The modern model family at home in Singapore: a queer geography

Abstract

The two meanings of 'domestic', as both residential dwelling and national territory, collide unusually forcefully in Singapore since its Housing Development Board (HDB) provides most housing in this city-state. While many scholars have interrogated the boundaries between homely ⁄ unhomely and foreign ⁄ domestic in Singapore by examining gender, ethnic ⁄ racial and class politics of HDB, in this paper I argue for the analytical usefulness of considering Singapore housing and citizenship as heteronormative; and, more broadly, for the value of a queer theoretical approach in advancing critical geographies of home. Combining archival research with contemporary observation, I examine discourses of respectable domesticity and proper family across Singapore's colonial and postcolonial periods in order to understand not just the exclusion of gays and lesbians, but also the 'queering' of a range of figures such as the single mother, the migrant worker, the unfilial child, and many others. Since the production of this range of non-heteronormative others is produced by a much more complex set of cultural logics than a focus on the deployment of a sexual binary can capture, the queer theoretical approach I argue for understands heteronormativity not as a universal policing of a heterosexual-homosexual binary, but as the geographically and historically specific coincidence of race, class, gender, nationality and sexual norms. key words Singapore heteronormativity queer geography postcoloniality family home housing

Precariousness, Precarity, and Family: Notes from Palestine

“…The reasons for this rejection are clear: such normative family ideals, and the practices they promote, have had and continue to have devastating effects. For example, Oswin's (2010a) research in Singapore demonstrates how a very powerful statist production of a heteronormative nuclear family ideal, in part through the residential space of the apartment block, creates forms of exclusion that impact on a whole range of non-heteronormative, 'queered' subjects, (many of which might otherwise be thought about as families, e.g. single parents with children, queer couples).…”

“…Valentine (2008) notes that geographers are only just beginning a sustained examination of the geographies of families themselves, which is to say geographies that don't subsume family within concepts such as social reproduction and care. Geographies of families themselves have explored how families are enmeshed in spacings of transnational migration (Waters 2002, Yeoh et al 2005, home (Harker 2010, Oswin 2010a, Stenning et al 2010, the (post)colonial nation-state (Oswin 2010b), law and borders (Martin 2011), while being part of a broader array of intimate relations and spaces (Valentine 2008).…”

“…Geographical research has explored how families are constituted by, and enmeshed within, particular geographies such as transnational migration (Waters 2002, Yeoh et al 2005, home (Harker 2010, Oswin 2010a, Stenning et al 2010, the (post)colonial nation-state (Oswin 2010b), law and borders (Martin 2011), while being part of a broader array of intimate relations and spaces (Valentine 2008). Reading these investigations of family spaces -the spatial formations, relations and flows that manifest and are manifested by familiesand family spacings -the processes through which family spaces emerge (see (Valentine 2008) and/or exclusionary national identity spaces (Cowen & Gilbert 2007).…”

Single People's Geographies of Home: Intimacy and Friendship beyond ‘the Family’

“…Therefore, despite these significant changes in intimate life, or maybe perhaps because of these shifts, many governments continue to favour 'traditional' two-parent families, and family policy remains overwhelmingly predicated on the coupled household form (Oswin, 2010;Ramdas, 2012). The nuclear family is still protected and promoted by the state and, consequently, long-term singles continue to face discrimination in terms of benefits payments, tax credits, and housing allocation (Quinton, 2012;Reynolds, 2008).…”

“I never felt targeted as an Asian … until I went to a gay pub”: Sexual racism and the aesthetic geographies of the bad encounter

“…Though questions around sexual identity remain important, the point about sexuality is a broader one, incorporating both sex itself and its politics at the intersection of gender, race, and class (Cohen, 1997;Oswin, 2010). Here, scholarship like Manalansan's (2005) work on the neoliberal politics of queer displacement in New York City, Haritaworn's (2015) exploration of the complicated intersection of racializing xenophobia and queer inclusion in Berlin, Benedicto's (2014) examination of the classed nature of gay life in Manila, and Catungal's (2013) focus on the forms of racialized violence endemic to global-multicultural Toronto, implicitly or explicitly, presents a challenge for work on encounter to more fully engage with the unevenness that characterizes the shared spaces of diverse urban life.…”