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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Sociology
Lion City Zoopolis: Urban Crittizenship In Biophilic Singapore, George Wong
Lion City Zoopolis: Urban Crittizenship In Biophilic Singapore, George Wong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
A central theme of Singapore’s “City in Nature” vision is framed through biophilic urbanism, or efforts to harmonize biodiversity and urban development through built, social, and political design. The central discourses of Singapore’s biophilic urbanism have revolved around flora-centric paradigms, including habitat conservation, greening spaces, and access to natural capital. This paper detours from conventions of Singapore’s urban ecological futures and instead explores the governance of fauna co- existence in the city–state through the concept of “urban crittizenship.” Defined as a more-than-human denization framework that interrogates urban wildlife governance, urban crittizenship interrogates the politics of urban wildlife’s rights to the …
No-Place, New Places: Death And Its Rituals In Urban Asia, Lily Kong
No-Place, New Places: Death And Its Rituals In Urban Asia, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In many Asian cities, particularly those that confront increasing land scarcity, the conversion from burial to cremation has been encouraged by state agencies in the last several decades. From Hong Kong to Seoul to Singapore, planning agencies have sought to reduce the use of space for the dead, in order to release land for the use of the living. More secular guiding principles regarding efficient land use in these cities had originally come up against the symbolic values invested in burial spaces, resulting in conflicts between different value systems. In more recent years, however, the shift to cremation and columbaria …
Contesting Urban Citizenship: The Urban Poor’S Strategies Of State Engagement In Chennai, India, Subadevan Mahadevan, Ijlal Naqvi
Contesting Urban Citizenship: The Urban Poor’S Strategies Of State Engagement In Chennai, India, Subadevan Mahadevan, Ijlal Naqvi
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Existing accounts of how the urban poor in the global south engage with the state fall short on two fronts. Firstly, the literature lacks an overarching framework articulating the urban poor’s strategies for engaging the state. Secondly, these accounts typically capture singular instances of state engagement pursued by the urban poor and theorise on that basis. Using Partha Chatterjee’s distinction between civil and political society as our theoretical point of departure, we draw on ethnographic evidence from Chennai’s informal settlements to demonstrate how and when the urban poor deploy different strategies of state engagement to advance their claims to urban …
Transnational Mobilities And The Making Of Creative Cities, Lily Kong
Transnational Mobilities And The Making Of Creative Cities, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This review essay on the literature on creative cities pays particular attention to the ways in which transnational mobilities contribute significantly to the making of such cities. The paper reviews critically both the literature and phenomena of creative cities and their transnational flows by framing the discussion around the mobility of ideas (creative economy/creative city discourse), the mobility of people (the migration of the creative class), the mobility of technology (the travel of the creative cluster and architectural iconism phenomena), the mobility of finances (capital and investment flows), and the mobility of images (transnational artistic collaborations and products).
From Cultural Industries To Creative Industries And Back? Towards Clarifying Theory And Rethinking Policy, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, I draw attention to the complexities and confusions in the shift in discourse and praxis from "culture industry" to "cultural industries" and then "creative industries." I examine how this "creative turn" is fraught with challenges, highlighting seven issues in particular: (i) the difficulties in defining and scoping the creative industries; (ii) the challenges in measuring the economic benefits creative industries bring; (iii) the risk that creative industries neglect genuine creativity/culture; (iv) the utopianization of "creative labour"; (v) the risk of valorizing and promoting external expertise over local small- and medium-scale enterprises in the building of "creative industries"; …
Ambitions Of A Global City: Arts, Culture And Creative Economy In 'Post-Crisis' Singapore, Lily Kong
Ambitions Of A Global City: Arts, Culture And Creative Economy In 'Post-Crisis' Singapore, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper chronicles some of the key policies pertaining to the arts and culture in post-independent Singapore. A brief summary is first provided of the early (1960s and 1970s) cultural policy focusing on the harnessing of arts and culture for nation-building purposes, followed by the subsequent (1980s) recognition that the arts and culture had tourist dollar potential. The paper then expands on the cultural/creative economy policy of the 2000s, in which arts, heritage, media and design are recognized for their economic value (beyond their role in tourism to include their export value and their importance in attracting global workers). The …
Improbable Art: The Creative Economy And Sustainable Cluster Development In A Hong Kong Industrial District, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
A noted Singapore-based cultural geographer and specialist on Asia analyzes the emergence and functioning of a unique artistic cluster in Hong Kong's Fotan light industrial district. The objective of the research is to understand how artistic work in the cluster, despite some challenges, has thus far proven sustainable in cultural, social, and economic terms. The findings of this case study permit further clarification of several dimensions of an emerging theory of cultural/creative clusters, which should be considered as distinct from business and industrial clusters. Selective comparisons between the Fotan cluster and the Moganshan Lu cluster in Shanghai demonstrate that cultural/creative …
Conceptualising Cultural And Creative Spaces, Lily Kong
Conceptualising Cultural And Creative Spaces, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper reviews the literature on cultural and creative spaces, and examines its merits and shortcomings in helping to explain how culture and creativity in the city are supported. Alternative ways of conceptualising cultural and creative spaces which emphasise the importance of networks and multi-scalar relationships and non-economic considerations will be examined.
Rethinking The Rural-Urban Divide In China’S New Stratification Order, Qian Forrest Zhang
Rethinking The Rural-Urban Divide In China’S New Stratification Order, Qian Forrest Zhang
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
I use a Marxist framework centred on the mode of production to conceptually analyze the changing stratification structure in today’s China with a focus on the changing nature of rural-urban inequality. As the state-managed tributary mode of production, once dominant under socialism, is being gradually eclipsed by the reviving petty-commodity mode of production and the newly emerged capitalist mode of production, both of which are market-based and enable the transfer of surplus from labour to capital, a new set of mechanisms are creating and sustaining rural-urban inequality in China. Rural-urban inequality – although still significant in its magnitude – is …
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 …
Knowledges Of The Creative Economy: Towards A Relational Geography Of Diffusion And Adaptation In Asia, Lily Kong, Chris Gibson, Louisa-May Khoo, Anne-Louise Semple
Knowledges Of The Creative Economy: Towards A Relational Geography Of Diffusion And Adaptation In Asia, Lily Kong, Chris Gibson, Louisa-May Khoo, Anne-Louise Semple
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Recent dialogues in geography and the social sciences have reminded researchers of the extent to which academic and policy knowledges are socially and spatially embedded-that is, they circulate through formal and informal systems of publishing, exchange, commodification and cultural influence. Academic and policy knowledges are, in short, very much a part of the creative economy. In light of this, our paper surveys knowledges of the creative economy itself, as reflected in a geography of industry reports and government policy statements in selected Asian countries. Using a post-positivist framework adapted from diffusion theory, we critically interpret the circulation, mutation and adaptation …
Cultural Economy: A Critical Review, Chris Gibson, Lily Kong
Cultural Economy: A Critical Review, Chris Gibson, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article reviews work on 'cultural economy', particularly from within geography, and from other disciplines, where there are links to overtly geographical debates. We seek to clarify different interpretations of the term and to steer a course through this multivalency to suggest productive new research agendas. We review and critique work on cultural economy that represents a relatively straightforward economic geography, based on empirical observation while theoretically informed and driven by debates about Fordism and post-Fordism, agglomeration and cluster theory. Some of these ideas about cultural economy have proven attractive to policy-makers and we map a normative script of cultural …
Religious Schools: For Spirit, (F)Or Nation, Lily Kong
Religious Schools: For Spirit, (F)Or Nation, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper I draw attention to the study of 'unofficially sacred' sites in geographies of religion, which provide significant insights into the construction of religious identity and community, and the intersections of sacred and secular. I show that such sites deserve as much attention as places of worship (the more conventional focus in the geographical study of religion) in our understanding of the place of religion in contemporary urban society. In particular, using the case of Islamic religious schools in Singapore, I examine how Muslim identities and community are negotiated within multicultural and multireligious contexts, and particularly within one …
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.
Urban Constraints, Political Imperatives: Environmental 'Design' In Singapore, Victor R. Savage, Lily Kong
Urban Constraints, Political Imperatives: Environmental 'Design' In Singapore, Victor R. Savage, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
What lies at the heart of the continuing efforts at social education and engineering? We argue that they stem from a political elite which recognises the constraints facing Singapore and the need to deal with them at national level. Specifically, the government in Singapore has recognised the spatial constraints of an island-state and the dangers of a burgeoning population, particularly in relation to the need to sustain a viable urban ecosystem. They have therefore been conscientious in planning and population control. They have also stressed the importance of remaining economically viable in order to survive and an entire survival and …