<i>Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore</i>

Seng, Loh Kah

doi:10.1355/sj29-3l

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…This departs from attributing state-led accumulation to abstract developmental cultures (Johnson, 1982(Johnson, , 1999 or juridical-idealistic 'government autonomy from interest groups' (Huff, 1995(Huff, : 1430. Instead, passive revolution offers an explanatory framework for uncovering the unity of diverse developmental state projects -such as land reform (You, 2017) and public housing provision (Haila, 2015;Seng, 2013), as well as its trademark of industrial development -as material concessions that stabilize the political-economic power of extant ruling classes.…”

Section: The Developmental State and The Politics Of Passive Revolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prose of passive revolution: Mobile experts, economic planning and the developmental state in Singapore

Meulbroek

Akhter

2019

Environ Plan A

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During the Cold War, a barrage of globally mobile development professionals proliferated throughout the decolonizing Third World to both assist in economic development and to constrain the geopolitical spread of communist-sympathetic regimes. This paper considers a document authored by one such professional, Albert Winsemius, and draws on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution to theorize the process of state formation in Singapore. By examining Winsemius’ role in Singapore’s development planning, we demonstrate how globally sourced, ideological anti-communism and transnational economic expertise were inscribed into the institutional structure of the Singaporean state under Lee Kuan Yew and the People’s Action Party. Basing our analysis in a close reading of a key economic planning document, we argue that Winsemius and the Industrial Survey Mission demonstrate a political understanding of state formation rooted in the need to suppress labour strife and maintain political stability. This paper contributes to a more spatially nuanced understanding of East Asian industrialization and state transformation through a theorization of the influence of transnational expertise on an archetypal ‘developmental state’.

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Section: The Developmental State and The Politics Of Passive Revolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The prose of passive revolution: Mobile experts, economic planning and the developmental state in Singapore

Meulbroek

Akhter

2019

Environ Plan A

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“…Similar stories mark the post-WWII histories of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo (Bestor 2004, pp. 55-62;Jou et al 2014;Seng 2013;Smart 2001). Because development projects are so often linked to evictions, Herzfeld refers to them as acts of "spatial cleansing," an "intentional allusion to the notion of ethnic cleansing, since .…”

Section: Violence: Forceful Exclusionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Space and Exclusion in Asia

Harms

2016

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.

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The much-vaunted growth of cities across Asia has been accompanied by new forms of urban exclusion. This article reviews recent research into urban space and exclusion in Asia, focusing on anthropology as well as on key works in cognate fields such as geography, political science, sociology, and urban studies. The review of the literature suggests that spatial exclusions in Asian cities are perpetuated by numerous different modes, some overt and intentional, others tacit and unintentional, and that inclusion and exclusion are often entangled with each other. Six representative modes of exclusion are outlined: paperwork, money, violence, environment, space, and civility. Essential scholarship about each mode of exclusion is introduced, and it is suggested that the best scholarly work on urban exclusion investigates the overlaps and intersections of modes such as these. 4.1

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“…For many, the HDB was an instrument of displacement of the poor. It is only after the 1961 fire of the Bukit HoSwee precarious neighbourhood, in which more than 2000 houses were destroyed and more than 16000 people lost their home that the legitimacy of the HDB became almost unanimously accepted (LohKah Seng, 2013). Theepisode (and the way the ruling party used it in its propaganda) convinced reluctant inhabitants to leave their barracks and accept the proposed new flats 6 .…”

Section: Housing Policies As a Pillar Of Nation-building Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Living in Singapore: Housing Policies between Nation Building Processes, Social Control and the Market

Bocquet¹

2015

Territorio

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International audienceHousing policies have been at the very core of the national ideology of Singapore since the time of independence in 1965. The task of providing a flat to citizens and permanent residents thanks to the efforts of a public institution has not only been one of pragmatic realism, or an aspect of the application of economic theories pertaining to the sphere of developmentalism, it also constituted a central feature in the collective project of a City-State in which social engineering was conceived as a global duty of the ruling party and comprised various aspects of the organization of everyday life, from urban planning to housing or from education to leisure and civic engagement. With about 80% of the population (5.5 million inhabitants in 2015) housed in flats built by the Housing and Development Board ( HDB), Singapore remains in 2015, in spite of the recent diversification of the housing market, one of the cities in the world in which the share of population housed in publicly built estates is the highest. 95% of the inhabitants of Singapore that are housed in such HDB flats, though, own them on a 99-year lease agreement. In the stronghold of capitalism in South-East Asia, social housing was conceived, since the time of independence, as a way to reinforce private property and the familial values that are attached to it. The object of the present paper is to analyze the evolution of this ideology of social housing in Singapore from the moment of the invention of the HDB as an instrument of national development and social balance to the period of the necessary adaptation of this heritage to the new needs that emerged twenty years after independence and up to more recent challenges posed by the concurrence of alternative models and social imaginaries of housing, such as those embodied by condominiums

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Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

The prose of passive revolution: Mobile experts, economic planning and the developmental state in Singapore

The prose of passive revolution: Mobile experts, economic planning and the developmental state in Singapore

Urban Space and Exclusion in Asia

Living in Singapore: Housing Policies between Nation Building Processes, Social Control and the Market

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