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Contains discussions on Singapore's public rhetoric about liberalization and its association with the development of a creative economy, focusing on questions surrounding conservatism, national identity and values, civil society activism, and the societal role of the younger generation.
Through close readings of contemporary made-in-Singapore films (by Jack Neo, Eric Khoo, and Royston Tan) and television programs (Singapore Idol, sitcoms, and dramas), this book explores the possibilities and limitations of resistance within an advanced capitalist-industrial society whose authoritarian government skillfully negotiates the risks and opportunities of balancing its on-going nation-building project and its a oeglobal citya aspirations. This book adopts a framework inspired by Antonio Gramsci that identifies ideological struggles in art and popular culture, but maintains the importance of Herbert Marcusea (TM)s one-dimensional society analysis as theoretical limits to recognize the power of authoritarian capitalism to subsume works of art and popular culture even as they attempt consciouslya "even at times successfullya "to negate and oppose dominant hegemonic formations.
This book provides a detailed analysis of how governance in Singapore has evolved since independence to become what it is today, and what its prospects might be in a post-Lee Kuan Yew future. Firstly, it discusses the question of political leadership, electoral dominance and legislative monopoly in Singapore’s one-party dominant system and the system’s durability. Secondly, it tracks developments in Singapore’s public administration, critically analysing the formation and transformation of meritocracy and pragmatism, two key components of the state ideology. Thirdly, it discusses developments within civil society, focusing in particular on issues related to patriarchy and feminism, het...
Contemporary Singapore is simultaneously a small postcolonial multicultural nation state and a cosmopolitan global city. To manage fundamental contradictions, the state takes the lead in authoring the national narrative. This is partly an internal process of nation building, but it is also achieved through more commercially motivated and outward facing efforts at nation and city branding. Both sets of processes contribute to Singapore's capacity to influence foreign affairs, if only for national self-preservation. For a small state with resource limitations, this is mainly through the exercise of smart power, or the ability to strategically combine soft and hard power resources.
In an industry of higher education that measures the longevity of its leading institutions in decades and centuries, the establishment and rapid growth of the eight-year-old Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKY School), National University of Singapore, is a remarkable story that deserves to be told. The five co-authors, all of whom were involved in guiding the School during its formative years, provide unique perspectives of key events and the thinking behind major decisions that helped place the School on its current trajectory. They also provide insights into the challenges faced along the way as well as their own motivations in becoming part of this enterprise. Finally, each author ...
Irene Lim writes vividly about her life, family and friends over a period of 90 years. Except for a few years spent in Bukit Mertajam, Penang during the Japanese Occupation, Irene’s account is also a small Singapore Story.
A key exploration of political legitimacy in East Asian societies undertaken by normative political theorists and empirical political scientists.
This book discusses contemporary film in all the main countries of Southeast Asia, and the social practices and ideologies which films either represent or oppose. It shows how film acquires signification through cultural interpretation, and how film also serves as a site of contestations between social and political agents seeking to promote, challenge, or erase certain meanings, messages or ideas from public circulation. A unique feature of the book is that it focuses as much on films as it does on the societies from which these films emerge: it considers the reasons for film-makers taking the positions they take; the positions and counter-positions taken; the response of different communit...