qian Hui Tok, Carmel S. Saad, Heejung S. Kim Dec 2021

Religion, Environmental Guilt, And Pro-Environmental Support: The Opposing Pathways Of Stewardship Belief And Belief In A Controlling God, Kimin Eom, Tricia Qian Hui Tok, Carmel S. Saad, Heejung S. Kim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Religion exerts significant influence on how individuals respond to social issues. The present research investigates the implications of religious beliefs on emotions and behaviors regarding environmental issues. In three studies conducted with Christians in the U.S. (N = 1970), we test the model in which stewardship belief and belief in a controlling god are oppositely (i.e., positively for stewardship belief and negatively for belief in a controlling god) associated with environmental guilt, which in turn leads to greater pro-environmental support. We do so by employing both correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental data (Study 3) with diverse measures of …


Circuits Broken, Remade, And Newly Forged: Tracing Southeast Asia's Foreign Relations After The Vietnam War, Wen-Qing Ngoei Jun 2021

Circuits Broken, Remade, And Newly Forged: Tracing Southeast Asia's Foreign Relations After The Vietnam War, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article (2021) in Diplomatic History's pandemic feature examines how the principles and consequences of Singapore's "circuit breaker" policy offers a conceptual framework for studying the history of Southeast Asia's foreign relations in the 1970s to 1990s. With this approach, the essay considers how a study of Southeast Asia's culture-makers (artists, writers, dramatists), their works and transnational circuits, may open a productive inquiry into a diverse array of regionalisms that compete and complement ASEAN.


Religiosity Moderates The Link Between Environmental Beliefs And Pro-Environmental Support: The Role Of Belief In A Controlling God, Kimin Eom, Carmel S. Saad, Heejung S. Kim Jan 2021

Religiosity Moderates The Link Between Environmental Beliefs And Pro-Environmental Support: The Role Of Belief In A Controlling God, Kimin Eom, Carmel S. Saad, Heejung S. Kim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The current research examines differences in what motivates environmentally sustainable behavior between more and less religious people in the United States. We found that religiosity moderates the extent to which environmental beliefs predict pro-environmental support. Specifically, environmental beliefs predicted pro-environmental support less strongly among more religious people than less religious people (Studies 1 and 2). Using a correlational (Study 2) and an experimental (Study 3) design, we further found that one particular aspect of religiosity—believing in a controlling god—reduced the importance of personally held environmental beliefs in shaping one’s support for pro-environmental actions. Our findings suggest that motivation to act …


The Thailand Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington, Serene Chen Jun 2015

The Thailand Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington, Serene Chen

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Thai migrants first began trickling into the Chao Phraya river valley from Southern China in the eleventh century. Thai chieftains established petty kingdoms in modern-day Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, initially as tributaries to more established Burmese and Khmer rulers. However, both the diminishing influence of the Khmer Empire and the Mongols’ sacking of the Burmese capital Bagan in 1287 left a political vacuum in mainland Southeast Asia, which was soon filled by Thai kingdoms such as Sukhothai (1238–1463), Chiang Mai (1296–1775), Ayutthaya (1351–1767) and eventually Bangkok (f. 1 782). In the process, the up-and-coming Thai polities supplanted the Khmer Empire …


The Indonesia Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington Jun 2015

The Indonesia Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

A maritime analogue to the silk road running through Central Asia, the Indonesian archipelago was a key ancient trade route linking Chinese goods to markets in India and farther west into the Mediterranean. Its cosmopolitan ports attracted significant numbers of Arab, Indian and Chinese merchants and holy men and fostered the exchange of goods as well as cultural and religious ideas. Cultural appropriation had a clear Indian bias. Starting in the early eighth century, the various islands saw the rise and fall of several Indianised Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms, including Mataram, Singhasari and Majapahit in east Java and Srivijaya in …


The Metro Manila Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington May 2015

The Metro Manila Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Although Western colonisers have, to varying degrees, shaped the political structures and economies of nearly all modern Southeast Asian nations, they achieved an unmatched level of cultural and institutional penetration in the Philippines. Far from the Indic influences that inspired Angkor Wat, Borobudur and Bagan, the island group was only marginally sanskritised during the pre-colonial period. With some notable exceptions in the south, Muslim communities were also never able to establish firm roots. Mindanao, Sulu and even southern Luzon were home to maritime sultanates beginning in the late 14th century, but a Spanish victory over the Muslim Rajah of Maynila …


The Singapore Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Aji Paramartha, Shihui Khee, Regina Unson, Sai Hein Apr 2015

The Singapore Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Aji Paramartha, Shihui Khee, Regina Unson, Sai Hein

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Singapore has come a long way, since her beginnings as a sleepy fishing village and a tiny Malay settlement ruled by the Sultan of Johor. Sir Stamford Raffles first arrived in Singapore in 1819 and immediately recognised that its strategic location along the Straits of Malacca would be useful to the British in developing an alternative to challenge Dutch influence and monopoly in the region. During British colonial rule, Singapore developed into an important free port and trade city, an essential trait that continues to feature heavily in Singapore’s economic development to this day.


The Vietnam Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington Mar 2015

The Vietnam Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Although most of Southeast Asia is home to religions and cultures carrying significant Indic influence, Vietnam alone is the mainland’s only Sinicised culture. Chinese emperors directly ruled northern Vietnam for most of the period spanning 111 BCE to 938 CE. The next eight hundred years saw a series of independent Vietnamese kingdoms administered by Chinese-style mandarins gradually extend control over and supplant the Indic Champa civilisation to the south—even as French incursions began chipping away at Vietnamese territory as early as 1858.


The Dili Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim Dec 2014

The Dili Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Lai Cheng Lim

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Timor-Leste, Asia’s newest nation, is located in Southeast Asia, on the southernmost edge of the Indonesian archipelago. The country was colonised by the Portuguese for over 450 years, occupied by the Indonesians for 24 years and administered by the United Nations for two and a half years. As a nation, Timor-Leste has had a very traumatic birth.


Ideology, Social Commentary And Resistance In Popular Music: A Case Study Of Singapore, Phua Siew Chye, Lily Kong Jun 1996

Ideology, Social Commentary And Resistance In Popular Music: A Case Study Of Singapore, Phua Siew Chye, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Popular music as a site of struggles over meaning is focused upon, where the social and political relations between different groups in Singapore society are mirrored. How ruling elites and everyday people make use of the same cultural form--popular music--for different purposes is examined.


Making "Music At The Margins"? A Social And Cultural Analysis Of Xinyao In Singapore, Lily Kong Jan 1996

Making "Music At The Margins"? A Social And Cultural Analysis Of Xinyao In Singapore, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Formalist critics and aestheticians have argued that music does not possess any kind of "extra-musical" significance, that there is no meaning beyond the form and structural relations of the notes. For them, music exemplifies the laws of mathematical harmony and proportion rather than the social and political contexts within which it is produced, reproduced and consumed. This view has been challenged by a number of social theorists: Max Weber, Theodor Adorno and Edward Said have all argued for an understanding of music within its social, cultural, economic and political contexts. Such analysis of popular music is now unquestioned. Indeed, it …


Popular Music And A Sense Of Place In Singapore, Lily Kong Jan 1996

Popular Music And A Sense Of Place In Singapore, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper illustrates how popular music written, produced, and performed by Singaporeans provides a means through which the culture and society of Singapore may be understood. Music with English language text conveys a sense of place and reflects a distinctively Singaporean spirit and identity. The paper examines four themes: the portrayal of Singapore's multiracial population which reflects a unique cultural synthesis; the Singaporeans' concept of urbanity, manifested as the simultaneous attraction and repulsion towards the city and the desire for nature and the rustic; the distinctive social engineering in Singapore; and the way in which global issues are imported into …


Singapore, Kirpal Singh Jan 1983

Singapore, Kirpal Singh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.