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Full-Text Articles in Sociology of Culture

Cultural Policy Beyond Economy: Democratising Access To The Arts Through Cultural Policy In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe Mar 2026

Cultural Policy Beyond Economy: Democratising Access To The Arts Through Cultural Policy In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Across the globe, governments have released cultural policies that aim to justify public expenditure on the arts through democratising access to the arts to the wider population. Singapore is no exception. This article critically examines the role of cultural policy in expanding access to the arts in Singapore. More specifically, this article will demonstrate how cultural policy in Singapore has traditionally and consistently adopted a democratisation of culture approach to broaden access to develop arts audiences. Through an analysis of cultural policy documents and statistical data on arts attendance and attitudes in Singapore, this article will highlight some of the …


Seeing Beyond The State: Private Sector-Led Smart City Governance In Bsd City, Indonesia, Prerona Das, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong Nov 2025

Seeing Beyond The State: Private Sector-Led Smart City Governance In Bsd City, Indonesia, Prerona Das, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In recent decades new cities have sprung up at a rapid pace, aided by private sector funding (Hogan et al., 2012). Within the realm of smart city development, private sector influence over urban governance has substantially increased, particularly through Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). However, in Indonesia, there is an emerging trend of the private sector exerting significant control over ‘independent’ greenfield smart cities beyond state-led frameworks. This paper develops the idea of seeing beyond the state which involves looking past conventional state-centered approaches to urban governance. It considers instead how power and control are exercised outside or beyond the usual boundaries …


What Are The Limits To Smart Innovation? The Digital Underground Initiative And New Frontiers Of “Smartness” In Singapore, Prerona Das, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong Sep 2025

What Are The Limits To Smart Innovation? The Digital Underground Initiative And New Frontiers Of “Smartness” In Singapore, Prerona Das, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper argues that the emergence of new frontiers of smart transformation, such as underground spaces, can pose significant challenges to the implementation of “smart” technological solutions. Exploring the case of Singapore’s Digital Underground initiative, we show that elements such as material complexity, co-ordination between stakeholders, and the availability of appropriate regulatory and administrative frameworks can problematize the implementation of subterranean smart initiatives. By considering multistake-holder perspectives on these “more-than-technological” factors, this paper offers lessons for urban planners, policymakers, and developers in cities around the world that are keen to leverage technology to unlock the potential of underground space.


Do Birds Of A Nest Flock Together? A Study Of Home Provinces And Migration Paths Among Filipina Domestic Workers In Hong Kong, Tim F. Liao, Yasmin Y. Ortiga May 2025

Do Birds Of A Nest Flock Together? A Study Of Home Provinces And Migration Paths Among Filipina Domestic Workers In Hong Kong, Tim F. Liao, Yasmin Y. Ortiga

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

There is strong evidence that migration is networked. However, it is unclear whether having the same province of origin can also lead to similar migratory paths. This study investigates the question of whether a shared home province among Filipina migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong is associated with shared or linked migration paths to Hong Kong. Using a unique data source, the 2017 Survey of Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong, we employed sequence analysis to identify which specific provinces exhibit stronger linkages between migratory trajectories among migrants from the same provinces and if so, whether certain provincial characteristics matter. …


Diaspora Politics And A Rising China: Ambivalent Ties Amid Geopolitical Changes, Jiaqi M. Liu Jan 2025

Diaspora Politics And A Rising China: Ambivalent Ties Amid Geopolitical Changes, Jiaqi M. Liu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Over the past decade, the rise of China on the global stage has witnessed the emergence of members of the Chinese diaspora as new meso-level actors in mediating Sino-Western relations. As part of China’s burgeoning “public diplomacy” around the globe, Chinese migrants organize cultural events to establish grassroots and semi-official exchanges between China and the West. This chapter provides a state-of-the-art examination of so-called “diasporic public diplomacy” whereby the Chinese diaspora plays an increasingly important role in promoting China’s soft power abroad. Based on long-term fieldwork in a prominent emigrant community, I analyse how Chinese national policies envision two specific …


To Whom Thou Art Bound: Bicultural Identity Integration Moderates The Influence Of Conspiracy Beliefs On Chinese Americans’ Ingroup Bias, Edison Tan, Chi-Ying Cheng, Angela K. Y. Leung, Sheila X. R. Wee Sep 2024

To Whom Thou Art Bound: Bicultural Identity Integration Moderates The Influence Of Conspiracy Beliefs On Chinese Americans’ Ingroup Bias, Edison Tan, Chi-Ying Cheng, Angela K. Y. Leung, Sheila X. R. Wee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Endorsing conspiracy beliefs about an outgroup typically fosters ingroup bias. However, the response of bicultural individuals to conspiracy theories about one of their ingroups remains understudied. We posited that bicultural individuals’ display of ingroup bias in such situations hinges on their levels of bicultural identity integration (BII). Two studies involving Chinese American participants revealed that conspiracy beliefs about China were associated with lower Chinese ingroup bias among those with higher BII levels. In Study 1, high BII Chinese Americans who endorsed conspiracy theories about China reported less favorable perceptions of the Chinese ingroup, but not among low BII Chinese Americans. …


Is This Home Truly? Reflections On Singapore As It Turns 59, Lily Kong Aug 2024

Is This Home Truly? Reflections On Singapore As It Turns 59, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In a commentary, SMU President Professor Lily Kong shared her reflections on Singapore as it turns 59. She discussed Singapore's nation-building process and offered her views on how the country can strengthen its social compact to make Singapore a home for Singaporeans.


Loose Purse Strings, Loose Cultures: How Resource Increase Affects Cultural Tightness-Looseness And Creativity In Large And Small Organizations, Caleb Chun Kwan Chu Apr 2024

Loose Purse Strings, Loose Cultures: How Resource Increase Affects Cultural Tightness-Looseness And Creativity In Large And Small Organizations, Caleb Chun Kwan Chu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

For over a decade, cultural tightness-looseness (TL) has established itself as a culture construct that is useful in diverse contexts at multiple levels. While most TL research has focused on TL consequences, less attention has been paid to TL antecedents. This dissertation proposes resource increase as a TL predictor and uses a resource-based perspective to review and extend extant TL literature. I empirically examine the effect of resource increase on incremental and radical creativity as mediated by TL at the team level. I also explore the moderating effect of organizational size on these team-level relationships. The data were drawn from …


The Partial Secularisms Of Singapore's Muslim Minorities: Arbitraging Model Citizenship And (In)Complete Selves At The Margins, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong Oct 2023

The Partial Secularisms Of Singapore's Muslim Minorities: Arbitraging Model Citizenship And (In)Complete Selves At The Margins, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article argues that the secular should be understood as a partial construct that is selectively deployed by individuals to structure everyday encounters with difference. The partiality of the secular is pronounced in Muslim minority contexts, in which Muslims must negotiate varying degrees of ontological incompatibility between their religious and nonreligious selves. How religious and secular understandings of “model” citizenship are negotiated throughout the spaces and aspirations of everyday life can provide insight into the partiality of the secular, and how such partiality can create difference where there might otherwise be unity. We illustrate these ideas through an empirical exploration …


Why Do Farmers’ Cooperatives Fail In A Market Economy? Rediscovering Chayanov With The Chinese Experience, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Oct 2023

Why Do Farmers’ Cooperatives Fail In A Market Economy? Rediscovering Chayanov With The Chinese Experience, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In The Theory of Peasant Cooperatives, Chayanov develops the theories of differential optima and vertical integration, which stress the vulnerability of peasant farming in capitalist markets, and argues that cooperatives can support smallholders only if they operate as ‘a cooperative movement’, are buttressed by a strong ‘cooperative culture’, and achieve ‘vertical integration’. Based on extensive fieldwork in China, we identify six major obstacles that explain the failure of most cooperatives. Chayanov’s arguments caution us to not only the vital importance of cooperatives to the resilience of peasant farming, but also the apparently insurmountable obstacles that cooperatives face in market economies.


"Sissy That Walk”: The Queer Kinaesthetics Of Mobility-Through-Difference, Orlando Woods Sep 2023

"Sissy That Walk”: The Queer Kinaesthetics Of Mobility-Through-Difference, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article advances the idea of ‘queer kinaesthetics’ to show how moving through difference can enable disaggregated individuals to realize a new sense of becoming. Doing so involves rejecting the categories of identity that lead to disaggregation in the first place, and reorienting the self by developing a distinctly and radically (dis) embodied subject position. I illustrate these ideas by exploring the queer kinaesthetics of drag. Drag is most commonly associated with queer, cisgender males embodying otherness in order to come to terms with the disaggregation that many experience in heteronormative society, and through the heterological norms of representation. By …


Agentic Selves, Agentic Stories: The Cultural Foundations Of Beliefs About Meritocracy, Jacqueline Ho Sep 2023

Agentic Selves, Agentic Stories: The Cultural Foundations Of Beliefs About Meritocracy, Jacqueline Ho

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Work on stratification beliefs expects disadvantaged individuals to believe less strongly in meritocracy because they are more likely to observe structural barriers to opportunity, and because meritocratic ideology runs counter to their self-interest. If they embrace meritocracy, they are understood as victims of a system-justifying ideology. By conceptualising belief formation as a cultural process, I argue that meritocracy belief among the disadvantaged may simply be pragmatic, rather than irrational. I use a narrative identity lens to analyse interviews with forty-one Singaporean youth, arguing that in the absence of other forms of capital, socioeconomically disadvantaged youth draw on narratives of meritocracy …


Elucidating Evolutionary Principles With The Traditional Mosuo: Adaptive Benefits And Origins Of Matriliny And “Walking Marriages”, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li Dec 2022

Elucidating Evolutionary Principles With The Traditional Mosuo: Adaptive Benefits And Origins Of Matriliny And “Walking Marriages”, Jose C. Yong, Norman P. Li

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Mosuo, arguably the last surviving matrilineal society in China, offers interesting insights into kinship practices that support reproduction. In particular, the modes of courtship and reproduction of the traditional Mosuo revolve around a practice known as walking marriages, which involves no contract or obligations, where the men do not use social status or resources to court women, women do not expect commitment from men, and multiple sexual relationships are permitted for both sexes and seldom incite conflict. Children borne from walking marriages are cared for not so much by fathers but rather their mothers' brothers, and wealth and property …


Building Up A Culture Of Respect, Siow-Heng Ong Oct 2022

Building Up A Culture Of Respect, Siow-Heng Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Recently, we have become more acutely aware of a variety of undesirable workplace circumstances and practices in Singapore. personal time; discriminatory workplace practices against members of various categories of minority groups; and bias against women staff.


Looking Beyond The 'Middle Class' For Other Chinas, Qian Forrest Zhang Oct 2022

Looking Beyond The 'Middle Class' For Other Chinas, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

There are high hopes for China’s middle class. Thanks to their rising disposable income, this group of Chinese is expected to unleash a consumer revolution in the domestic market. However, I argue that the ‘middle class’ as a concept provides at best a partial understanding of the Chinese consumer population; at worst, it can even provide a misleading perspective that brings us to erroneous conclusions about its profile and size. Instead, I propose the notion of ‘three Chinas’ as an alternative way to make sense of China’s consumers. ‘First China’ comprises residents in medium and large-sized cities, ‘Second China’ consists …


Lived Religion In A Digital Age: Technology, Affect And The Pervasive Space-Times Of “New” Religious Praxis, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong, Siew Ying Shee Sep 2022

Lived Religion In A Digital Age: Technology, Affect And The Pervasive Space-Times Of “New” Religious Praxis, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong, Siew Ying Shee

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper explores how Christian practices of prayer are being reconfigured through digital media in Singapore. Although digital technologies are an area of burgeoning interest amongst social and cultural geographers, the ways in which these technologies reconfigure the space-times of religious praxis and engender new affective relations or subjectivities of religion have not yet been embraced. This paper fills the lacuna by bringing existing studies on religion, technology and affect into constructive conversation with each other. By elaborating on digital prayer as an affective assemblage of religious practice, we show how digital technologies blur institutional boundaries and create new affordances …


Lived Religion In A Digital Age: Technology, Affect And The Pervasive Space-Times Of “New” Religious Praxis, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong, Siew Ying Shee Sep 2022

Lived Religion In A Digital Age: Technology, Affect And The Pervasive Space-Times Of “New” Religious Praxis, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong, Siew Ying Shee

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper explores how Christian practices of prayer are being reconfigured through digital media in Singapore. Although digital technologies are an area of burgeoning interest amongst social and cultural geographers, the ways in which these technologies reconfigure the space-times of religious praxis and engender new affective relations or subjectivities of religion have not yet been embraced. This paper fills the lacuna by bringing existing studies on religion, technology and affect into constructive conversation with each other. By elaborating on digital prayer as an affective assemblage of religious practice, we show how digital technologies blur institutional boundaries and create new affordances …


Property In Whose Name? Intrahousehold Bargaining Over Homeownership In China, Jia Yu, Cheng Cheng Sep 2022

Property In Whose Name? Intrahousehold Bargaining Over Homeownership In China, Jia Yu, Cheng Cheng

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Previous research typically examined homeownership inequality across individuals or households, overlooking the intrahousehold allocation of homeownership. Using couple-level data of the 2016 China Family Panel Studies, our study addresses the gap by examining the bargaining over homeownership between husbands and wives in China. Descriptive results reveal a large gender gap in homeownership: only about one-quarter of couples listed the wife as an owner on the Housing Ownership Certificate, whereas about 92% listed the husband. The gender gap in ownership, however, has narrowed among couples married after 2000. Multivariate analyses show that economic autonomy, relative resources, housing purchase conditions, and modernization …


Helping-Seeking Tendencies And Subjective Well-Being: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of The United States And Japan, Verity Yu Qing Lua, Nadyannam N. Majeed, Andree Hartanto, Angela K. Y. Leung Jun 2022

Helping-Seeking Tendencies And Subjective Well-Being: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of The United States And Japan, Verity Yu Qing Lua, Nadyannam N. Majeed, Andree Hartanto, Angela K. Y. Leung

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Help-seeking is commonly conceived as an instrumental behavior that improves people’s subjective well-being. However, most findings supporting a positive association between help-seeking and subjective well-being are observed in independence-preferring countries. Drawing from research demonstrating that the pathways to subjective well-being are culturally divergent, we posit that help-seeking tendencies may be detrimental to subjective well-being for members in interdependence-preferring countries where norms for preserving relational harmony and face concerns are prevalent. This study tested the moderating role of country in the relationship between help-seeking tendencies and subjective well-being using data from 5,068 American and Japanese participants. Results revealed that although help-seeking …


Trust Building Within And Across Cultures: A Study Of Guinea, Xiushun Sun Apr 2022

Trust Building Within And Across Cultures: A Study Of Guinea, Xiushun Sun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the development of African economy and the increasing Chinese MNCs operating in Africa, there is a need to have a better understanding of the trust relationships between Chinese expatriates and African HCNs in the organizational environment. We adopt both qualitative and quantitative approaches to understand the trust relationships between Chinese supervisors, Guinea supervisors and Guinea subordinates in a Chinese MNC’s subsidiary in Guinea, compare the difference within culture and across culture, and examine how the interpersonal trust and the trust in the organization affect employees’ job performance. In study 1, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 Chinese supervisors, 20 …


Cultural Diplomacy And Co-Operation In Asean: The Role Of Arts And Culture Festivals, David Ocon Nov 2021

Cultural Diplomacy And Co-Operation In Asean: The Role Of Arts And Culture Festivals, David Ocon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Beyond their traditional role as entertainment, form of expression and meeting spaces within local communities, arts and culture festivals can perform various functions. They can serve as showcases of artistic pride, signal openness towards cultural diversity, support the local economy, contribute to reducing political tension and provide grounds to consolidate international relationships. On occasion, such festivals function as tools to support the vision of a multilateral co-operation institution, as is the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Through a comprehensive review of the arts and culture festivals curated in ASEAN, this article investigates the festivals’ ulterior motivations. …


(Un)Tethered Masculinities, (Mis)Placed Modernities: Queering Futurity In Contemporary Singapore, Orlando Woods Jun 2021

(Un)Tethered Masculinities, (Mis)Placed Modernities: Queering Futurity In Contemporary Singapore, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper considers how socio-political prescriptions can bring about the queering of futurity in Singapore. In Singapore, state-sponsored narratives of progress view futurity in terms that are bound to place, and reproduced through the heteronormative family unit. These factors have caused constructions of masculinity to be tethered to the family, and placed within public housing. Recently, this narrative has become an increasingly inflexible and marginalizing construct that can cause straight males to be queered by their prescribed futures. In contrast, gay males are more likely to be untethered from their families, and thus occupy “unplaced” positions in Singapore’s social structure.


Learning From The Bats: Cooperation A Fundamental Sustainability Principle, Juan Humberto Young May 2021

Learning From The Bats: Cooperation A Fundamental Sustainability Principle, Juan Humberto Young

Perspectives@SMU

Most scientists agree that COVID-19 was transmitted to humans from bats. In an ironic twist, their social behaviour could help us solve many of our collective problems


Beliefs And Social Norms As Precursors Of Environmental Support: The Joint Influence Of Collectivism And Socioeconomic Status, David K. Sherman, John A. Updegraff, Michelle S. Handy, Kimin Eom, Heejung S. Sim Apr 2021

Beliefs And Social Norms As Precursors Of Environmental Support: The Joint Influence Of Collectivism And Socioeconomic Status, David K. Sherman, John A. Updegraff, Michelle S. Handy, Kimin Eom, Heejung S. Sim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The present research investigates how the cultural value of collectivism interacts with socioeconomic status (SES) to influence the basis of action. Using a U.S. national sample (N = 2,538), the research examines how these sociocultural factors jointly moderate the strength of two precursors of environmental support: beliefs about climate change and perceived descriptive norms. SES and collectivism interacted with climate change beliefs such that beliefs predicted environmental support (i.e., proenvironmental behaviors and policy support) more strongly for those who were high in SES and low in collectivism than for all other groups. This interaction was explained, in part, by sense …


Haptic Heritage And The Paradox Of Provenance Within Singapore's Cottage Food Businesses, Orlando Woods, John A. Donaldson Mar 2021

Haptic Heritage And The Paradox Of Provenance Within Singapore's Cottage Food Businesses, Orlando Woods, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper offers a “more-than-representational” understanding of how heritage value is reproduced by cottage food businesses in Singapore. It advances the notion of haptic heritage to highlight the importance of touch and feel in inculcating food with a sense of heritage value. Haptic heritage is reproduced through the physical handling of ingredients in ways that contribute to more “authentic” products. However, it also foregrounds food production processes that are more tactile, time-consuming and thus unscalable than their automated counterparts. Accordingly, the reproduction of haptic heritage is becoming increasingly unviable in Singapore’s competitive economic landscape. These ideas are explored through a …


Affective Cosmopolitanisms In Singapore: Dancehall And The Decolonisation Of The Self, Orlando Woods Mar 2021

Affective Cosmopolitanisms In Singapore: Dancehall And The Decolonisation Of The Self, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper advances a new understanding of cosmopolitanism; one that is rooted in the affective potential of the body. It argues that whilst the self is often projected onto the body, so too can the body play an important role in (re)imagining the self. As such, the body can decolonise the self from the mind, from the expectations of society and culture, and from the normative epistemological underpinnings of academic knowledge production. I validate these theoretical arguments through an empirical focus on the practice of dancehall in Singapore. Dancehall is an emancipatory cultural movement that emerged in Jamaica in the …


Clashing Cyphers, Contagious Content: The Digital Geopolitics Of Grime, Orlando Woods Oct 2020

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 …


Place-Making/Management: The Policy And Practice Of Arts-Centred Spatial Interventions In Singapore, Su Fern Hoe Jun 2020

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 …


Free Bodies, Segmented Selves: Paradoxical Spaces Of Dancehall Culture In Singapore, Orlando Woods Apr 2020

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 Confucian Merchant, Singapore Management University Jan 2020

The Confucian Merchant, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Profits and virtue are not opposites, and businessmen can become gentlemen by observing Confucian values