1st Edition
Race and State in Independent Singapore 1965–1990 The Cultural Politics of Pluralism in a Multiethnic Society
First published in 1998, this volume explores Singapore as an ideal case study for the examination of the management of postcoloniality, social diversity and the pursuit of economic growth with ethnic harmony. Singapore has, since independence, evolved a unique mix of state directed capitalism, revamped Confucianism and a social order based on an ideology of multiracialism. The result has been a State with enormous sociological diversity held together by the need to create a unified political order out of a population of immigrants of very diverse origins. This has placed the management of multiethnicity at the heart of political discourse and social policy. This book examines critically the operation of ethnicity in post-independence Singapore, the social policies that have been evolved to manage it, and the implications of the Singapore experiment for other plural societies in Asia and elsewhere.
1. Managing the Multiethnic State: Ethnicity, Classifications and the Power to Name in the Construction of Singaporean Social "Reality". 2. Race as Ideology: the Evolution of Ethnicity as the Basis of Social Classification. 3. Integrating the Other: Ethnic Minorities and the Structure of the Whole. 4. Multiculturalism and the Cultural Politics of Pluralism. 5. Space and Power: Ethnicity, Class and Culture in the Urban Crucible. 6. Falling Between the Cracks: the Informal Sector, Peripheral Capitalism and State Formation. 7. Feeling the Strain: Social Movements, Ethnic (De)Mobilisation and Cultural Protest. 8. The Racialisation of Identity and the Politics of Race. 9. Plastic Confucianism and he Degendering of Identity. 10. Modernity, Social Exclusion and the Developmental State. 11. The State, Race and Values: the National Ideology and the Management of Pluralism. 12. Ideology and Development in Singapore.
Biography
John Clammer
