International and Area Studies Commons^™

Dealing With Covid-19 And Emerging Stronger From It, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Whether it is reacting to news on COVID-19 cases, following safe management rules, adapting to changes at work, assessing leadership and public responses to the coronavirus crisis, or navigating post-pandemic realities, it is all part of understanding how humans think, feel, and behave, says SMU Professor David Chan.

A Question Of Scale: Making Meteorological Knowledge And Nation In Imperial Asia, Fiona Williamson, Vladimir Jankovic

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This special issue of History of Meteorology explores processes of making, communicating, and embedding modern meteorological knowledge in late nineteenth and early twentieth century imperial Asia. Its focus is on the institutionalisation of meteorology in key nation-building activities such as developing agricultural services, synoptic mapping to predict storms, and participation in scientific organisations and initiatives. Collectively, the essays explore the intersection of local, regional, and international scales and processes in generating new forms of state-sponsored meteorological practices and institutions, though complex multi-layered networks involving different actors and modes of information flow across multiple scales. In so doing, they reveal the …

Archives Of Societies And Historical Climatology In East And Southeast Asia, Fiona Williamson, Qing Pei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Major sources of social archives for paleoclimatology in East and Southeast Asia include ancient annals and chronicles, instrumental records from government, military or missionary bodies, and private records such as diaries. Records are rich but scattered and of inconsistent quality, often requiring different forms of cross-validation and homogenization from those in the Western world. This article discusses these source types.

The Myanmar Business Environment Index 2020: Measuring Economic Governance For Private Sector Development, Edmund Malesky, Dean C. Dulay, Ville Peltovuori

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The 2020 Myanmar Business Environment Index (MBEI) aims to identify constraints in Myanmar’s business regulatory environment and provide a tool for identifying reform opportunities that spur growth.

Rural Land Dispossession In China And India, Joel Andreas, Sunila Kale, Michael Levien, Forrest Q. Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The twelve articles in this special issue feature the work of scholars studying the dispossession of rural land in China and India. Each offers new insights about the extent and patterns of dispossession, the complex dynamics driving it, the consequences for farmers, as well as the factors shaping resistance or compliance. Although each article treats developments within one country, the collection helps uncover features common to rural land dispossession in China and India, and illuminates differences that shape the processes of dispossession in each country. Comparison of the two countries helps us to not only understand the future implications of …

The Other China Model: Daoism, Pluralism, And Political Liberalism, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

While scholars often portray Chinese political thought and tradition as standing in opposition to Western notions of political liberalism, little consideration has been given to compatibility between liberalism and Daoism, a prominent religion and long-standing alternative school of thought among Chinese peoples. Addressing this gap in the literature, this study in comparative political thought compares Laozi’s Dao De Jing with John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty to illustrate certain core political ideas in the Dao De Jing and their treatment in Mill’s landmark text on political liberalism. Although the two texts diverge in terms of advocacy of popular representation, public contestation, …

Introduction, Stephanie Burridge

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This eclectic monograph investigates corporealities across diverse arts practices – dance, music, fashion, visual and performance art. The six chapters resulted from a multidisciplinary seminar series at LASALLE College of the Arts, a tertiary arts institution in Singapore – the unifying themes were the body, embodied performativity and multidisciplinarity. This research series on what initially appear to be disparate titles was curated to facilitate dialogues about the notion of the body as central to all creative practice, with an objective to enable and enhance inter-disciplinary relationships and pedagogy.

Forging Alternatively Sacred Spaces In Singapore's Integrated Religious Marketplace, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper expands the notion of sacred space within the geographies of religion by arguing that spaces of religious praxis need to be understood in relation to the broader spatial logics within which they are embedded. Given that the spatial logics of urban environments tend to be secular and neoliberal in nature, it considers how religious groups respond to the realities of the marketplaces in which they operate by forging “alternatively sacred” spaces. These spaces augment the appeal of religious groups in non-religious ways, thus making them more competitive players in a religious marketplace. Specifically, it explores how independent churches …

Indonesia: Twenty Years Of Democracy By Jamie S. Davidson [Book Review], Colm A. Fox

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In Indonesia: Twenty years of democracy, Jamie S. Davidson looks back over the two decades since Soeharto’s fall, focusing on the ‘tensions, inconsistencies, and contradictory puzzles of Indonesia’s democracy’ (p. 4). Refreshingly, the book moves beyond the common approach of studying the similarities and differences between the contemporary democratic period and the Soeharto era. Davidson identifies, labels and skilfully guides the reader through three separate eras in Indonesia’s recent democratic history: the innovation period (1998–2004), the stagnation period (2004–14) and the period of polarisation (2014–18). Each era is analysed in parallel fashion, with subsections on politics, political economy and identity-based …

Gender And Parliamentary Representation In India: The Case Of Violence Against Women And Children, Sadhvi Kalra, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

To better understand how gender impacts parliamentary representation, we analysed representative claims made by parliamentarians in India, the world's largest democracy. Applying critical frame analysis to plenary debates in the Indian Rajya Sabha, we examined four parliamentary bills addressing violence against women and children under four successive governments between 1999 and 2019. Testing six hypotheses concerning who represents and how, our study found women legislators more active in speaking on behalf of women and children than male legislators. Women parliamentarians focused more on rehabilitating victims and expanding the scope of rights and rights-holders. Women were also more vocal in contesting …

Screening Southeast Asia: Film, Politics, And The Emergence Of The Nation In Postwar Southeast Asia, Darlene Machell Espena

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Public Cleanliness Satisfaction Survey [2019], Paulin Straughan, Mathews Mathew

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Singapore Management University undertook the third wave of the Public Cleanliness Satisfaction Survey (PCSS) with 1716 Singapore resident respondents providing responses before the start of the Circuit Breaker.

The 2019 wave of the PCSS continued to reflect the overall satisfaction with public cleanliness in Singapore. Satisfaction with cleanliness and cleaning services has improved substantially across all domains.

Ninety three percent of survey respondents were satisfied with the cleanliness of public spaces that they had recently visited, a 9% increase from the findings in 2018.

There was a substantial increase in satisfaction with the cleanliness of food and beverage (F&B) …

Why Have Candidates In Indonesian Elections Increasingly Been Rallying Ethnic And Religious Support?, Colm A. Fox

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Ethnicity and religion often become politicised in elections. Research has found that this is particularly true during a transition to democracy. During these times, fragile democratic rules and practices, coupled with strong ethnic bonds, often motivate aspiring politicians to bolster their support by appealing to voters’ emotional allegiances to their tribe, ethnicity, or religion. But, Indonesia’s case is puzzling.

Laden With Great Expectations: (Re)Mapping The Arts Housing Policy As Urban Cultural Policy In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The arts and artists need space to thrive. However, as much of the land in Singapore is state-owned, the finiteness of space – literally and figuratively – remains a key challenge. Yet there is a rich variety of arts infrastructure in Singapore today, from exhibition spaces to performing arts venues and state-subsidised artist studios. This infrastructure comes at a cost - these arts spaces are positioned as policy interventions capable of achieving a broad confluence of cultural, urban, economic and social outcomes for Singapore.

This article aims to provide an understanding of how arts spaces in Singapore has been framed …

Countering Exclusivism, Promoting Inclusivism: The Way Forward For Singapore, Lily Kong, Orlando Woods, Acmal Zuheyr Iefan Abdul Wahid

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper addresses the situation in Singapore, where a state of religious harmony has prevailed over the past few decades, though evidencing skirmishes and tensions periodically. These skirmishes are a consequence of exclusivist attitudes held by those with religion and those without religion. While some of the strategies that have been in place to address such exclusivist behaviours have been largely effective, the extent to which they have been successful in addressing, more fundamentally, exclusivist attitudes and beliefs is more questionable. Three key dialectics that operate in everyday interreligious encounter are identified to be consequential in countering exclusivism and promoting …

Learning From The Past: Distributed Cognition And Crisis Management Capabilities For Tackling Covid-19, Seulki Lee, Jungwon Yeo, Chongmin Na

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has presented an unprecedented public health crisis across the globe. Governments have developed different approaches to tackle the complex and intractable challenge, showing variations in their effectiveness and results. South Korea has achieved exceptional performance thus far: It has flattened the curve of new infections and brought the outbreak under control without imposing forceful measures such as lockdowns and travel ban. This commentary addresses the South Korean government’s response to COVID-19 and highlights distributed cognition and crisis management capabilities as critical factors. The authors discuss how the South Korean government has cultivated distributed …

How Do Intercrisis Learning Outcomes Affect Intracrisis Learning? “Learning In The Making” In The Case Of South Korea’S Covid-19 Response, Chongmin Na, Seulki Lee, Jungwon Yeo

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study explores the processes of intercrisis and intracrisis learning and the link between them, drawing on South Korea’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as an example. The crisis management literature suggests that intracrisis learning is less likely to occur than intercrisis learning due to inherent barriers that hinder learning and adaptation in the heat of crisis. Based on the conceptual framework of problem-oriented governance and crisis learning, we unpack how prominent outcomes of intercrisis learning facilitate intracrisis learning during the acute phase of an emerging crisis. We postulate that learning after 2015 MERS crisis developed the core capabilities for …

The Transnational Frontiers Of Japanese Education: Multiculturalism, Cosmopolitanism, And Global Isomorphism, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Japanese education system today faces three transnationally created challenges. The first is multiculturalism. Given an increasing number of students whose parents are either migrants or naturalized citizens, the government needs to rethink the nature of public schools, which have traditionally catered to ethnic majority students, and explore how to make them culturally more inclusive. The second is cosmopolitanism. Although cosmopolitanism is regarded as a desirable disposition and competency in a globalizing world, the government has difficulty incorporating it into the education system that continues to function as a central vehicle of nation-building. The third is global isomorphism. While world …

Chinese Temple Networks In Southeast Asia: A Webgis Digital Humanities Platform For The Collaborative Study Of The Chinese Diaspora In Southeast Asia, Yingwei Yan, Kenneth Dean, Chen-Chieh Feng, Guan Thye Hue, Khee-Heong Koh, Lily Kong, Chang Woei Ong, Arthur Tay, Yi-Chen Wang, Yiran Xue

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article introduces a digital platform for collaborative research on the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, focusing on networks of Chinese temples and associations extending from Southeast China to the various port cities of Southeast Asia. The Singapore Historical Geographic Information System (SHGIS) and the Singapore Biographical Database (SBDB) are expandable WebGIS platforms gathering and linking data on cultural and religious networks across Southeast Asia. This inter-connected platform can be expanded to cover not only Singapore but all of Southeast Asia. We have added layers of data that go beyond Chinese Taoist, Buddhist, and popular god temples to also display …

The Science Of Stifling Heat: Recognising Urban Climate Change In The Straits Settlements, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Heat is a ubiquitous part of tropical living. During the nineteenth century consumers and writers of travel literature, explorers and colonists became increasingly familiar with the endless, languid summers of tropical climates where continued, unrelenting heat and humidity created a daunting climate for the European.

Singapore's Climate Action: It Is Time To Be More Ambitious, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Some nations have declared net-zero carbon emission targets by 2050. Businesses and the people here know Singapore can punch above its weight. The government should lend its support.

Porous Religious Economies And The Problem Of Regulating Religious Marketplaces, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper reframes the theory of religious economy by developing an understandingof the effects of transnational religious influence on religious marketplaces. It highlightsthe need to rethink the role of regulation in shaping the ways in which religiousmarketplaces operate. By reinterpreting regulation as the ability of the state to controlthe extent to which religious groups are able to access resources, it argues thattransnational religious networks can enable access to extraneous resources, which, inturn, can enable religious groups to subvert the regulatory prescriptions of the state.Transnational religious influences therefore highlight the porosity of religiouseconomies, and the problem of regulating religious marketplaces. Qualitative …

Place-Making/Management: The Policy And Practice Of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Singapore has won numerous accolades and garnered global attention for its physical infrastructure and iconic architecture. Despite these achievements, its government has recognized that certain parts of the city still lack a certain human vitality and buzz. Additionally, like other post-industrial cities, the production of a positive urban experience has been identified as that critical competitive advantage that would differentiate Singapore from other cities. Consequently, the Singapore government adopted a strategy called ‘place management’ in 2008 to inject ‘heart and soul’ into the city, and deliver a liveable, globally competitive and amenity-rich urban environment for its increasingly educated and upper …

Competing For Academic Labor: Research And Recruitment Outside The Academic Center, Yasmin Y. Ortiga, Meng-Hsuan Chou, Jue Wang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Increasing competition among research universities has spurred a race to recruit academic labor to staff research teams, graduate programs, and laboratories. Yet, often ignored is how such efforts entail negotiating a pervasive hierarchy of universities, where elite institutions in the West continue to attract the best students and researchers across the world. Based on qualitative interviews with 59 Singapore-based faculty, this paper demonstrates how migrant academics in competitive universities outside the West take on the burden of seeking other ways of attracting academic labor into their institutions, often resorting to ethnic and transnational ties to circumvent limits imposed by a …

Departing From Java: Javanese Labour, Migration And Diaspora, Andy Scott Chang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Under globalization, guest worker programs are increasingly touted as a “win-win” solution for regularizing cross-border mobility. While such temporary migration schemes enable destination states to procure a flexible labour pool, they are said to benefit origin states through skill and remittance transfers. The Indonesian state, nonetheless, is often perceived as bereft of the capacity to harness labour export for development. Departing from Java complicates this narrative of administrative failure by analyzing diaspora through the prisms of empire, state-building, and feminism. Placing migration in contexts that are local and global, imperial and postcolonial, and authoritarian and democratic, the edited volume examines …

‘Living In A State Of Filth And Indifference To … Their Health’: Weather, Public Health And Urban Governance In Colonial George Town, Penang, Fiona Williamson, Katrina Proust

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article explores the development of public health infrastructure in George Town, Penang, before the 1930s. It argues that the extreme weather of the tropical climate led to a unique set of health challenges for George Town’s administrators, as the town grew from a small British base to a multi-cultural and thriving port. Weather and public health were (and still are) integrally connected,although the framing of this relationship has undergone significant shifts in thinking and appearance over time. One lens into this association is the situation and expression of these elements within municipal structures.During the nineteenth century, government departments were …

Learning To Leave: Filipino Families And The Making Of The Global Filipino Nurse, Yasmin Y. Ortiga

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This chapter investigates how this process of reconfiguring the “social” plays out in the context of the Philippines’ labor export system and pervasive culture of emigration. Focusing on the case of Filipino nursing graduates seeking to work overseas, this chapter discusses how the success of the Philippines’ labor-brokering process relies on individuals who can take on the responsibility of transforming themselves, mainly through education and training, into desirable workers for future employers. While the migration literature had largely framed emigration as an individual aspiration and project, this chapter demonstrates how families subsidize the Philippine state’s labor export system by taking …

Sing Hallelujah To The Lord: Secular Christianities On Hong Kong's Civic Square, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I was in Chicago on June 12, 2019 when my friend, a Christian theologian from Hong Kong, sent me a Facebook Live video of Civic Square, the site outside the government offices that got its name from a 2012 protest against a bill to revise Hong Kong’s education curriculum to feature nationalistic Chinese themes. Civic Square was also where the 2014 Umbrella Movement began. The crowd that gathered there in June of last year was singing the evangelical chorus "Sing Hallelujah to the Lord." The word on the street, my friend said, was that Christians were trying to calm the …

Free Bodies, Segmented Selves: Paradoxical Spaces Of Dancehall Culture In Singapore, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper contributes to the ongoing expansion of the geographies of encounter by considering how cultural encounters can lead to the realisation, and the segmentation, of the self. As much as cultural differences can be manifested, negotiated and managed externally, so too can these differences be internal states that are realised through engagements with the embodied self. Accordingly, segmented selves are an outcome of the desire for individuals to compartmentalise diverse and disaggregated lives, and to retain a sense of cohesion and harmony within the various socio-cultural communities to which they belong. I bring these ideas to life through an …

The Spatial Subversions Of Global Citizenship Education: Negotiating Imagined Inclusions And Everyday Exclusions In International Schools In China, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In recent years, schools around the world have started to adopt curriculums that attempt to transform students into “global” citizens. Global citizenship education is, however, a homogenising abstraction that has been cri- ticised for reflecting and reproducing (neo)liberal Western values; as such, it can be undermined by its delivery and everyday applications in non-Western contexts. This problem is pronounced in international schools, and is especially pronounced in China. By exploring the spatial subversions of international schools in China, this paper offers a new way of understanding the problems associated with delivering global citizenship education, and constructing global citizens. It draws …