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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
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 …
Re-Presenting The Religious: Nation, Community And Identity In Museums, Lily Kong
Re-Presenting The Religious: Nation, Community And Identity In Museums, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper examines the roles that museums play as 'unofficially sacred' places, underscoring or challenging the religious life of a people and 'nation'. It focuses on three key questions: (1) Do sub-national and transnational religious formations pose a challenge to or present opportunities for nation-building strategies, and what part do museums play in this struggle? (2) In what ways do re-presentations of religion in museums contest or reinforce religious community and identity? and (3) What challenges do museum displays pose to the understanding of religious meanings? This paper explores these three key questions about the intersection of religion with politics …
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 …
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 Of National Identity Through The Production Of Ritual And Spectacle: An Analysis Of National Day Parades In Singapore, Lily Kong, Brenda S. A. Yeoh
The Construction Of National Identity Through The Production Of Ritual And Spectacle: An Analysis Of National Day Parades In Singapore, Lily Kong, Brenda S. A. Yeoh
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, we adopt the view that 'nation' and 'national identity' are social constructions, created to serve ideological ends. We discuss this in the specific empirical context of Singapore's National Day parades. By drawing on officially produced souvenir programmes and magazines, newspaper reports, and interviews with participants and spectators, we analyse the parades between 1965 and 1994, showing how, as an annual ritual and landscape spectacle, the parades succeed to a large extent in creating a sense of awe, wonderment and admiration. Discussion focuses on four aspects of the celebrations: the site of the parades, their display and theatricality, …
Singapore And The Experience Of Place In Old Age, Lily Kong, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Peggy Teo
Singapore And The Experience Of Place In Old Age, Lily Kong, Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Peggy Teo
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Through case studies of two neighborhoods in Singapore with large concentrations of elderly residents-Tiong Bahru and Chinatown-we explore the relationship between the aged's emotional attachments to place and the sustenance of their personal identities, their continued participation in life, and their adaptation to changing circumstances. In particular, we examine their feelings of physical, social, and autobiographical insideness. We emphasize the rapidly changing physical conditions in Chinatown wrought by the government's conservation strategy and their implications for the elderly. In Tiong Bahru young people are moving to newer housing developments, leaving the aged behind in an essentially little-changed physical environment; we …