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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Discontent In The World City Of Singapore, Gordon Tan, Jessie P. H. Poon, Orlando Woods
Discontent In The World City Of Singapore, Gordon Tan, Jessie P. H. Poon, Orlando Woods
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
A burgeoning literature on ‘left behind’ places has emerged that captures the backlash against globalisation and highlights the locales that lag world cities. This paper integrates the ‘left behind’ and world cities literatures through the lens of discontent in the context of Singapore, using sentiment analysis and topic modelling as well as interviews with local professionals to unpack the multidimensional aspects of discontent. Focusing on the Singapore–India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement that spurred discontent directed at foreign Indian professionals, we show that the worlding generated by transnational flows has accentuated intra-urban inequality through racialisation and spatialisation of financial business and …
Island Platforms And The Hyper-Terrestrialisation Of Singapore's Smart City-State, Orlando Woods, Tim Bunnell, Lily Kong
Island Platforms And The Hyper-Terrestrialisation Of Singapore's Smart City-State, Orlando Woods, Tim Bunnell, Lily Kong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This paper foregrounds the importance of underlying territorial formations in realising a vision of the smart city. It argues that as a political technology of the state, territory should be understood as a platform upon which data works and the smart city unfolds. In this view, island territories – of which bordered city-states like Singapore provide paradigmatic examples – provide an integral, yet hitherto unexplored, component in the realisation of urban “smartness”. We illustrate these theoretical arguments through an analysis of how the territorial constraints that characterise Singapore’s island platform enable the state to accurately and effectively realise its vision …
Trust: The Feature That Vending Machines And Atms Share, But Simplygo Lacks, Sun Sun Lim
Trust: The Feature That Vending Machines And Atms Share, But Simplygo Lacks, Sun Sun Lim
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
The article discussed the intricacies of trust in the SimplyGo debacle and highlighted how the design of physical interfaces like vending machines and ATMs and digital interfaces from apps like Grab, Parking.sg and ShopBack have critical features to instil trust. People need to be reassured that their transactions have proceeded as they should, and thay have not been short-changed.
The Illusory Infrastructure Of Ink: Machinic Bodies And Epidermic Affects In Singapore, Orlando Woods
The Illusory Infrastructure Of Ink: Machinic Bodies And Epidermic Affects In Singapore, Orlando Woods
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This paper advances recent theorisations of the body-as-infrastructure by exploring the premise that there are multiple bodily infrastructures at play at any one time. It focusses on three infrastructural formations – the body, the skin that encases the body, and tattoos as visual inscriptions on the skin – that jostle against each other for representational primacy. The layering of infrastructure-upon-infrastructure leads to understandings of the self that exist in a state of tension with societal norms and the illusions of self-representation. Indeed, it is the intersecting gazes of society and the self that cause these infrastructures to become disaggregated, and …
The State-Led Platformisation Of Financial Services: Frictionless Ecosystems And An Expansive Logic Of "Smartness" In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Tim Bunnell, Lily Kong
The State-Led Platformisation Of Financial Services: Frictionless Ecosystems And An Expansive Logic Of "Smartness" In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Tim Bunnell, Lily Kong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article explores the role of the state in driving the platformisation of industry, and in doing so offers a counterpoint to scholarship that focusses on the exploitative effects of private sector-led platformisation. That scholarship views platformisation as the latest incarnation of neoliberal urbanism, with the profit-maximising tendencies of the private sector driving the proliferation of platforms throughout everyday life. Notwith- standing, there remains a need to consider alternative models of platformisation. Drawing on 31 interviews with architects of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, we consider the state-led platformisation of financial services. We argue that state-led platformisation can open up marketplaces …
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 …
Insourcing The Smart City: Assembling An Ideo-Technical Ecosystem Of Talent, Skills, And Civic-Mindedness In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Tim Bunnell, Lily Kong
Insourcing The Smart City: Assembling An Ideo-Technical Ecosystem Of Talent, Skills, And Civic-Mindedness In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Tim Bunnell, Lily Kong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This article examines an alternative model of smart city formation, one based on the principle of insourcing technical competencies and capabilities to those responsible for city governance. This model counters the logic of technological outsourcing upon which many assumptions and critiques of the smart city rest, and thus reveals ways in which a more generative discourse can be forged. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with senior stakeholders from public and private sector organizations, we develop a case study of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative. Through coordinated efforts to reorganize the public sector’s technological functions, develop nation-wide skills upgrading programs, …
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 …
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
El Niño And The Human-Environment Nexus: Drought And Vulnerability In Singapore 1877-1911, Fiona Williamson
El Niño And The Human-Environment Nexus: Drought And Vulnerability In Singapore 1877-1911, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
This chapter brings a climatic perspective to the study of Singaporean history by exploring the impacts of the strong El Niño inspired droughts of 1877, 1902 and 1911. The narrative focuses on unpacking the nexus of nature-inspired versus human-induced vulnerability to drought within the contexts of colonial urbanisation and looks at the short-to medium-term impacts of the events on society. It also explores how such events inspired new questions about the climate and regional teleconnections, as a wealth of evidence became available due to the increasingly connected nature of scientific institutions, scientific literature, and communications systems across the Indian Ocean …
Lessons From Our Living Rooms: Illuminating Lockdowns With Technology Domestication Insights, Sun Sun Lim, Yang Wang
Lessons From Our Living Rooms: Illuminating Lockdowns With Technology Domestication Insights, Sun Sun Lim, Yang Wang
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
With at least half of humanity under lockdown to arrest the spread of COVID-19 (Sandford, 2020), adults have been working from home and children engaging in home schooling for months on end. Competing for scarce resources such as digital devices, bandwidth, as well as physical and personal space, families have had to contend with rising tensions around the quality of digital engagement, children’s learning abilities, parent-child relationships and overall familial wellbeing. This fraught situation shone the spotlight on the household context of technology use but also enabled us to marshal academic insights to advance advocacy and public education. The pandemic …