Kah Seng Loh
The University of Western Australia, School of Social Sciences, Department Member
- Disaster Studies, Asian Studies, History, Natural hazards and disasters, especially vulnerability analysis, Natural Disasters, Southeast Asian Studies, and 21 moreSocial History, Experts in the 20th century, Singapore History, Transnational History, History of Medicine, Urban History, Oral history, Oral History and Memory, Archival Studies, Archives, Resilient Cities, Urban Systems, Climate Change, Flood Risk, Natural Disasters Reduction, Southeast Asia, Narrative, Singapore, Social Engineering, Great Depression, and Squattersedit
- Work class historian. Loh Kah Seng is a historian of Singapore and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of ... moreWork class historian.
Loh Kah Seng is a historian of Singapore and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. He is interested in all things that happened in the history of a city. He is the author of the award-nominated Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore (NUS Press 2013) and Tuberculosis – The Singapore Experience, 1867-2018: Disease, Society and the State (with Hsu Li Yang, Routledge 2020). He runs Chronicles Research and Education, a research consultancy on the rich and varied heritages of Singapore – housing, industrial, medical, and culinary.edit
The history of mental health and psychiatry in the city-state of Singapore is shaped by political, economic and social developments that are both international and local. Compared to other countries in Asia and the Pacific, Singapore has... more
The history of mental health and psychiatry in the city-state of Singapore is shaped by political, economic and social developments that are both international and local. Compared to other countries in Asia and the
Pacific, Singapore has been more open to external ideas and practices of mental health. On the one hand, in both the colonial and postcolonial periods, Singapore has had a diverse multicultural population, which
historically comprised migrants from different parts of Asia and beyond, and which held different views of mental illness. On the other hand, the dominant model of mental health and psychiatry in the city-state is
the western one: namely the British influence in the colonial and immediate post-independence periods, and increasingly from the Second World War, the prevailing American model. Thus, the openness of Singapore to western ideas and expertise, while beneficial in some aspects, is not without difficulty and ambivalence. The shift from asylum-based institutionalization to community psychiatry and the recognized
importance of mental health are definite signs of progress. However, the continuing dominance of western frameworks of psychiatry ignores both the rich experience of clinicians based in Singapore as well as the varied customary ways in which Singaporeans have viewed and treated mental illness. History thus provides insights not only into the social impact of a western-centered psychiatry in Singapore. It also highlights the need for a more grounded paradigm that is appropriately attuned to local circumstances and experiences.
Pacific, Singapore has been more open to external ideas and practices of mental health. On the one hand, in both the colonial and postcolonial periods, Singapore has had a diverse multicultural population, which
historically comprised migrants from different parts of Asia and beyond, and which held different views of mental illness. On the other hand, the dominant model of mental health and psychiatry in the city-state is
the western one: namely the British influence in the colonial and immediate post-independence periods, and increasingly from the Second World War, the prevailing American model. Thus, the openness of Singapore to western ideas and expertise, while beneficial in some aspects, is not without difficulty and ambivalence. The shift from asylum-based institutionalization to community psychiatry and the recognized
importance of mental health are definite signs of progress. However, the continuing dominance of western frameworks of psychiatry ignores both the rich experience of clinicians based in Singapore as well as the varied customary ways in which Singaporeans have viewed and treated mental illness. History thus provides insights not only into the social impact of a western-centered psychiatry in Singapore. It also highlights the need for a more grounded paradigm that is appropriately attuned to local circumstances and experiences.
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We seek to explore the spaces and gaps between history and film. In the three films, the ex-leftists and young filmmakers partially converged in exploring Singapore’s political history, possessing similar though ultimately distinct... more
We seek to explore the spaces and gaps between history and film. In the three films, the ex-leftists and young filmmakers partially converged in exploring Singapore’s political history, possessing similar though ultimately distinct motivations and viewpoints of the past. Both groups pursued different objectives: the ex-leftists rejected the state’s accusation of them as subversive “pro-communists” and affirmed their contributions to Singapore’s independence, and young filmmakers urged greater reflexivity in the public’s understanding of history. In the films, the relation between the two groups can be likened to an oral history interview rendered public, with the testimony being a joint product of the interviewer and interviewee. This was the case when Martyn See interviewed Said Zahari, or when Tan Pin Pin questioned Han Tan Juan about the past, or indirectly in a film script, where En conversed with his grandfather or where En’s father recalled the past in a monologue voiceover.
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Western planning experts, beginning with the United Nations Mission of Experts on Tropical Housing in 1950–1951, undertook major interventions in what they described as a zone of urban crisis across Southeast Asia after the Second World... more
Western planning experts, beginning with the United Nations Mission of Experts on Tropical Housing in 1950–1951, undertook major interventions in what they described as a zone of urban crisis across Southeast Asia after the Second World War. In various ‘emergencities’, allegedly threatened by expanding squatter settlements, the experts proposed robust and immediate state action to organise a comprehensive regime of planning to replace the unauthorised areas with regulated housing. Yet, despite its scientific appearance, the planning expertise constituted a political project that sought to transfer Western ideas of the “Garden City” to unruly Southeast Asian cities. The project stressed the importance of nationhood, citizenship and democracy in urban reform and was fearful of the appeal of communism in post-colonial Southeast Asia.
The expert interventions usually failed but still had significant and unpredictable outcomes. By reinforcing patronage politics, they politicised housing and extended state power into urban life. The interventions also created crisis situations of their own making and catalysed social resistance, both spontaneous and organised. Southeast Asian cities became sites of a struggle between competing forms of urban modernity. In contrast to the experts framing modernity and tradition in opposition, however, squatters demonstrated their adaptive “cultures of modernity”, utilising both old and new ways in their pursuit of a modern life.
The expert interventions usually failed but still had significant and unpredictable outcomes. By reinforcing patronage politics, they politicised housing and extended state power into urban life. The interventions also created crisis situations of their own making and catalysed social resistance, both spontaneous and organised. Southeast Asian cities became sites of a struggle between competing forms of urban modernity. In contrast to the experts framing modernity and tradition in opposition, however, squatters demonstrated their adaptive “cultures of modernity”, utilising both old and new ways in their pursuit of a modern life.
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Emergency and participation intersect to form the basis of Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (CBDRRM). This article has three aims. First, it explores the criticisms of participatory development in CBDRRM. Second, it... more
Emergency and participation intersect to form the basis of Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (CBDRRM). This article has three aims. First, it explores the criticisms of participatory development in CBDRRM. Second, it highlights how disasters provide insights into participatory development when disasters are viewed not merely as terrible events but as catalysts for social change. Third, the article contends that despite its flaws, CBDRRM is neither hegemonic nor oppressive but can be adapted to the needs and cultures of communities. The article calls for an empathetic form of participation and room for diverse partners to work together.
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The case of Singapore explores the history of mental illness in a British colony, port city, and Chinese coolie town. As a colony, Singapore not only received Western psychiatric expertise from the metropole but also suffered from the... more
The case of Singapore explores the history of mental illness in a British colony, port city, and Chinese coolie town. As a colony, Singapore not only received Western psychiatric expertise from the metropole but also suffered from the inner contradictions and failings of colonial rule. The mental asylum thus had both a modernizing and marginal role. As an international port city, Singapore was a major center for internationally crisscrossing flows, yet the transnationalism in mental health policy remained connected to colonial power in two ways: the British simplified the culturally diverse patients into distinct, subordinate races and transferred them between Singapore and other countries. Singapore was also an unruly " coolie town " where, utilizing the weapons of the weak, Chinese sufferers contested the psychiatric regime in the asylum and continued to seek treatment and care beyond it. Their ability to do so depended, however, on the specific circumstances that prevailed in the individual, asylum, and coolie town, and their agency was expressed in relation to the colonial system rather than independent of it. Singapore: Colony, Port City, and Coolie Town Was Singapore a British colony, international port city, or Chinese coolie town? From a factual standpoint, all three descriptions are of course correct, but each has histo-riographical implications for writing about mental illness. As an instance of the first description, Ng Beng Yeong's (2001) account of psychiatry plots a linear history of transfer and progress astride Singapore's transition from colony to nation-state.
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Housing was the first major facet of social change which Singaporeans experienced in the making of a modern nation-state. Between the 1950s and 1970s, large numbers of middle- and low-income families moved from the unauthorised wooden... more
Housing was the first major facet of social change which Singaporeans experienced in the making of a modern nation-state. Between the 1950s and 1970s, large numbers of middle- and low-income families moved from the unauthorised wooden housing of kampongs to the modern, usually multi-storey flats of public housing estates. This paper explores ways to cultivate the key historical skills of imagination and empathy in source-based studies in the secondary-level History curriculum. The paper argues that examining a range of historical sources which offer differing perspectives, including official documents, oral history interviews and photographs, can help students understand and analytically appraise older Singaporeans’ experiences of a momentous social transformation in our recent past. By drawing from a small-size study in a local secondary school, the paper discusses the use of sources on two main themes: official and residents’ views of kampong life; and former kampong dwellers’ responses and adjustment to public housing.
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The Singapore Polytechnic underwent a period of both rupture and adaptation as British advisers worked with the post-colonial government to facilitate technical education reform and Singapore’s transition to a nation-state. Established in... more
The Singapore Polytechnic underwent a period of both rupture and adaptation as British advisers worked with the post-colonial government to facilitate technical education reform and Singapore’s transition to a nation-state. Established in 1958 and based on the metropolitan model, the Singapore Polytechnic constituted an imperial project for orderly development and decolonisation. It encountered criticisms from nationalists for its colonial links and a brief period of conflict between the advisers and the post-colonial People’s Action Party (PAP) government, underlining colonial Singapore’s uneven transition to its post-colonial future. However, the PAP quickly repaired its relationship with the advisers to plan the next phase of the Polytechnic’s development into a technical university in the 1960s. Unlike many other cases, the history of the Singapore Polytechnic suggests that technical experts, while tied to political interests, did not always fail.
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A history of urban floods underlines the state’s efforts to discipline people as well as to control floodwaters. We focus on two big cities in Southeast Asia—Singapore and Metro Manila—in the period from after World War II until the... more
A history of urban floods underlines the state’s efforts to discipline people as well as to control floodwaters. We focus on two big cities in Southeast Asia—Singapore and Metro Manila—in the period from after World War II until the 1980s. During this period, both cities traversed similar paths of demographic and socio-economic change that had an adverse impact on the incidence of flooding. Official responses to floods in Singapore and Manila, too, shared the common pursuit of two objectives. The first was to tame nature by reducing the risk of flooding through drainage and other technical measures, as implemented by a modern bureaucracy. The second was to discipline human nature by eradicating “bad” attitudes and habits deemed to contribute to flooding, while nurturing behavior considered civic-minded and socially responsible. While Singapore’s technocratic responses were more effective overall than those in Metro Manila, the return of floodwaters to Orchard Road in recent years has highlighted the shortcomings of high modernist responses to environmental hazards. This article argues that in controlling floods—that is, when nature is deemed hazardous—the state needs to accommodate sources of authority and expertise other than its own
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This paper explores the dual seemingly contradictory roles of hospitals, leprosaria and mental asylums in Southeast Asia: they were important nodes of the colonial system, yet remained marginal in the lives of most Southeast Asians.
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This article investigates community-based disaster responses among informal settlers in a barangay located just outside Metro Manila in the aftermath of Typhoon Ondoy (international code name Ketsana) in 2009. People have embraced some... more
This article investigates community-based disaster responses among informal settlers in a barangay located just outside Metro Manila in the aftermath of Typhoon Ondoy (international code name Ketsana) in 2009. People have embraced some technical measures, such as forcible evacuation, but others have continued customary practices, such as seeking refuge on rooftops where they could get trapped during floods. An important factor in this process has been the credible work of a local people’s organization, which has mediated technical expertise from outside the community. Adaptation of disaster expertise is an ongoing and unpredictable process, shaped by people’s lived experiences and the wider political, economic, and social context.
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Informal housing communities of semi-autonomous urban migrants emerged rapidly at the margins of Southeast Asian cities and Hong Kong after World War II. Their development constituted an important moment in postwar social history: the... more
Informal housing communities of semi-autonomous urban migrants emerged rapidly at the margins of Southeast Asian cities and Hong Kong after World War II. Their development constituted an important moment in postwar social history: the dwellers eked out a livelihood on land which initially lay beyond official control, relying on family, kinship and community ties to cope with the challenges of employment, environmental disaster and eviction. What was also historic was the response of the colonial and postcolonial states to the informal housing.
Influenced partly by the advice of international experts on the need for controlled development, the region’s governments criminalised the informal housing as illegal, represented their dwellers as socially inert and warned of the dire impact such unplanned settlement, like a contagion, would have on the character and future of the society and nation. To varying degrees, they also undertook to either resettle the dwellers in emergency public housing or reorganise social life in the settlements through aided self-help. In only the former British-ruled city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong did the authorities succeed in transforming the face and character of the city; elsewhere, the pressure of patronage politics and the preference for “prestige projects’ greatly limited the scope of the actual reorganisation. Drawing upon James Scott’s concept of “high modernist’ planning and social governance, this paper examines the origins and development of informal settlements in urban Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and the different outcomes of state efforts to transform their residents into “squatters’, colonial subjects and, finally, model citizens of new nation-states.
Influenced partly by the advice of international experts on the need for controlled development, the region’s governments criminalised the informal housing as illegal, represented their dwellers as socially inert and warned of the dire impact such unplanned settlement, like a contagion, would have on the character and future of the society and nation. To varying degrees, they also undertook to either resettle the dwellers in emergency public housing or reorganise social life in the settlements through aided self-help. In only the former British-ruled city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong did the authorities succeed in transforming the face and character of the city; elsewhere, the pressure of patronage politics and the preference for “prestige projects’ greatly limited the scope of the actual reorganisation. Drawing upon James Scott’s concept of “high modernist’ planning and social governance, this paper examines the origins and development of informal settlements in urban Southeast Asia and Hong Kong and the different outcomes of state efforts to transform their residents into “squatters’, colonial subjects and, finally, model citizens of new nation-states.
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Research Interests: Real Estate, Law, Development Studies, Information Security, Disaster Studies, and 14 moreProperty, Rural Development, Urban Studies, Singapore, Housing, Ecology, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, Singapore History, High Modernism, Squatters, Bukit Ho Swee fire, Kampong, Housing and Development Board, and Resettlement
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By 1970, Singapore’s urban landscape was dominated by high-rise blocks of planned public housing built by the People’s Action Party government, signifying the establishment of a high modernist nation-state. A decade earlier, the margins... more
By 1970, Singapore’s urban landscape was dominated by high-rise blocks of planned public housing built by the People’s Action Party government, signifying the establishment of a high modernist nation-state. A decade earlier, the margins of the City had been dominated by kampongs, home to semi-autonomous communities of low-income Chinese families which freely built, and rebuilt, unauthorised wooden houses. This change was not merely one of housing but belied a more fundamental realignment of state-society relations in the 1960s. Relocated in Housing and Development Board flats, urban kampong families were progressively integrated into the social fabric of the emergent nation-state. This study examines the pivotal role of an event, the great Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire of 1961, in bringing about this transformation. The redevelopment of the fire site in the aftermath of the calamity brought to completion the British colonial regime’s ‘emergency’ programmes of resettling urban kampong dwellers in planned accommodation, in particular, of building emergency public housing on the sites of major fires in the 1950s. The PAP’s far greater political resolve, and the timing of and state of emergency occasioned by the scale of the 1961 disaster, enabled the government to rehouse the Bukit Ho Swee fire victims in emergency housing in record time. This in turn provided the HDB with a strategic platform for clearing other kampongs and for transforming their residents into model citizens of the nation-state. The 1961 fire’s symbolic usefulness extended into the 1980s and beyond, in sanctioning the PAP’s new housing redevelopment schemes. The official account of the inferno has also become politically useful for the government of today for disciplining a new generation of Singaporeans against taking the nation’s progress for granted. Against these exalted claims of the fire’s role in the Singapore Story, this study also examines the degree of actual change and continuity in the social and economic lives of the people of Bukit Ho Swee after the inferno. In some crucial ways, the residents continued to occupy a marginal place in society while pondering, too, over the unresolved question of the cause of the fire. These continuities of everyday life reflect the ambivalence with which the citizenry regarded the high modernist state in contemporary Singapore.
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‘Theatres of history and memory’ is a research and documentation project which began in 2017 to uncover and highlight the industrial heritage of modern Singapore. Singapore is especially interesting as one of the first countries in Asia... more
‘Theatres of history and memory’ is a research and documentation project which began in 2017 to uncover and highlight the industrial heritage of modern Singapore. Singapore is especially interesting as one of the first countries in Asia to make the transformation from a colonial
entrepot port to an industrial export economy in the 1960s and 1970s. On the other hand, Singapore’s experience is also informative because it is a land-scarce city-state where many old industrial sites have been redeveloped, making it additionally difficult to conserve tangible industrial heritage.
entrepot port to an industrial export economy in the 1960s and 1970s. On the other hand, Singapore’s experience is also informative because it is a land-scarce city-state where many old industrial sites have been redeveloped, making it additionally difficult to conserve tangible industrial heritage.
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Theatres of History and Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore is a research project which seeks to traverse new ground in the field of industrial heritage. Drawing from historian Raphael Samuel’s useful concept, ‘theatres... more
Theatres of History and Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century
Singapore is a research project which seeks to traverse new ground in
the field of industrial heritage. Drawing from historian Raphael Samuel’s
useful concept, ‘theatres of memory’, the project makes the case for an
intangible form of industrial heritage.
Singapore is a research project which seeks to traverse new ground in
the field of industrial heritage. Drawing from historian Raphael Samuel’s
useful concept, ‘theatres of memory’, the project makes the case for an
intangible form of industrial heritage.
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Jurong Industrial Estate is a symbol and metaphor for Singapore’s transformation from a colonial entrepôt port to an industrial export economy in the 1960s and 1970s. It is regularly referred to as ‘Goh’s Folly’, so-named after Goh Keng... more
Jurong Industrial Estate is a symbol and metaphor for Singapore’s transformation from a colonial entrepôt port to an industrial export economy in the 1960s and 1970s. It is regularly referred to as ‘Goh’s Folly’, so-named after Goh Keng Swee, Singapore’s Minister for Finance at the time and the architect of the project. Used in the context of Jurong’s development into a vibrant industrial hub, the epithet repudiates accusations of bad economics and demonstrates the sound thinking of Goh, and by extension the Singapore government. This official imaginary of Jurong is central to Singapore’s economic history.
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The public housing problem in Singapore raises two basic questions about public housing. One, given the big role of the market, can we still speak of public, rather than semi-private, housing? Second, should Singaporeans continue to look... more
The public housing problem in Singapore raises two basic questions about public housing. One, given the big role of the market, can we still speak of public, rather than semi-private, housing? Second, should Singaporeans continue to look to a public approach to housing? A scrutiny of the last 50 years of public housing provides some insights into these questions.
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As the Singapore government reacts sharply to the research on Operation Coldstore, even claiming that ‘revisionist’ historians are seeking to undermine its legitimacy, it is timely to take stock of the research. As this annotated... more
As the Singapore government reacts sharply to the research on Operation Coldstore, even claiming that ‘revisionist’ historians are seeking to undermine its legitimacy, it is timely to take stock of the research. As this annotated bibliography will show, the documentary trail of Coldstore is fairly straightforward. The recent research has built on the pioneering work of British imperial historians, which demonstrated that there was no case for the arrests and that Britain had bowed to political pressure in conducting the security operation.
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This brief note considers whether human rights in Southeast Asia after the Second World War should be viewed as part of the ‘universal’, same as those in the West, or as unique to the region and its peoples, with their own bases, forms... more
This brief note considers whether human rights in Southeast Asia after the Second World War should be viewed as part of the ‘universal’, same as those in the West, or as unique to the region and its peoples, with their own bases, forms and histories. The social history of postwar squatters in Southeast Asia suggests how a narrative of interests-rights might be written. This history will be based on people’s worldviews and relationships with those in power. Human rights will jostle for a place with other interests, sometimes gaining the upper hand, at other times subordinate to them, but always entangled.
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To cite this article: Seng, Loh Kah. The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History [Book Review][online]. Oral History Association of Australia Journal, The, No. 32, 2010: 107-108. Availability:< http://search. informit. com.... more
To cite this article: Seng, Loh Kah. The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History [Book Review][online]. Oral History Association of Australia Journal, The, No. 32, 2010: 107-108. Availability:< http://search. informit. com. au/documentSummary; dn= 856279175318940; ...
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Presented at the forum on 2009 Year in Review, organised by The Online Citizen, 29 December 2009
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Presented at Teaching History in Singapore: The State of the Craft
A Roundtable Presented by the Singapore Heritage Society
Monday 30 November 2009, National Library Building
By Loh Kah Seng
A Roundtable Presented by the Singapore Heritage Society
Monday 30 November 2009, National Library Building
By Loh Kah Seng
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TEACHING HISTORY IN SINGAPORE: THE STATE OF THE CRAFT
A Roundtable Presented by the Singapore Heritage Society
Monday 30 November 2009, National Library Building
Opening remarks by Loh Kah Seng
A Roundtable Presented by the Singapore Heritage Society
Monday 30 November 2009, National Library Building
Opening remarks by Loh Kah Seng
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Book Launch at KL Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, 15 August 2009.
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Elderly Southeast Asians experienced great changes in their lives – of war and violence, of the imposition of the nation-state, of economic development – and remember them in different ways. Their oral histories may bear the influence of... more
Elderly Southeast Asians experienced great changes in their lives – of war and violence, of the imposition of the nation-state, of economic development – and remember them in different ways. Their oral histories may bear the influence of state-sanctioned narratives, attempt to speak truth to power or reconcile individual and official memories. By taking an inter-disciplinary approach,Oral History in Southeast Asia: Memories and Fragments considers the relationship of these fragments of memory to dominant accounts; it unravels the complex ways through which people remember and make sense of their pasts.
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This book examines both history textbook controversies AND teaching historical controversy in Asian contexts. The different perspectives provided by the book’s authors offer numerous insights, examples, and approaches for understanding... more
This book examines both history textbook controversies AND teaching historical controversy in Asian contexts. The different perspectives provided by the book’s authors offer numerous insights, examples, and approaches for understanding historical controversy to provide a practical gold mine for scholars and practitioners. The book provides case studies of history textbook controversies ranging from treatments of the Nanjing Massacre to a comparative treatment of Japanese occupation in Vietnamese and Singaporean textbooks to the differences in history textbooks published by secular and Hindu nationalist governments in India. It also offers a range of approaches for teaching historical controversy in classrooms. These include Structured Academic Controversy, the use of Japanese manga, teaching controversy through case studies, student facilitated discussion processes, and discipline-based approaches that can be used in history classrooms. The book’s chapters will help educational researchers and curricularists consider new approaches for curriculum design, curriculum study, and classroom research.
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The crowded, bustling, 'squatter' kampongs so familiar across Southeast Asia have long since disappeared from Singapore, leaving few visible traces of their historical influence on the life in the city-state. In one such settlement,... more
The crowded, bustling, 'squatter' kampongs so familiar across Southeast Asia have long since disappeared from Singapore, leaving few visible traces of their historical influence on the life in the city-state. In one such settlement, located in an area known as Bukit Ho Swee, a great fire in 1961 destroyed the kampong and left 16,000 people homeless, creating a national emergency that led to the first big public housing project of the new Housing and Development Board (HDB). HDB flats now house more than four-fifths of the Singapore population, making the aftermath of the Bukit Ho Swee fire a seminal event in modern Singapore.
Loh Kah Seng grew up in one-room rental flats in the HDB estate built after the fire. Drawing on oral history interviews, official records and media reports, he describes daily life in squatter communities and how people coped with the hazard posed by fires. His examination of the catastrophic events of 25 May 1961 and the steps taken by the new government of the People's Action Party in response to the disaster show the immediate consequences of the fire and how relocation to public housing changed the people's lives. Through a narrative that is both vivid and subtle, the book explores the nature of memory and probes beneath the hard surfaces of modern Singapore to understand the everyday life of the people who live in the city.
Loh Kah Seng grew up in one-room rental flats in the HDB estate built after the fire. Drawing on oral history interviews, official records and media reports, he describes daily life in squatter communities and how people coped with the hazard posed by fires. His examination of the catastrophic events of 25 May 1961 and the steps taken by the new government of the People's Action Party in response to the disaster show the immediate consequences of the fire and how relocation to public housing changed the people's lives. Through a narrative that is both vivid and subtle, the book explores the nature of memory and probes beneath the hard surfaces of modern Singapore to understand the everyday life of the people who live in the city.
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The book, using a small group of left-wing student activists as a prism, explores the complex politics that underpinned the making of nation-states in Singapore and Malaysia after World War Two. While most works have viewed the period in... more
The book, using a small group of left-wing student activists as a prism, explores the complex politics that underpinned the making of nation-states in Singapore and Malaysia after World War Two. While most works have viewed the period in terms of political contestation groups, the book demonstrates how it is better understood as involving a shared modernist project framed by British-planned decolonization. This pursuit of nationalist modernity was characterized by an optimism to replace the colonial system with a new state and mobilize the people into a new relationship with the state, according them new responsibilities as well as new rights.
This book, based on student writings, official documents and oral history interviews, brings to life various modernist strands – liberal-democratic, ethnic-communal, and Fabian and Marxist socialist – seeking to determine the form of postcolonial Malaya. It uncovers a hitherto little-seen world where the meanings of loud slogans were fluid, vague and deeply contested. This world also comprised as much convergence between the groups as conflict, including collaboration between the Socialist Club and other political and student groups which were once its rivals, while its main ally eventually became its nemesis.
This book, based on student writings, official documents and oral history interviews, brings to life various modernist strands – liberal-democratic, ethnic-communal, and Fabian and Marxist socialist – seeking to determine the form of postcolonial Malaya. It uncovers a hitherto little-seen world where the meanings of loud slogans were fluid, vague and deeply contested. This world also comprised as much convergence between the groups as conflict, including collaboration between the Socialist Club and other political and student groups which were once its rivals, while its main ally eventually became its nemesis.
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In exploring the past, researchers labour in the present: to locate the archival document which is located somewhere – behind a gate with its keeper; or to find that elusive participant who will throw light on a gap in our knowledge, and... more
In exploring the past, researchers labour in the present: to locate the archival document which is located somewhere – behind a gate with its keeper; or to find that elusive participant who will throw light on a gap in our knowledge, and convince them to speak. The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History meditates on this relationship between past and present in a developmental city-state. It discusses how researchers seek to gain entry to archives and memories, in endeavours which crucially shape the imagination of Singapore as a nation and the identity of its people as citizens.