Sociology Commons^™

Clashing Cyphers, Contagious Content: The Digital Geopolitics Of Grime, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper seeks to expand popular geopolitics in line with the digital worlds in which many of us now live. By interpreting geopolitics as a method of cultural (re)production, it becomes a creative tool that can be used to shape and elevate the affective appeal of content. Digital technologies are centrally implicated in the production of such content. By decoupling space and time from their physical anchors in the real world, digital technologies imbue them with a creative latency that can be deployed in both agentic and affective ways. Specifically, decoupling creates spatio‐temporal openings that offer new opportunities for content …

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 …

How Much Money Can Buy You Happiness, And Can Happiness Be Engineered?, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

There may be a lot of misery in the world, opines Chandran Kukathas, but for many, ‘there’s gold in them thar hills’. But can happiness be engineered?

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) …

Effects Of Social Media And Smartphone Use On Body Esteem In Female Adolescents: Testing A Cognitive And Affective Model, Hwajin Yang, Jiaqi Joy Wang, Yue Qi Germaine Tng, Sujin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We examined the predictive relations of social media and smartphone use to body esteem in female adolescents and the mechanism that underlies these relations. As a result of frequent social media and smartphone use, adolescents are continually exposed to appearance-related media content. This likely reinforces a thin ideal and fosters appearance-based comparison and increases fear of external evaluation. Hence, we investigated a cognitive-affective framework in which the associations of social media and smartphone use with body esteem are serially mediated by cognitive internalization of an ideal body image, appearance comparisons, and social appearance anxiety. By testing female adolescents (N = …

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.

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 …

Changes In Prenatal Testosterone And Sexual Desire In Expectant Couples, Wei Xiang Sim, William J. Chopik, Britney M. Wardecker, Robin S. Edelstein

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

During the transition to parenthood (TTP), both women and men report declines in sexual desire, which are thought to reflect an evolutionarily adaptive focus on parenting over mating. New parents also show changes in testosterone, a steroid hormone implicated in both parenting and mating, suggesting that changes in sexual desire may be associated with changes in testosterone. To test these associations, we followed a sample of heterosexual couples expecting their first child across the prenatal period. We examined prenatal changes in testosterone and two forms of sexual desire (solitary, dyadic). Expectant mothers showed prenatal increases in testosterone, and women's higher …

Foster Positivity Amid Covid-19 Challenges, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Many behaviours have encouraged positivity during the pandemic. More can be done to create communities that nurture positive attitudes and experiences

Temporality And Acquiescent Immobility Among Aspiring Nurse Migrants In The Philippines, Yasmin Y. Ortiga, Romeo Luis A. Macabasag

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

While there is a considerable literature on how people decide to move from their places of origin, few studies have examined how aspiring migrants cope with immobility and eventually decide to let go of their migration aspirations. This paper uses the lens of migration temporalities to show how Filipino nurses unable to emigrate overseas eventually chose to remain in the Philippines. In particular, we discuss how nurses formulated these decisions as they experienced different forms of temporality: from an optimistic period of 'becoming a migrant' in nursing school to the precarious temporality of building work experience in a context of …

Executive Function And Subjective Well-Being In Middle And Late Adulthood, Wei Xing Toh, Hwajin Yang, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Objectives: A growing body of research has investigated psychosocial predictors of subjective well-being (SWB), a key component of healthy ageing, which comprises life satisfaction and affective well-being. However, few studies have examined how executive function (EF)-a collection of adaptive, goal-directed control processes-could affect SWB in middle and late adulthood. Methods: By analyzing a nationally representative adult cohort ranging from early 30s to early 80s from the Midlife Development in the United States 2 study, we examined two potential mediators (i.e., sense of control versus positive reappraisal) that could underlie the relation between EF and SWB. Further, we assessed how these …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

For Cosmopolitan, Public, And Reflexive Sociology, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Is sociological theory up to the challenge of understanding and explaining the phenomenon? I think that the kind of sociological theory capable of meeting this challenge has to be cosmopolitan, public, and reflexive. To understand the social and political impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to embrace what Ulrich Bech called "methodological cosmopolitan" to investigate a multitude of networks, mechanisms, and processes through which the pandemic reverberates across national borders. At the same time, this cosmopolitan sociology has to be publicly oriented, addressing head-on the urgent matters of concern among citizens, rather than driven by discipline-specific debates that are …

Life Course Pathways From Childhood Socioeconomic Status To Later-Life Cognition: Evidence From The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, Emily A. Greenfield, Sara Moorman, Annika Marie Rieger

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

ObjectivesA growing body of research indicates that older adults are at greater risk for poorer cognition if they experienced low socioeconomic status (SES) as children. Guided by life course epidemiology, this study aimed to advance understanding of processes through which childhood SES influences cognition decades later, with attention to the role of scholastic performance in adolescence and SES in midlife.MethodWe used data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), which has followed a cohort of high school graduates since they were 18 years old in 1957. Childhood SES was measured prospectively in adolescence, and measures of memory and language/executive functioning were …

A Toolkit To Deal With Negative Reactions In The Covid-19 Crisis, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Understanding our own and others’ biases helps us respond better to difficult situations. Adopt what I call the 3Rs approach - refrain, reflect and resolve, to deal with negative events and manage our negative gut emotions and reactions.

Parallel Spaces Of Migrant (Non-)Integration In Singapore: Latent Politics Of Distance And Difference Within A Diverse Christian Community, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper explores how the spatial practices of churches can lead to the (non-)integration of migrant communities. Whilst churches bring migrants and non-migrants together in space and time, so too can they cause them to become divided along ethnic, national, linguistic and/or class-based lines. In such cases, migrants can become integrated into a community of other migrants, which can discourage integration into the church-at-large, or into society more generally. These practices of (non-)integration give rise to parallel spaces of Christian praxis that can lead to the reproduction of distance and difference between (and within) migrant and non-migrant communities. To illustrate …

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 …

When Losing Your Job Feels Like Losing Your Self, Aliya Hamid Rao

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I interviewed Todd, a marketing professional, in 2014 for my forthcoming book, Crunch Time: How Married Couples Confront Unemployment, which focuses on the unemployment experiences of highly educated, married professionals with children in the U.S. Like dozens of other professionals I interviewed, Todd’s employment is key to his sense of self, determining how he measures his social status and self-worth. Yet, this self-worth is constantly threatened, because professionals like Todd have become recent casualties of a pervasive labor market uncertainty that existed long before the coronavirus pandemic.

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 …

Drill Into What Makes People Socially Responsible, David Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In an invited commentary, SMU Behavioural Sciences Institute Director Professor David Chan explained why being socially responsible is critical in Singapore’s efforts to contain the Covid-19 outbreak and mitigate its effects. He discussed the psychology underlying people’s behaviour change and suggested that we pay attention to issues of values, image, norms, convenience and enforcement.

Mood-Creativity Relationship In Groups: The Role Of Equality In Idea Contribution In Temporal Mood Effects, Angela K. Y. Leung, Shynan Liou, Ming-Hong Tsai, Brandon Koh

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

As people working in groups might fare better in solving complex problems than those working alone (e.g., Laughlin, Hatch, Silver, & Boh, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 2006 and 644), organizations have increasingly assigned creative projects to groups. Group members contribute their collective efforts over time until the creative project has come to fruition. Although mood is identified as an important antecedent to creativity, little is known about the temporal pattern of how group mood enhances or inhibits group creativity, as well as the underpinning group process that explains the mood—creativity link in groups. We set out to …

Cognitive, Social, Emotional, And Subjective Health Benefits Of Computer Use In Adults: A 9-Year Longitudinal Study From The Midlife In The United States (Midus), Andree Hartanto, Jose C. Yong, Wei Xing (Zhuo Weixing) Toh, Sean Teck Hao Lee, Yue Qi Germaine Tng, William Tov

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Computer use has been proposed to carry a host of benefits for cognitive function and socioemotional well-beingin older adults. However, the literature on computer use remains equivocal as extant research suffers from mixedfindings as well as methodological limitations, such as overreliance on cross-sectional designs, small samplesizes, and use of narrow criterions. The current studies (NStudy 1 ¼ 3,294, NStudy 2 ¼ 2,683) sought to address theselimitations through the use of a large-scale, nationally representative, and longitudinal dataset. We found thatfrequency of computer use—over a period of approximately 9 years—longitudinally predicted positive changesin executive functioning, hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, sense of …

Solving Mate Shortages: Lowering Standards, Searching Farther, And Abstaining, Peter K. Jonason, Simone L. Betes, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although much work on mating psychology has focused on mate preferences and responses to desirable sexual and romantic offers, less is known about what happens when individuals face a lack of mating options. We present 2 studies on (hypothetical) compensatory mating tactics. In Study 1 (N = 299), participants were asked to imagine they were struggling to find long-term and short-term mates and we revealed sex differences and context-specific effects consistent with parental investment theory. In Study 2 (N = 282), participants were asked to imagine they had been incapable of finding a short-term and long-term mate for 6 months …

Subverting The Logics Of "Smartness" In Singapore: Smart Eldercare And Parallel Regimes Of Sustainability, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper argues that the divergent logics of “smartness” and “sustainability” can lead to parallel regimes of sustainability. Whilst sustainability is often used to justify the need for smart cities, smart cities are often undermined by the neoliberal logics of digital governance. Moreover, because the intersection of digital technologies and society is a negotiated one, smart solutions often fail to provide adequate solutions to social problems. This is especially true when smart solutions are used to augment or replace hitherto human-centred processes, like caregiving.Parallel regimes of sustainability are a response to these failures. Drawing onan analysis of a trial of …

Mothers And Fathers In Parliament: Mp Parental Status And Family Gaps From A Global Perspective, Devin K. Joshi, Ryan Goehrung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Studies of Western parliaments find women experience greater difficulty than men in combining parenting with a career in parliament. Is it the same worldwide? Addressing this issue, we compared the marital and parental status of legislators in 25 diverse parliaments around the world while theoretically exploring whether parliamentary family gaps are due to individual, family, institutional, societal or global-level conditions. Through a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, we find institutional- and societal-level factors matter. Namely, family gaps between men and women members of parliament (MPs) were narrower under conditions of higher female employment, women in parliamentary leadership and lower rates of …

Three Types Of Organizational Boundary Spanning: Predicting Csr Policy Extensiveness Among Global Consumer Products Companies, Alwyn Lim, Shawn Pope

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

As part of the rise of a worldwide corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement, companies have increasingly incorporated social and environmental concerns into their policies. This paper examines the extensiveness of these policies, proposing that an underappreciated contributor is the degree of organizational boundary spanning. The paper is novel in integrating multiple types of boundary spanning into a single empirical framework, including product, sub‐unit, and national boundary spanning. The paper adds complexity to the literature by theorizing that different types of boundary spanning associate with CSR policy extensiveness in different issue areas. The results show that product spanning associates with CSR …