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Articles 1 - 30 of 552
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Silver Screen Reversals Of The Domino Theory: American Cold War Movies And The Re-Imagination Of British Experiences In Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei
Silver Screen Reversals Of The Domino Theory: American Cold War Movies And The Re-Imagination Of British Experiences In Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This essay examines how Hollywood was affected by the successful anticommunism of Britain and its local allies in Malaya and Singapore, victories that unfolded alongside Vietnam’s mounting crisis in the early 1960s. It shows that American movies of this era which portrayed the intertwining of US and British experiences in 1950s Malaya and 1940s Singapore conveyed an uneasy yet clear optimism about U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
Confucian Family Ideal And Same-Sex Marriage: A Feminist Confucian Perspective, Sor-Hoon Tan
Confucian Family Ideal And Same-Sex Marriage: A Feminist Confucian Perspective, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article engages the views of PRC Confucian scholars who responded to the United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's citing of Confucius in his majority opinion on same-sex marriage in 2015. It questions their separation of tolerance for homosexuality from legalization of same-sex marriage and argue that tolerance is not enough. The arguments in the mainland Confucian discourse about same-sex marriage highlights the historical and persistent entanglement of Confucianism with patriarchy. Instead of reviving traditional patriarchal society, further entrenching and increasing gender inequality, contemporary Confucianism could shape its own unique modern society that aspires to (and hopefully one day …
Merit And Inequality: Confucian And Communitarian Perspectives On Singapore's Meritocracy, Sor-Hoon Tan
Merit And Inequality: Confucian And Communitarian Perspectives On Singapore's Meritocracy, Sor-Hoon Tan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper compares criticisms of Singapore’s meritocracy, especially against its impact on income disparities and class divisions, with Michael Sandel’s critique of the meritocratic ethic in the United States. Despite significant differences in their history and politics, meritocracy has similar dysfunctions in both societies, allowing us to draw theoretical conclusions about meritocracy as an ideal of governance. It then contrasts Sandel’s communitarian critique of meritocracy with recent Confucian promotion of political meritocracy and meritocratic justice and argues that the Confucian principle of “promoting the virtuous and talented” is different from the contemporary conception of meritocracy. Textual evidence indicates that a …
Rethinking The Inclusionary Potential Of Religious Institutions: The Case Of Gurdwaras In Singapore, Siew Ying Shee, Orlando Woods
Rethinking The Inclusionary Potential Of Religious Institutions: The Case Of Gurdwaras In Singapore, Siew Ying Shee, Orlando Woods
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Whilst Singapore’s Sikh community is relatively small, it is also heterogeneous. Its diversity reflects differences in ancestral and socio-economic backgrounds. As spaces of worship that regularly bring together the Sikh community in space and time, Sikh temples—gurdwaras––are often conceived as important places through which a shared sense of religiously-defined community is reproduced. Yet, as much as religion can provide a bridge that integrates people of different ethnic, racial, national, and linguistic groups into a single faith community, so too can it act as a buttress through which differences and divisions are enforced within the community. We argue that whilst gurdwaras …
“Fly Buddha To Mars”: The Co-Production Between Religiosity And Science & Technology At Longquan Monastery, Beijing, Han Zhang, Junxi Qian, Lily Kong
“Fly Buddha To Mars”: The Co-Production Between Religiosity And Science & Technology At Longquan Monastery, Beijing, Han Zhang, Junxi Qian, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article attempts at a re-theorization towards the symbiosis and co-production of religion, modern science and technology, inspired by theoretical thinking within geographies of religion and science and technology studies (STS). Recent scholarship on the geographies of religion has made substantive advancements in discerning the convergence of religion and secular modernity. However, science and technology (S&T), as an essential condition and driving force of secular modernity, remain peripheral to this ongoing theoretical agenda, yet to be fully incorporated into the analytical framework about the co-constitution of religion and secular modernity, arguably because of the entrench divide between the rationalism of …
An Integrated Theory Of Happiness: The Yang Zhu Chapter Of The Liezi, Devin K. Joshi
An Integrated Theory Of Happiness: The Yang Zhu Chapter Of The Liezi, Devin K. Joshi
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article examines the integrated approach to theorizing happiness in the Yang Zhu chapter of the book associated with the Daoist master Liezi. While ancient critics famously denounced Yang Zhu as an amoral, pleasure-seeking hedonist, I argue the Yang Zhu chapter offers an individually rational but socially non-conformist approach to well-being of considerable relevance to contemporary scholarship on happiness. Not only does the chapter offer an intriguing and counter-intuitive argument about what constitutes and causes well-being, but its philosophical implications address a large number of inescapably foundational conceptual questions that can serve as metrics for evaluating theories of happiness in …
After Great Pain: The Uses Of Religious Folklore In Kenji Mizoguchi’S Sansho The Bailiff (Jp 1954) And Kaneto Shindo’S Onibaba (Jp 1964), Teng-Kuan Ng
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article studies the adaptations and applications of religious folklore in two mas-terworks of Japanese cinema: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Bailiff, JP 1954) and Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba (JP 1964). While academic approaches will often draw a strict line between narrative genres and discursive forms, these films, I argue, draw creatively from Japanese tradition for both critical and constructive purposes in the postwar context. Besides mounting trenchant criticisms of Japan’s erstwhile militaristic violence and imperial ambitions, both filmmakers present their respective female protagonists as models for spiritual and sociocultural transformation in the face of anomie. Embodying humanistic compassion on …
Ten Years As Boundary Object: The Search For Identity And Belonging As 'Hongkongers', John Lowe, Espena Darlene Machell, George Wong
Ten Years As Boundary Object: The Search For Identity And Belonging As 'Hongkongers', John Lowe, Espena Darlene Machell, George Wong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article examines the complex process of symbolic boundary-making of ‘Hongkonger’ cultural identities through the lens of the controversial 2015 film Ten Years, which is a celebrated omnibus production comprised of five short segments that picture a dystopic end to Hong Kong’s cherished way of life in the year 2025. The article is premised on an interdisciplinary approach engaging with cultural studies and film studies. On one hand, it explores how Ten Years functioned as a boundary object, a vast terrain within which cultural identities of what it means to be a Hongkonger are constructed, banished, imagined, and performed under …
When Planetary Cosmopolitanism Meets The Buddhist Ethic: Recycling, Karma And Popular Ecology In Singapore, Siew Ying Shee, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
When Planetary Cosmopolitanism Meets The Buddhist Ethic: Recycling, Karma And Popular Ecology In Singapore, Siew Ying Shee, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
By thinking with and through Buddhist cosmology, this paper explores the emergence of an ethical sensibility—what we call planetary cosmopolitanism—that is based on not just a spatially expanded ethic of care to ecological worlds, but also a temporally extended sense of justice to the future Earth. This transtemporal sense of ethical becoming reflects how the possibility of future ‘rebirth’ and accountability for past actions can motivate new ecological consciousness in the present. We forge these ideas through an empirical focus on popular Buddhist ecological practices in Singapore, where green recovery visions have primarily been driven by a secular and technocratic …
Flacgec: A Chinese Grammatical Error Correction Dataset With Fine-Grained Linguistic Annotation, Hanyue Du, Yike Zhao, Qingyuan Tian, Jiani Wang, Lei Wang, Yunshi Lan, Xuesong Lu
Flacgec: A Chinese Grammatical Error Correction Dataset With Fine-Grained Linguistic Annotation, Hanyue Du, Yike Zhao, Qingyuan Tian, Jiani Wang, Lei Wang, Yunshi Lan, Xuesong Lu
Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems
Chinese Grammatical Error Correction (CGEC) has been attracting growing attention from researchers recently. In spite of the fact that multiple CGEC datasets have been developed to support the research, these datasets lack the ability to provide a deep linguistic topology of grammar errors, which is critical for interpreting and diagnosing CGEC approaches. To address this limitation, we introduce FlaCGEC, which is a new CGEC dataset featured with fine-grained linguistic annotation. Specifically, we collect raw corpus from the linguistic schema defined by Chinese language experts, conduct edits on sentences via rules, and refine generated samples manually, which results in 10k sentences …
Deontic Meta-Rules, Francesco Olivieri, Guido Governatori, Matteo Cristani, Antonino Rotolo, Abdul Sattar
Deontic Meta-Rules, Francesco Olivieri, Guido Governatori, Matteo Cristani, Antonino Rotolo, Abdul Sattar
Centre for Computational Law
The use of meta-rules in logic, i.e., rules whose content includes other rules, has recently gained attention in the setting of non-monotonic reasoning: a first logical formalisation and efficient algorithms to compute the (meta)-extensions of such theories were proposed in Olivieri et al. (2021, Computing defeasible meta-logic. In JELIA 2021, LNCS, vol. 12678, pp. 69-84. Springer.). This work extends such a logical framework by considering the deontic aspect. The resulting logic will not just be able to model policies but also tackle well-known aspects that occur in numerous legal systems. The use of Defeasible Logic to model meta-rules in the …
Merit Transference And The Paradox Of Merit Inflation, Matthew Hammerton
Merit Transference And The Paradox Of Merit Inflation, Matthew Hammerton
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Many religious traditions and ethical systems hold that individuals accrue merit through their good intentions, acts, and character, and demerit through their bad intentions, acts, and character. This merit and demerit, accumulated by individuals throughout their lives, gives each person a kind of ethical “score” that can determine what they deserve, and influence whether good or bad things happen to them (e.g., divine punishments and rewards, a favourable or unfavourable rebirth, etc.). In some traditions (most notably Buddhism, but also to a limited extent in Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity), “merit transference” is a feature of these merit-based ethical systems. This …
Princely Adventures In The Sulalat Al-Salatin (The Genealogy Of Kings), Emily Soon
Princely Adventures In The Sulalat Al-Salatin (The Genealogy Of Kings), Emily Soon
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
No abstract provided.
The Irreducible Otherness Of Desi And Desire In Singapore’S Gurdwaras: Moral Boundary-Making In The Shadows Of A Multicultural Society, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
The Irreducible Otherness Of Desi And Desire In Singapore’S Gurdwaras: Moral Boundary-Making In The Shadows Of A Multicultural Society, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article considers the emergence of new multiculturalisms taking root in Asia by exploring how value-based frameworks and moral judgements are deployed to create new lines of difference within co-ethnic communities. These frameworks and judgements cause multiculturalism to become a more subjective, and thus splintered construct that is increasingly decoupled from state discourse. Further, it considers how religious spaces are typically associated with the performance of morally “right” attitudes and behaviours, and therefore provide fertile yet underexplored sites through which multicultural subjectivities are formed and enacted. It illustrates these theoretical ideas through an empirical examination of how moral boundary-making within …
Spatial Disaggregation Of Poverty And Disability: Application To Tanzania, Tomoki Fujii
Spatial Disaggregation Of Poverty And Disability: Application To Tanzania, Tomoki Fujii
Research Collection School Of Economics
Estimating poverty measures for disabled people in developing countries is often difficult, partly because relevant data are not readily available. We extend the small-area estimation developed by Elbers, Lanjouw and Lanjouw (2002, 2003) to estimate poverty by the disability status of the household head, when the disability status is unavailable in the survey. We propose two alternative approaches to this extension: Aggregation and Instrumental Variables Approaches. We apply these approaches to data from Tanzania and show that both approaches work. Our estimation results show that disability is indeed positively associated with poverty in every region of mainland Tanzania.
Islamic Political Parties And Election Campaigns In Indonesia, Colm A. Fox, Jeremy Menchik
Islamic Political Parties And Election Campaigns In Indonesia, Colm A. Fox, Jeremy Menchik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Islamist political parties are a structural feature of politics across the Muslim world, raising persisting questions for scholars of democracy. Under what conditions will Islamists moderate to support democracy and pluralism? Under what conditions will they adopt more exclusive behavior? Taking a fresh approach, we focus on electoral competition and the conditions under which Islamic party candidates campaign using either inclusive nationalist appeals or exclusively Islamic appeals. Using a unique data source, we coded the appeals contained on the campaign posters of 572 Islamic party candidates in Indonesia. We found that demographics, urban–rural differences, and the level of government office …
Revisiting Tocqueville's American Woman, Christine Dunn Henderson
Revisiting Tocqueville's American Woman, Christine Dunn Henderson
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This paper revisits Tocqueville’s famous portrait of the American female, which begins with assertions of her equality to males but ends with her self-cloistering in the domestic sphere. Taking a cue from Tocqueville’s extended sketch of the “faded” pioneer wife in “A Fortnight in the Wilderness” and drawing connections to Tocqueville’s criticisms of the division of industrial labor, I argue that the American girl’s ostensibly free choice to remove herself from public life is not an act of freedom. Rather, it is a manifestation of a particular type of unfreedom that reveals underappreciated connections between the two great dangers about …
Imprinting-Like Effects Of Early Adolescent Music, Jiayu Fu, Lynn K. L. Tan, Norman P. Li, Xiao Tian Wang
Imprinting-Like Effects Of Early Adolescent Music, Jiayu Fu, Lynn K. L. Tan, Norman P. Li, Xiao Tian Wang
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This research examines the hypothesis that music experienced during puberty in early adolescence imprints on individuals to promote the pursuit of friendships and mating. We conducted an online survey with samples from the United States and China (Study 1) and a within-subject experiment (Study 2). Results suggest that most songs and poems identified as “favorites” were learned during early adolescence. Furthermore, compared with recently acquired songs and poems, those from early adolescence reminded participants more about friendship and induced more emotional reactions. In the Chinese sample, the shared preference for similar songs from early adolescence increased friendliness perception. Music from …
Climate Denialism Bullshit Is Harmful, Joshua Luczak
Climate Denialism Bullshit Is Harmful, Joshua Luczak
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This paper suggests that some climate denialism is bullshit. Those who spread it do not display a proper concern for the truth. This paper also shows that this bullshit is harmful in some significant ways. It undermines the epistemic demands imposed on us by what we care about, by the social roles we occupy, and by morality. It is also harmful because it corrodes epistemic trust.
'Kevin Vallier' Trust In A Polarized Age, Chandran Kukathas
'Kevin Vallier' Trust In A Polarized Age, Chandran Kukathas
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Vallier offers a defence of liberalism that is publicly justified as an answer to political polarization. This critique argues that the philosophical solution he offers - a version of liberalism more likely to be endorsed by moderately idealized agents - may not succeed because the source of polarization lies elsewhere: in resentments arising out of changed social conditions and the alienation of parts of society unhappy with the very liberal narrative in question.
Continuity, History, And Identity: Why Bongbong Marcos Won The 2022 Philippine Presidential Election, Dean C. Dulay, Allen Hicken, Anil Menon, Ronald Holmes
Continuity, History, And Identity: Why Bongbong Marcos Won The 2022 Philippine Presidential Election, Dean C. Dulay, Allen Hicken, Anil Menon, Ronald Holmes
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In May of 2022, Bongbong Marcos won a commanding 59 percent of the vote to become president of the Philippines. His victory was, on some level, shocking to scholars and analysts of Philippine politics. As a result, a plethora of different theories have been proposed, in an attempt to explain why Marcos won. In this paper, we use nationally representative survey data to explore which factors predict (and do not predict) voting intention for Marcos. We find that, a) support for former President Rodrigo Duterte, b) positive perceptions of the late President Ferdinand Marcos and martial law, and c) ethnic …
The Demands Of Displacement, The Micro-Aggressions Of Multiculturalism: Performing An Idea Of "Indianness" In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
The Demands Of Displacement, The Micro-Aggressions Of Multiculturalism: Performing An Idea Of "Indianness" In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This paper explores the ways in which state-defined discourses of multiculturalism can unintentionally create a framework through which micro-aggressions are enacted against those interpreted as "other". These definitions cascade down from the state to majority and then minority ethno-national groups, who leverage positions of relative dominance to establish the terms of acceptance and integration into society. By negotiating these terms, ethnicity becomes a performative construct through which difference is asserted and reified. We illustrate these ideas through an empirical analysis of Singapore's minority Indian community, and how Singaporean Indians perform an idea of "Indianness" in response to their Singaporean Chinese …
Algorithm's Cradle: Commemorating Al-Khwarizmi In The Soviet History Of Mathematics And Cold War Computer Science, Ksenia Tatarchenko
Algorithm's Cradle: Commemorating Al-Khwarizmi In The Soviet History Of Mathematics And Cold War Computer Science, Ksenia Tatarchenko
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This chapter investigates the origin narratives and commemoration practices that came hand in hand with the growing cultural authority of the algorithm after World War II, culminating in celebrations in honor of the 1,200th anniversary of the medieval scholar Abu MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RINGAdallah Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. I first show how al-Khwarizmi's legacy was claimed by Soviet historians of mathematics aiming to construct a history inspired by dialectical materialism, a goal that eventually led to arguments about the distinct, algorithmic character of mathematics in the East. Next, I study how these ideas were appropriated by the international community …
The Political Ecology Of Death: Chinese Religion And The Affective Tensions Of Secularised Burial Rituals In Singapore, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
The Political Ecology Of Death: Chinese Religion And The Affective Tensions Of Secularised Burial Rituals In Singapore, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper explores the political ecology of death and the affective tensions of secularised burial rituals in Singapore. Although scholars have recently acknowledged the roles of biopower and affect in shaping environmental politics, religion and death as socio-affective forces have not been substantively engaged with by political ecologists. We argue that death is inherently both a spiritual and ecological phenomenon, as it exposes not only the spiritual geographies that structure how people see the natural world, but also the affective tensions and struggles over what counts as a “proper” form of burial in relation to religion and nature. First, we …
Deconstruction Of A Dialogue: Creative Interpretation In Comparative Philosophy, Steven Burik
Deconstruction Of A Dialogue: Creative Interpretation In Comparative Philosophy, Steven Burik
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
It is common knowledge that Martin Heidegger’s attempts at engaging non-Western philosophy are very much a construct of his own making. This article in no way seeks to disagree with those observations, but argues two things: first, that Heidegger’s “dialogue” with his two main other sources of inspiration, the ancient Greek thinkers and the German poets, is not different in kind or in principle from his engagement with East Asia. One can of course quite easily argue that Heidegger’s main interest was the ancient Greek thinkers, and then the poets, and only lastly Asia. But this hierarchy in preference does …
Heat And Colonial Weather Science In The Straits Settlements C. 1820-1900, Fiona Williamson
Heat And Colonial Weather Science In The Straits Settlements C. 1820-1900, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Historical explorations of tropical heat in a colonial context have largely focussed on two interconnected spheres: colonial perceptions of place and body or, the implications of heat on different bodies in medical thought and practice. This paper seeks to move the discussion towards a history of colonial scientific thought about heat as component of weather and of escalating nature-induced hazards, studied in the observatory or meteorological department. A central theme is to think about heat in its relationship to nascent meso-scale atmospheric knowledge, meteorological theory and, as a by-product of urbanisation and land-use change. In so doing, it conceptualises the …
Man-Machine Dialogues: Computer Representations And Appropriations In The Soviet Union And The United States, Ksenia Tatarchenko
Man-Machine Dialogues: Computer Representations And Appropriations In The Soviet Union And The United States, Ksenia Tatarchenko
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
What brought a plurality of information societies into existence? The global process of computerizations went hand in hand with political competition between the First and Second World during the second half of the twentieth century. Non-capitalist information societies were imagined and experienced under the socialistregimes alongside and in interaction with their better-known capitalist counterparts. Both capitalism and socialism asserted the power of the new machines to depict and create a better world.
The Search For Spices And Souls: Catholic Missions As Colonial State In The Philippines, Dean C. Dulay
The Search For Spices And Souls: Catholic Missions As Colonial State In The Philippines, Dean C. Dulay
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
A growing literature posits that colonial Christian missions brought schooling to the colonies, improving human capital in ways that persist to this day. But in some places they did much more. This paper argues that colonial Catholic missions in the Philippines functioned as state-builders, establishing law and order and building fiscal and infrastructural capacities in territories they controlled. The mission-as-state was the result of a bargain between the Catholic missions and the Spanish colonial government: missionaries converted the population and engaged in state-building, whereas the colonial government reaped the benefits of state expansion while staying in the capital. Exposure to …
British Neo-Colonialism In Malaya And Singapore, And U.S. Empire In The Pacific, Wen-Qing Ngoei
British Neo-Colonialism In Malaya And Singapore, And U.S. Empire In The Pacific, Wen-Qing Ngoei
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This essay places the Vietnam War upon the larger canvas of Southeast and East Asian history by studying the long shadow that Britain’s Empire cast over U.S. entanglements across the region. It shows how British officials in Malaya and Singapore directly contributed to the expansion of US involvement in post-1945 Southeast Asia, as well as the overall pro-US trajectory of the region well before the Americanization of the Vietnam conflict.
What Is The Fallacy Of Approximation?, Matthew Hammerton, Sovan Patra
What Is The Fallacy Of Approximation?, Matthew Hammerton, Sovan Patra
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Many philosophers appeal to the “fallacy of approximation”, or “problem of second best”. However, despite the pervasiveness of such appeals, there has been only a single attempt to provide a systematic account of what the fallacy is. We identify the shortcomings of this account and propose a better one in its place. Our account not only captures all the contexts in which approximation-based reasoning occurs but also systematically explains the several different ways in which it can be in error.