Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Human Geography
Hawker Culture And Its Infrastructure: Experiences And Contestations In Everyday Life, Lily Kong, Aidan Marc Wong
Hawker Culture And Its Infrastructure: Experiences And Contestations In Everyday Life, Lily Kong, Aidan Marc Wong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Hawker foods characterize urban Asia, with similarities and differences across cities that forge both cultural commonalities and distinctions. From the itinerant to the fixed location, from the temporary sites to the purposebuilt, hawker foods are served in informal settings, with varying degrees of tradition and innovation, hygiene and squalidness, local authenticity and globalized influence. In the side-streets of Beijing where local delicacies such as scorpion are served, to the abundant food cart vendors on Bangkok streets, to the warung (small, typically family-owned eateries) in Surabaya, and the carefully planned and designed hawker centres in Singapore, hawker culture is a distinctive
Singapore’S Chinatown: Nation Building And Heritage Tourism In A Multiracial City, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Lily Kong
Singapore’S Chinatown: Nation Building And Heritage Tourism In A Multiracial City, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper focuses on the pivotal role played by the state in refashioning the Chinatown landscape as part of both nation-building and heritage tourism projects, and the ensuing cultural politics. After a brief history of the creation of Singapore’s Chinatown, the paper discusses, first, Chinatown’s place in Singapore’s post-independence nation-building project and, second, the reconfiguration of the Chinatown landscape as a tourism asset. The final section reflects on the changing politics of place as Chinatown gains legitimacy in state discourses on heritage, tourism and multiculturalism, as well as in the popular imagination as an ethnic precinct par excellence.
From Precarious Labor To Precarious Economy? Planning For Precarity In Singapore's Creative Economy, Lily Kong
From Precarious Labor To Precarious Economy? Planning For Precarity In Singapore's Creative Economy, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The important place of the oftentimes "hidden" independent worker, or freelancer, has been acknowledged in developed countries where the creative economy has grown. These creative workers do not belong to the traditional employment set-up organized around firms. Instead, they move from portfolio to portfolio, assignment to assignment, interspersing corporation-based jobs with periods of self employment. Their work offers freedom, independence and creative space, but has also been characterized as precarious, because the securities of old working patterns no longer hold. While governments in many countries and cities have become attracted to the potential of the creative economy, those that have …
Making Sustainable Creative/Cultural Space In Shanghai And Singapore, Lily Kong
Making Sustainable Creative/Cultural Space In Shanghai And Singapore, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Shanghai and Singapore are two economically vibrant Asian cities that have recently adopted creative/cultural economy strategies. In this article I examine new spatial expressions of cultural and economic interests in the two cities: state-vaunted cultural edifices and organically evolved cultural spaces. I discuss the simultaneous precariousness and sustainability of these spaces, focusing on Shanghai's Grand Theatre and Moganshan Lu and on Singapore's Esplanade-Theatres by the Bay and Wessex Estate. Their cultural sustainability is understood as their ability to support the development of indigenous content and local idioms in artistic work. Their social sustainability is examined in terms of the social …
Cultural Icons And Urban Development In Asia: Economic Imperative, National Identity, And Global City Status, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Global cities are characterized by the multiplicity of flows that they are implicated in - flows of people, goods, services, ideas, and images. Yet, global cities do not derive their status only on the basis that they are networked nodes. They also require particular forms of cultural capital. Cities with global aspirations have thus increasingly recognized the need to accumulate cultural capital, for which one means is to create new urban spaces, in particular, new cultural urban spaces (e.g. grand theatres, museums, libraries). These often monumental structures are intended to support a vibrant cultural life, in order to attract and …
Cultural Policy In Singapore: Negotiating Economic And Socio-Cultural Agendas, Lily Kong
Cultural Policy In Singapore: Negotiating Economic And Socio-Cultural Agendas, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, I examine the role of cultural policy in a newly industrialised economy, which is at the same time a state with a short history and only nascent beginnings in nation-building and efforts to construct a distinctive cultural identity. Using Singapore as the site of analyses, develop an understanding of the intersection between the economic and socio-cultural agendas behind cultural development policies. I illustrate the hegemony of the economic, supported by the ideology and language of pragmatism and globalisation. At the same time, I explore the reception of and attempts to negotiate (and at times, contest) state policies …
Religion And Modernity: Ritual Transformations And The Reconstruction Of Space And Time, Chee Kiong Tong, Lily Kong
Religion And Modernity: Ritual Transformations And The Reconstruction Of Space And Time, Chee Kiong Tong, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, we use the case of Chinese religion in Singapore to examine the relationships between religion and modernity, and between social processes, on the one hand, and spatial conceptions, forms and structures and temporal practices, on the other. Specifically, we look at how traditional Chinese rituals are being modified, reinterpreted and invented to fit with modern living. Such ritual transformations entail reconstructed notions of space and time. Through such transformations, modernity does not simply lead to the demise of religious beliefs and practices but allows for a continued role for religion in providing a meaning system for Chinese …
Globalisation And Singaporean Transmigration: Re-Imagining And Negotiating National Identity, Lily Kong
Globalisation And Singaporean Transmigration: Re-Imagining And Negotiating National Identity, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Within the context of globalisation that confronts the world today, I aim in this paper to illustrate one particular state's attempts at constructing a 'nation' amidst efforts to encourage its citizens to globalise, actions which are ostensibly, or at least, potentially, contradictory; and to analyse how these citizens who became transmigrants construct and negotiate their sense of 'nation' and national identity. Specifically, my empirical questions centre on Singaporean transmigrants working in China. I ask the following questions. What happens to the sense of national identity among Singaporeans and their relationship with the 'nation' when confronted with transnational conditions? What are …
Cemetaries And Columbaria, Memorials And Mausoleums: Narrative And Interpretation In The Study Of Deathscapes In Geography, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper reviews research on deathscapes, particularly by geographers in the last decade, and argues that many of the issues addressed reflect the concerns that have engaged cultural geographers during the same period. In particular, necrogeographical research reveals the relevance of deathscapes to theoretical arguments about the social constructedness of race, class, gender, nation and nature; the ideological underpinnings of landscapes, the contestation of space, the centrality of place and the multiplicity of meanings. This paper therefore highlights how the focus on one particular form of landscape reveals macro-cultural geographical research interests and trends.
The Construction And Experience Of Nature: Perspectives Of Urban Youths, Lily Kong, Belinda Yuen, Navjot S. Sodhi, Clive Briffett
The Construction And Experience Of Nature: Perspectives Of Urban Youths, Lily Kong, Belinda Yuen, Navjot S. Sodhi, Clive Briffett
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, we explore the ways in which young people in a highly urbanised setting experience and develop constructions of nature. We do so by using Singapore as our case study, an Asian context in which urbanisation is total (Singapore's population is totally urbanised), Based on focus group discussions, we conclude that young Singaporeans have little interest in and affinity for nature. This stems from a few factors: growing up in a highly urban environment in which contact with nature is limited; over-protective parents of two-children families who worry about the 'dangers' their children are exposed to when playing …
Negotiating Conceptions Of 'Sacred Space': A Case Study Of Religious Buildings In Singapore, Lily Kong
Negotiating Conceptions Of 'Sacred Space': A Case Study Of Religious Buildings In Singapore, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, I approach the study of religious place from a re-theorized cultural geographical stance. Using multi-religious Singapore as a case study, I examine the tensions which arise over the meanings and values associated with religious buildings because of the conflict between state hegemony on the one hand and the oppositional meanings and values of religious groups and individuals on the other. I also examine the ways in which individuals negotiate their conceptions of sacred space in order to cope with changes imposed on their religious places by the state. Primarily, my argument is that conflict is avoided because …