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Articles 1 - 16 of 16
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
‘We Are People Of The Islands’: Translocal Belonging Among The Ethnic Chinese Of The Riau Islands, Charlotte Setijadi
‘We Are People Of The Islands’: Translocal Belonging Among The Ethnic Chinese Of The Riau Islands, Charlotte Setijadi
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The Riau Islands Chinese are an anomaly in the study of Chinese Indonesians. For one, while many of their ethnic Chinese counterparts in other parts of Indonesia can no longer speak Chinese due to the New Order regime’s assimilation policy, Chinese languages are alive and well in the Riau Islands. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017–2018, this paper seeks to understand the Riau Islands Chinese’s cultural resilience and sense of belonging as a borderland ethnic minority. I argue that long-standing inter-Island and cross-border mobilities and cultural flows with Singapore have been central to the maintenance of Riau Islands Chinese …
Class(Ify)Ing Christianity In Singapore: Tracing The Interlinked Spaces Of Privilege And Position, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Class(Ify)Ing Christianity In Singapore: Tracing The Interlinked Spaces Of Privilege And Position, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper considers how two facets of identity – religion and class – are performed, (re)produced and negotiated within the spaces of the Christian school, home and church in Singapore. We show how the social structuring of one space can inform and influence the structuring of another. Spaces of Christianity in Singapore tend to be mutually reinforcing, strengthening the linkages between religion and class, and in particular reifying the position of Christianity as a religion of the privileged classes. However, the ways in which Christian spaces are reified can become problematic when space is in fact shared with less privileged …
Crazy Rich Asians: A Tale Of Immigration, Globalization And Consumption In East Asia, Giana M. Eckhardt, Finola Kerrigan
Crazy Rich Asians: A Tale Of Immigration, Globalization And Consumption In East Asia, Giana M. Eckhardt, Finola Kerrigan
Markets, Globalization & Development Review
We review the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians in order to highlight its relevance for debates on immigration, globalization and consumption. In doing so, we argue that a new model of immigration for East Asians, distant and distinct from the American Dream, a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” narrative infused with an Asian ethic, is being valorized in the film. We also illuminate the complexities of East Asian representation on screen, as evidenced by varying receptions to the film in America and in various regions of Asia. And, finally, we note that while the film celebrates excess in consumption …
Spaces Of The Religious Economy: Negotiating The Regulation Of Religious Space In Singapore, Orlando Woods
Spaces Of The Religious Economy: Negotiating The Regulation Of Religious Space In Singapore, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Over the past three decades, the theory of religious economy has been established, applied, debated, developed, and rejected. It has proven to be as divisive as any "general theory" of religion should be, and yet its core tenets continue to engage and unite scholars around the world. In response to broader shifts within the sociology of religion, this article reframes religious economy by advancing a spatial approach to its theorization. A spatial approach can help develop new perspectives on the regulation of religion, and the resistant agency of religious groups. With a focus on the "secular monopoly" of Singapore, it …
Bringing The State Home: Neoliberalism In Global Models Of Public Housing, Nicholas Alfino
Bringing The State Home: Neoliberalism In Global Models Of Public Housing, Nicholas Alfino
Cultural Studies Capstone Papers
Global public housing authorities in state versus market capitalism take different approaches to provide housing for multicultural demographics. This capstone project looks at that of New York City and Singapore as case studies of ideologies of welfare, multicultural national identity and public policies representative of their political economies. With special attention paid the spatial relations of ethnic enclaves in both urban environments, focus is placed on a social, lived experience shaped by both 'productivist' versus 'cynical' ideology and privatization versus state authoritarianism. Each political economic system of welfare reaches from larger concepts of national and global economy to the local …
Hines, Clara Ursula (Wright) Nahm, 1904-1983 (Mss 561), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Hines, Clara Ursula (Wright) Nahm, 1904-1983 (Mss 561), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
MSS Finding Aids
Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 561. Personal diaries of Clara (Wright) Hines, Bowling Green, Kentucky, kept during her marriage to food critic Duncan Hines and after his death. Includes some correspondence, travel itineraries, and miscellaneous papers.
The Nationalization Of Religion: Cultural Performances And The Youth Of Soka Singapore, Jayeel Cornelio
The Nationalization Of Religion: Cultural Performances And The Youth Of Soka Singapore, Jayeel Cornelio
Development Studies Faculty Publications
Soka is known in Singapore for its cultural performances in events such as the National Day Parade and Chingay. This is part of Soka’s attempts to present itself as a cultural organization working for peace and progress in Singapore. Participating in these performances is common among the youth of Soka. In this paper I focus on young people’s participation as a form of religious patriotism. For them, it is about sending a message that individual and collective struggles can be overcome and that peace and harmony can be fostered. I then analyze these nuances in terms of the nationalization of …
The Eternal Mother And The State: Circumventing Religion Management In Singapore, Francis Khek Gee Lim
The Eternal Mother And The State: Circumventing Religion Management In Singapore, Francis Khek Gee Lim
Francis Khek Gee Lim
No abstract provided.
Prison’S Spoilt Identities: Racially Structured Realities Within And Beyond, Nafis Hanif
Prison’S Spoilt Identities: Racially Structured Realities Within And Beyond, Nafis Hanif
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article begins by seeking an explanation for the solidarity between Malay inmates and guards in perpetrating abusive and discriminatory treatment towards Malay transvestites. In the course of explaining an empirical phenomenon in the Singapore prison, this article has examined Singapore's history and ethnic demography, the ethnic Malay minority's lack of socio-economic development and modernisation vis-a-vis the ethnic Chinese majority, geo-politics, the ideology and strategic choices of the state's political elite and their implications for inter-ethnic interactions between Malays and Chinese. As this article will argue, prison culture, rather than being divorced from larger society, is in effect able to …
Internalized Boundaries: Aware’S Place In Singapore Emerging Civil Society, Lenore T. Lyons
Internalized Boundaries: Aware’S Place In Singapore Emerging Civil Society, Lenore T. Lyons
Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)
In the foundational narratives that members of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) tell about the organisation’s formation, many topics remain (to echo the state’s vernacular) ‘out-of-bounds’. In this paper I examine the ways in which AWARE members construct their own ‘OB markers’ in telling the history of AWARE. The constructedness of this history in itself is not remarkable. In telling stories about themselves and others, we expect situated actors to re-construct and re-present the past. In this paper, however, I argue that during its first decade of activism the process of delineating the boundaries of AWARE’s …
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 …
Popular Music In A Transnational World: The Construction Of Local Identities In Singapore, Lily Kong
Popular Music In A Transnational World: The Construction Of Local Identities In Singapore, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
As an area of geographical inquiry, popular music has not been explored to any large extent. Where writings exist, they have been somewhat divorced from recent theoretical and methodological questions that have rejuvenated social and cultural geography. In this paper, I focus on one arena which geographers can develop in their analysis of popular music, namely, the exploration of local influences and global forces in the production of music. In so doing, I wish to explore how local resources intersect with global ones in a process of transculturation. Using the example of English songs by one particular songwriter and artiste …
Ideology, Social Commentary And Resistance In Popular Music: A Case Study Of Singapore, Phua Siew Chye, Lily Kong
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.
Popular Music And A Sense Of Place In Singapore, Lily Kong
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 …
Making "Music At The Margins"? A Social And Cultural Analysis Of Xinyao In Singapore, Lily Kong
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 …
Music And Cultural Politics: Ideology And Resistance In Singapore, Lily Kong
Music And Cultural Politics: Ideology And Resistance In Singapore, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper focuses on popular music written and produced by Singaporeans to illustrate the nature of social relationships based on ideological hegemony and resistance. Analysis is based on two groups of music: 'national' songs supported by the government in the 'Sing Singapore' programme; and songs brought together in Not the Singapore song book. Interviews with local lyricists and analysis of video productions provide supplementary information. Music is used by the ruling elite to perpetuate certain ideologies aimed at political socialization and to inculcate a civil religion that directs favour and fervour towards the nation. Music is also a form of …