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Singapore presents a unique case study for multiculturalists in that the state leans heavily in its promotion of racial demarcations whilst simultaneously propagating a narrative of the state "regardless of race, language or religion". This paper argues that this apparent contradiction is a deliberate calculation to use multiculturalism to desecuritise an otherwise disparate multiracial society. Extending He's (2018) sequencing of multicultural progress as an a priori development to desecuritisation, this paper moves past traditionally democratic assumptions to demonstrate how the Singaporean state has in effect desecuritised national minorities through semi-to-autocratic management of multiculturalism. Referring to 'securitised multiculturalism' that has become increasingly evident since the 2000s, the paper progresses to consider how terrorism has affected Singapore's multicultural formulation and examines the state's top-down responses to desecuritise the security element in 'securitised multiculturalism' to the extent that such is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the emergence of new multiculturalisms taking root in Asia by exploring how value-based frameworks and moral judgements are deployed to create new lines of difference within co-ethnic communities. These frameworks and judgements cause multiculturalism to become a more subjective, and thus splintered construct that is increasingly decoupled from state discourse. Further, it considers how religious spaces are typically associated with the performance of morally "right" attitudes and behaviours, and therefore provide fertile yet underexplored sites through which multicultural subjectivities are formed and enacted. It illustrates these ideas through an empirical examination of how moral boundary-making within Singapore's Sikh community creates new lines of difference that renders migrant workers from the Punjab ("desis") irreducibly other. Drawing on 27 in-depth interviews conducted with Sikhs living in Singapore, the article considers how co-ethnic encounters within Sikh temples ("gurdwaras") create a sense of (in)distinction between desirous and desired subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicultural theorisations have presumed principles adopted from liberalism, and multiculturalists have explicated their theorisations within liberal democratic contexts. This article problematises both these conflations by focusing on an avowedly non-liberal polity, Singapore. Rather than focussing on developing and identifying normative justifications for multiculturalism, it advocates a practice-based approach which examines multiculturalism as an ethos of accepting cultural difference and actions that uphold such an ethos. This approach allows this paper to do three things: First, it demonstrates that Singapore's approach to engaging with its internal ethnic diversity is indeed a form of multiculturalism. Second, it highlights the pragmatic basis for the country's adoption of multiculturalism to manage diversity. Third, by identifying commonalities in multicultural practice in liberal and non-liberal settings, this article calls for a more critical examination of the slippage between theory and practice that is often overlooked by scholars on multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a study of Singapore's integration and naturalisation processes, this paper examines how the Singaporean state has negotiated the twin challenges of embracing cultural pluralism in its population while also forming a common national identity. Employing Benedict Anderson's conception of 'bound serialities', it argues that the Singaporean state has developed a framework of multiracialism to imagine the Singaporean nation through three serialities or collective identities. First, the Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other (CMIO) categories organise individuals into groups that have clear cultural identities. Second, the CMIO categories constitute a fixed image of the multicultural Singaporean nation. Third, being Singaporean requires an ethos of accepting the cultural differences that the CMIO structure represents. However, such a top-down imagining of the multicultural nation is increasingly challenged by the arrival of new citizens who embody alternative imaginings of their own ethnic and national identities, raising questions about the continued effectiveness of Singapore's multiracialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how new citizens reconfigure dominant indexes of citizenship to claim status as legitimate new citizens of Singapore. New citizens are expected to resolve a tension that underpins public discourses in Singapore society: while the statal narrative of multiculturalism countenances new citizens to have perceivable markers of difference, everyday discourses expect new citizens to assimilate into the 'Singapore core'—a term used in Singapore that denotes a homogeneous understanding of what it means to be Singaporean. By adopting a metapragmatic approach, this article identifies three common indexes of citizenship that new citizens negotiate to resolve this contradiction: language, loyalty, and legacy. By reconfiguring common markers of citizenship in Singapore, new citizens are able to discursively construct a type of citizenship that they can legitimately claim and contribute to. This expands common understandings of the notion of citizenship in Singapore society. (Citizenship, language ideologies, multiculturalism, metapragmatics, Singapore) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harmonious multiracialism is one of Singapore's national values, yet race in Singapore is almost always precariously managed. In 2019, race once again became the centre of public debate when a government-sanctioned advertisement featured a Chinese Singaporean actor 'brownfacing' as an Indian Singaporean, incurring public outcry. Local entertainers Preeti and Subhas Nair responded with a rap music video that criticised the advertisement and included the line 'Chinese people always out here fucking it up', which drew flak from the government and the Chinese community in Singapore. This article considers the state's response to the antiracist practices of the Nair siblings, and the subsequent labelling of their behaviour as racist. The article also introduces the concept of the state listening subject and describes its role in the semiotic process of rearticulation to elucidate how the Singaporean state selectively (de)couples race and language to maintain the national racial order. (Raciolinguistic ideology, multiracialism, rearticulation, state listening subject, race, Singapore, antiracism)* [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ways in which state-defined discourses of multiculturalism can unintentionally create a framework through which micro-aggressions are enacted against those interpreted as "other". These definitions cascade down from the state to majority and then minority ethno-national groups, who leverage positions of relative dominance to establish the terms of acceptance and integration into society. By negotiating these terms, ethnicity becomes a performative construct through which difference is asserted and reified. We illustrate these ideas through an empirical analysis of Singapore's minority Indian community, and how Singaporean Indians perform an idea of "Indianness" in response to their Singaporean Chinese fellow citizens on the one hand, and their migrant Indian counterparts on the other. This positioning causes Singaporean Indians to be subject to micro-aggressions vis-à-vis the Chinese majority, and to perpetrate micro-aggressions against Indian non-national minorities. In turn, this causes Singaporean Indianness to be underperformed throughout daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emphasizing inner racial and ethnic distinctions, post-independent Singapore adopts multiculturalism as a founding ideology to construct its national culture. However, the artistic experimentation of multicultural dance-making had emerged prior to Singapore achieving independence. This article argues that Singapore's multicultural dance-making was to be contextualized in the regional development in 1955 when the "Bandung spirit" was translated into youth solidarity that brought together three ethnic groups (Chinese, Malays, and Indians) to perform their visions of Merdeka (free from colonization). Without an identical culture and lineage to build on, the multiracial population flexibly drew resources from their respective ethno-cultural roots, which offered an important Inter-Asia lens for their anticolonial and diasporic imaginations. Such an artistic approach continued and was energized by dancers traveling from India, Taiwan, and Indonesia to implant new dancing forms into local Singapore society. The migratory trajectories of dance pioneers and their convergence in Singapore reveal un-explored inter-Asia connections that were crucial in nurturing local-born Singaporean dancers, who envisioned their hybrid multicultural dances to thrive in the independent Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on 'everyday multiculturalism' and 'lived multiculture' have advanced knowledge on the kinds of inclusive everyday spaces and practices that characterize our culturally complex, mobile and superdiverse cities. This paper expands this agenda by exploring informal sporting and leisure interactions amongst migrant and ethnically diverse urban populations. Embedded in a larger comparative city project that examines how urban environments and wider social structures mediate inclusions and exclusions of urban dwellers, this paper presents a case study of temporary migrant workers in Singapore and their participation in outdoor informal sport. It deploys Lefebvre's notion of 'Right to the City' to understand city dwellers' access to urban resources and their collective ability to democratically inhabit the city. Despite structural constraints imposed on marginalized migrants, the nature of informal sport, the spontaneous coming together to play, creative use of public space and a range of convivial practices, generate a sense of urban belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the proposed frame of 'everyday intimacies', this article explores the entanglements of race and gender in inter-ethnic relationships. 'Everyday intimacies' brings together the minority experiences of everyday racism, the state practices and policies of multiculturalism, and their inflections in intimate relationships of marriage, friendship, and dating. This approach demonstrates not just how the state regulates people's intimate life through policies of marriage and family, but also how other indirect processes of multicultural governance mediate intimate life. Drawing on biographical narratives of mainly Indian women from in-depth life story interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, the article brings the literature on intimacies in conversation with the scholarship on race and ethnic relations in Singapore. Through a focus on intimacy, the article illustrates how tacit knowledge and embodied effects of everyday racism relate to larger trends of intermarriages, rising singlehood among Indian women and possibilities of co-ethnic friendships and solidarities. In doing so, the article presents novel insight into race and gender relations in Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Within transnational contexts, ethnic minority Coorg festivals are conducted via the prominence of festival foodwork by Kodavathee immigrant mothers. In the absence of geographical proximity to the homeland of rural Kodagu due to (im)migration, festival food becomes a means to enculturate 'good' Coorg diasporic children with appropriate affiliative culinary identification to this 'vanishing' community. (Intra)domestic efforts to create emotional emplacement for transnational Coorg children are strategically positioned viz-a-viz other pan-'Hindu', Brahmanical religious festivals. Qualitative interviews with 43 Kodavathee (im)migrant mothers from urban, multicultural Sydney (Australia), multiracial Singapore and multi-ethnic Mysore (India), yielded how festival food took on a significant role in firstly: vicarious performances of emplacing Kodagu within the (im)migrant Coorg family context; and secondly in nesting children within an insider food culture which is celebrated in-group yet underplayed in more pan-Hindu contexts. While more publicly lauded performances of enacting 'appropriate Hinduness' for pan-Hindu (Diwali) celebrations was conducted, there was an umbilical sustenance sought in Coorg festival foods where in-group intimacies were privately nurtured through the culinary distancing from other non-Coorg Hindus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Singapore, a strict policy of male conscription or national service (hereafter, NS) that transforms boys into men is carefully calibrated to maintain support from the civilian sector. I argue that, in the widely acclaimed Ah Boys to Men film series directed by Jack Neo, cinematic scripts of military masculinities are inflected by class and ethnicity. While Neo's film series does not depart from the realities of everyday multiculturalism in Singapore as celebratory, the film is a rhetorical resource of the patriarchal state, albeit one that lacks finesse, which prepares teenage males for their indelible rites of passage into manhood. The film represents the symbolic power of the state in communicating the necessity of conscription as a proving ground of masculinity. In counteracting rhetorical fears of training fatalities and injuries to disarm questions about the relevance of male conscription, the state is careful not to undermine its militarised ambitions. Instead, it deploys curious narratives of masculinised sacrifice to propagate ideological control of the citizenry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the official idea of racial 'balance' in Singapore and its relationship to modern multiculturalism or (as the island's government refers to it) 'multiracialism'. The article explores the colonial origins of Singapore's contemporary ethnic population breakdown and the emergence of ethnic Chinese as the island's majority community. It examines how the Singapore government has come to officially depict the island's multicultural 'success story' since independence, and the official emphasis on the necessity of maintaining fixed ethnic ratios which ensure that Chinese remain roughly three-quarters of the island's settled population. At the same time, this article interrogates the official rationale behind such a policy, illuminating the colonial-era discursive assumptions that underpin it, and highlighting the way such assumptions have been contested. The article especially focuses on the role that immigration has played in the state's effort to ensure Singapore's racial 'balance', and argues that such an ethnically-determined immigration policy has frequently unsettled the Chinese majority it has been intended to bolster, while calling into question the multicultural idealism on which the Republic of Singapore was ostensibly founded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore has established a reputation as a country with social harmony. But in recent times, increasing reports on issues of social cohesion have begun to emerge in the media about tensions among its citizenry and between foreigners and migrants. Yet, little is known about youths' lived experiences of everyday multiculturalism amidst this changing demographic landscape. The discourses on diversities in Singapore classrooms have remained largely within the State's narrative of race-based harmonious multiculturalism based on inherited colonial racialised categories. This paper investigates the understanding and lived experiences of multiculturalism of students in one secondary school, situating the analysis of everyday multiculturalism within the complexities of local diversities and the structure of schooling in a postcolonial multilingual society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper examines cases of multiculturalism in Singapore and Malaysia. Through causal sociocultural mechanisms, the authors observe how two countries in proximity, with shared histories and demographic profiles, achieve differing outcomes in regard to social cohesion and competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach: The paper employs case-centric process tracing (CPT) to build a "plausible" explanation of causal mechanisms that can contribute to social cohesion and competitiveness. The authors adopt a common analytical framework to distil the nuances of generalizability and a cross-case analysis in order to ascertain factors that enable multiculturalism. Findings: Different causal mechanisms result in diverging outcomes in the two countries. In managing multiculturalism, Singapore has pursued policy actions emphasizing "integration and pragmatism," while Malaysia has followed a model of "separation and preferentialism." Judging by a selected number of established indicators, Singapore's multiculturalism outcomes seem more successful than that of Malaysia in respect to areas of national competitiveness and interethnic tolerance. Practical implications: This paper sheds insights on the policy actions that promoted multicultural integration. The process tracing approach is found to be a useful tool in helping policymakers understand how intrinsic mechanisms can contribute to more/less desirable socioeconomic outcomes. Originality/value: Together with the evidence using the CPT approach, the paper draws attention to multiculturalism evolving through distinctive sets of public policy. The authors ultimately suggest that such policies can be paralleled to the function played by institutions in leading to "varieties of capitalism" and have an impact on achieving cohesive and competitive societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I chronologically trace my lived experiences as a woman of color, growing up in multicultural Singapore. Exploring these moments while considering the racial politics embedded within institutionalized multiculturalism serves as an evocative illustration of the challenges and nuances of navigating multi-ethnicity in Singapore. These vignettes though personal, reveal the ways in which my multi-ethnic background manifests in different experiences, varying according to the ethnicity I openly identify with. Simultaneously, I unpack the double burden of being multi-ethnic in Chinese-majority Singapore—from identity-crises and the inescapability of phenotype. Often in these vignettes, I am silent, and respond only in thought. These thoughts however are lent a voice, in this auto-ethnographic text, liberating me from the silences that often characterize my position as a minority. These described moments also are revelatory of the hegemonic ideologies that are socially integrated and communicated insidiously albeit subtly, and their hierarchizing effects on ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last twenty years, cities around the world have seen the multiplication of cultural district projects, which aim to concentrate cultural organisations in a circumscribed urban space, or to label a neighbourhood's cultural scene. This paper examines the adoption and adaptation of a globally circulating cultural policy model as an instrument of urban governance. Moving away from the notion of policy transfer, understood as a neutral and unidirectional process through which successful culture-led development models spread to other contexts, I show how local actors mobilise external references to position themselves in a transnational cultural policymaking field, and construct their city as a model. I compare the multi-scalar politics of urban modelling in Doha and Singapore, where globally circulating culture-led development models have been introduced not only as instruments of economic growth, but also as diversity management tools. On the one hand, cultural districts serve as discursive nation building/branding instruments to project an imagined identity locally and internationally. On the other hand, urban elites can mobilise cultural districts to make strategic shifts in the diversity management discourse, through an engagement with the urban environment, and the co-optation civil society actors at multiple scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I highlight the emergence of a cosmopolitan turn in Literature education as observed in teachers' beliefs and practices in Singapore schools. Central to the cosmopolitan turn is the view that Literature education should not be disengaged from real-world connections to others particularly those who are marginalized and oppressed in the world. In the first part of this article, I describe core principles informing a cosmopolitan approach to teaching Literature that is distinct from previous movements. In the second part, I utilize case studies of Literature teachers from four secondary schools in Singapore to discuss key tensions resulting from teachers' attempts to foster cosmopolitan sensitivities. These tensions point to the propensity for Literature education to prioritize a form of universalism that neglects the dynamic interconnections between national and global identity; to encourage a human capital approach to education where cosmopolitanism is co-opted to strategically benefit elites and to perpetuate passive rather than active cosmopolitan engagement with justice. I suggest that awareness of these tensions can enable educators to develop more holistic and ethically grounded cosmopolitan Literature education where all students can be equipped with critical and empathetic capacities to navigate diverse and conflicting values in our global age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant-sending states are connecting systematically with their emigrants and diasporic descendants through policies known as "diaspora strategies." Underlying diaspora strategizing are the manifold ways in which states capitalize on past migration and present mobility patterns to advance national developmental agendas. Such agendas are conceived in terms of economic and (soft) political power, respectively referred to as "diaspora-and-development" and "diaspora diplomacy." This article undertakes a comparative analysis of the diaspora strategies by China and Singapore to ask critical questions about, first, the connectivities between migrant-sending states. Doing so elicits the multidirectional migration flows that connect nation-states, showing how the diaspora outreach of one affects the other. Second, the article examines the (multi)cultural logics that underpin diaspora strategizing and its possible impacts on domestic agendas. Such an approach urges researchers to study the race/ethnicity politics that underpin diaspora strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore has been undergoing a negotiation of its national identity as it celebrated its fifty years of independence. The seemingly lack of consensus on the nation's identity has brought about much heated debates about Singapore's governance. However, the construction of one's definition of national identity is often shaped not by the political discourse but by what one has experienced in his or her formative years. Citizens who experienced different stages of nationhood are hence likely to develop different interpretations of what it means to be a citizen of the nation. In this study, using network analysis, we sought to examine how the definition of national identity differed between citizens who were born before Singapore's independence, and hence experienced the early nation-building phase of the country, vis-à-vis citizens who were born after the country's independence. 1000 native Singaporeans indicated which of the 27 identity markers were important for an immigrant to have to be accepted as a Singaporean. The analysis revealed that there were differences in the number of clusters within the identity networks of individuals born before versus after Singapore's independence. The strength of the identity network of individuals born before independence was also stronger. Using simulated networks, we also showed how a change in endorsement of more influential markers had stronger effect on the overall identity network than a change in endorsement of less influential markers among individuals born before independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the I World Migration Report 2015 i (International Organisation for Migration, [2], p. 39), among major cities with the largest proportion of foreign-born population, Dubai and Singapore are the only two non-western cities to rank among the top 19 metropolises, mainly European, North American or Australian. This comparison is all the more interesting in that Dubai was nicknamed "Singapore of the Middle East" as it was very much inspired by the Singapore model of economic development during the early phase of post-oil diversification. We hope that this brief commentary has demonstrated the heuristic value of comparing Singapore and Dubai, two city-states with high levels of migration in non-western, non-integrative contexts. [Extracted from the article]

This paper adopts a care ethics lens to examine multicultural encounters in the institutional care space of nursing homes in Singapore. We focus on the interactions between foreign and local care workers of different nationalities and ethnicities in their interactions as they work alongside one another to take care of elderly residents, as well as in the time they spend together after working hours. Drawing upon qualitative data, we seek to understand the practices and processes of how different groups "do" care in negotiating the boundaries of diversity that characterize their everyday encounters. Providing a perspective from Singapore contributes to a more plural understanding of multicultural care ethics from a location outside the western world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humour plays an important role in making and mediating human relationships. While scholarship on workplace humour is voluminous, there is scarce literature on interactional humour in non-Western yet culturally diverse settings. This article looks at humour in multi-ethnic Singaporean workplaces employing both citizens and temporary migrants, with a particular focus on blue collar and service workers. We argue that Singlish forms a linguistic and aural humour template for workers to bridge significant language, racial and cultural differences through language play that is devoid of the aggressive disparagement humour that frequently characterizes shop-floor humour in the Anglosphere. What evolves is a humorous metrolingua franca (Pennycook, A., and E. Otsuji. 2015. Metrolingualism: Language in the City. London: Routledge.) that is specific to the way everyday multiculturalism operates in diverse Singaporean workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore Singaporeans' view to a multicultural neighbourhood, specifically, their views on the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP), a housing policy that promotes residential desegregation, and whether this policy has engendered a positive perspective to residential diversity. Design/methodology/approach: A grounded theory approach is used to answer the following research questions: how do Singaporeans feel about residential diversity? Does the EIP influence attitudes to residential segregation in Singapore? What do these attitudes mean for governments and policymakers around the world? The research involved focus group discussions with 27 Housing and Development Board real estate agents, in order to tap onto their vast network of clients and better understand the prevailing sentiments on the ground. Findings: The two major considerations when Singaporeans choose a flat are its price and location. Within the confines of these two factors, however, other considerations like race, nationality and the socio-economic makeup of a neighbourhood will influence their decisions. Social implications: These considerations can be condensed into the factors of constrained choice and voluntary segregation. By limiting the impact of voluntary segregation, the EIP can be credited with bridging the racial divide. However, with constrained choice being unaddressed by the policy, the emerging formation of a class divide is an unintended consequence. Originality/value: Because almost all developed economies are culturally plural, understanding Singapore's approach to residential desegregation offers insights as to how other countries may learn from the Singapore experience in managing and encouraging multiculturalism, especially since ethnic residential concentration can reduce the formation of strong social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Canada and Singapore express support for—and have the reality of being—multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious; and both jurisdictions have an avowed commitment to the freedom of religion. Yet, this commitment expresses itself in different ways in these two contexts. Although both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Singaporean Constitution guarantee the freedom of religion, juridical definitions of what this freedom means may differ quite profoundly. This Article explores and analyzes these two different environments that nonetheless share important features. We argue that the approaches of Singapore and Canada do not fall simply into the categories of being "liberal" or "illiberal," but instead invite reflection and reconsideration on the concepts of pluralism, secularism, and liberalism in interesting ways. This Article thus highlights the significance of contextual factors in understanding the ways in which religious diversity is dealt with, particularly in Canada and Singapore, but also more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions how meritocracy, as a state-sponsored narrative in Singapore, is variously negotiated and interpreted by Singaporean youth. Conveyed as a tenet central to Singapore's national identity, meritocracy is often referred to as the "Singapore Dream" where socioeconomic mobility is made possible through hard work and ability regardless of ethnic difference. Critics of meritocracy in Singapore problematise how the narrative exists as a political instrument, conceals systemic discrimination and perpetuates ethnic inequality. Yet, how the population receives meritocracy remains unexplored within scholarship. While recognising its dominance within Singapore's socio-political landscape, this article takes a bottom-up approach to understanding how meritocracy is perceived on the ground. Interviews conducted with Singaporean polytechnic students reveal differential experiences and articulations of meritocracy, demonstrating a gap between the endorsement of meritocracy as a positive value and conviction that it exists in practice. Furthermore, where ethnic discrimination is recognised among Singaporean youth, it is oftentimes normalised as a function of a multiracial society. This belief is problematic as it vindicates state and society and reduces the impetus to seek redress and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on ideological standing of multiculturalism. Topics discussed include to challenge the prevailing assumptions of liberal multiculturalism by first examining the Singaporean case in depth; seeing potential affinities with the mimetic approach inspired by cultural theorist René Girard, article provide a different understanding of multiculturalism that avoids the individuationist or collectivist biases that have purportedly implicated existing thought.

Ethnicity of models used in advertisements and the advertised product's country of origin are manipulated experimentally to study how attitudes toward advertising and products lead to behavioral intention. A sample of Singaporean students' traditional Eastern values about the family and conformity are also examined. Patterns of results for three products are consistent with theoretical predictions of cognitive processes, and attitude--intention links appear stronger than do those in similar tests in the West. Culture has mixed effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the colonial period, the Straits Settlements government formalised through law the declaration of public holidays marking religious festivals for the different communities. This practice was continued by the post-colonial state, apportioning public holidays "equally" amongst its citizenry. Adopting a historical perspective, this paper theorises the Singapore state's allocation of public holidays for its citizens with a specific focus on the Singaporean Hindu community. The paper traces the journey of Tai Pucam as a declared public holiday in colonial Singapore to the 1950s when the Hindu community had two gazetted public holidays to 1968 when Tai Pucam was removed from the list of public holidays, a situation which persists into the present. The "making and unmaking of Tai Pucam as a public holiday" remains a controversial issue for Singaporean Hindus who express unhappiness over the fact that their religious community is granted only one religious holiday, when the norm in Singapore is such that each ethnic community has two holidays. This inequality is cited by Hindus and Indians in Singapore as a discriminatory practice. In 2015, a recent case, Vijaya Kumar s/o Rajendran and Others v. Attorney General , the controversial ban on musical instruments during a Tai Pucam celebration triggered yet again the sensitive issue of Tai Pucam as a "non holiday". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand the acculturation experiences of Asian immigrants to Singapore. A qualitative exploratory study using focus group discussions was conducted among 40 permanent residents and new citizens. Each of the seven focus groups had an average of six participants and lasted 1-2 hours. Immigrants described Singaporean culture as a blended culture featuring multiracialism. Their acculturation strategies were influenced by the way they were perceived and treated by the host society, based on their country of origin and whether they had been members of a minority community there. Although the respondents valued multiracialism, they also faced challenges in maintaining interethnic contacts. Implications for further enhancing existing acculturation models are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on rising singlehood in Asia have largely focused on the economic dimension. This article widens that lens by examining how religious beliefs influence single Singaporean women’s views toward marriage. Applying the intersectional paradigm expands our understanding of how religion maintains or challenges cultural norms as well as gendered and racial meanings. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 27 unmarried Malay-Muslim Singaporean women, it argues that instead of conceptualizing religion as a barrier that hinders the formation of intimate relationships, we can better understand its role in terms of how single Malay-Muslim women appropriate it to negotiate cultural constraints that limit their ability to tie the knot. The research bears important implications on how cultural and religious forces affect marriage patterns in multicultural and multireligious societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the symbolic significance of Singapore's policy of "multiracialism" by bringing it in connection with the city-state's post-colonial problematic of national identity. Against the currently dominant, nativist rhetoric which aims to construct Singapore as an authentically "Asian" nation diametrically opposed to its "Western" counterparts, this paper stresses the necessary and inevitable hybridity of Singaporean identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While enchantment has been used productively to think through the geographies of social encounter, extant research – drawing largely from cases in the West – has reinforced a celebratory notion of enchantment, characterized by egalitarianism and serendipity. In this paper we draw ethnographically on encounters between Malay and Chinese users of two street football courts in Singapore, a non-Western context where principles of public interaction converge with but also exceed those in the West. In so doing we aim to advance existing debates by conceptualizing enchantment as it is negotiated and constituted, rather than asking if observed occurrences live up to dominant interpretations. We find that enchantment can be experienced through the construction, perpetuation and negotiation of boundaries; it is also a product of enduring rhythms in space that are produced and developed via the interactions of its users over time. In specifying the different ways in which enchantment is created, negotiated and lived we contribute to signalling the validity of expansive notions of publicness i.e. the different ways in which encounter in public space can be made meaningful and fulfilling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Foodways in Singapore embody the anxieties of the islandstate-- namely heritage, race, identity, and authenticity. Hawking in Singapore was initially seen as a nuisance that had to be tolerated and later regulated by both the colonial administration and newly independent government. The relocation of hawkers to centralized food centers marked the imposition of order and hygiene onto a squalid industry. Street peddlers, once an administrative problem, were refashioned into a potent symbol of Singapore's heritage. Hawker food has also been used as a trope of multiculturalism to unite a racially diverse people. The influx of foreign workers from the mid-1980s presented new tensions that shed light on the cultural power of food to articulate inclusion and exclusion. Markers of authenticity, namely historical traditions and artisanal expertise, map haphazardly onto the realities of actual foodways. Finally, a breed of connoisseurs, who grew up in a cosmopolitan nation-state, was birthed in the 1990s. Embracing the low culture of hawker food, local foodies impute new cultural meanings to hawker food that embody the tension between distinction and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand the role of cultural values in influencing public relations practice in Singapore. Given that Singapore exhibits a hybrid of cultures, it purposes to comprehend how multiculturalism is operationalized and to uncover if the values that have a greater influence on organizational communication resemble those in individualistic or collectivistic societies. Using Gudykunst’s (1998) seven dimensions that influence individualism-collectivism on communication as a guide, this study interviewed 20 public relations practitioners in Singapore. Our findings showed that although the patterns expressed is slightly more consistent with those found in collectivistic cultures, it does not resemble collectivism in entirety. Multiculturalism in Singapore displays a blend of certain cultural hybridity, which is aligned with it being a multicultural cosmopolitan city that embodies Western modernity while retaining its Asian values. Our findings further reinforced the idea that public relations professionals need to be multicultural themselves to effectively communicate with culturally diverse stakeholders in today’s globalizing era of multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on two beauty contests Ratu Suria (2012) and Miss Vasantham (2004-present) from the minority Malay and Tamil television stations in Singapore as case studies, this article seeks to map out the contours of ethnocultural scripting of gender and femininity. Rather than finding idealized beauties, these contests have brought to the surface anxieties of ethnocultural incompleteness. More importantly, they also reveal the extent of ethnocultural mobility in the contestants negotiating the ideological contours required by the state-supported minority television stations towards an idealized multicultural minority beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine Kuo Pao Kun's modern reiteration of the Zheng He theme in his 1995 Singaporean play titled Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral 郑和的后代. The memory of Zheng He and his legacy rooted in an anomalous series of sea expeditions makes him unique in Chinese history and speaks to contemporary issues of multiculturalism, ethnic hybridity, and the geopolitics of migration and diaspora. Kuo reappropriates the Zheng He theme to re-present the eunuch admiral as an ancient paradigm of the modern multicultural man in an increasingly transnational world. Scholars have noted the way Kuo uses storytelling to prompt people in Singapore to show a greater willingness to live together as a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual nation. However, I argue that the play's text reveals more somber and personal undercurrents, where Kuo draws upon an intimate understanding of the classical Chinese Zheng He story to record shrewd observations and articulate concealed shafts of criticism about Singapore's bureaucracy, intermingled with philosophical reflections addressing contemporary Sinophone lived reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In applied linguistics and language education, an increased focus has been placed on plurality and hybridity to challenge monolingualism, the native speaker norm, and the modernist view of language and language use as unitary and bounded. The multi/plural turn parallels postcolonial theory in that they both support hybridity and fluidity while problematizing the essentialist understanding of language and identity. However, postcolonial theory, which has been influenced by poststructuralism, met criticisms in the 1990s in cultural studies. The notion of hybridity has been especially criticized for its privileged status, individual orientation, and disparity between theory and practice. Furthermore, the conceptual features of the multi/plural turn overlap with neoliberalism and neoliberal multiculturalism, which uncritically support diversity, plurality, flexibility, individualism, and cosmopolitanism, while perpetuating color-blindness and racism. The multi/plural turn also neglects the ways in which neoliberal competition and the dominance of English affect scholars. This article examines the multi/plural trend by drawing on some critiques of postcolonial theory and neoliberal ideologies and proposes an increased attention to power and inequalities as well as collective efforts to resist the neoliberal academic culture underlying the multi/plural turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers and other social scientists have developed ways to describe and analyse people's routine and fleeting encounters with others in cities experiencing migrant-led diversification. Much of this work illuminates the significance of everyday rubbing along, but how diversity is lived and negotiated through specific principles of interaction and exchange has so far remained obscure. As such, the politics of fleeting encounters in public spaces have not been explained. Further, the overwhelming majority of conceptualisations of coexistence draw from European and North American contexts. Through an empirically grounded analysis of the principles of social organisation (known as gui ju in Singapore), I demonstrate that everyday norms of civility emerge as ways of boundary-breaking and boundary-making in shared spaces in Singapore's Jurong West. Addressing the potentials and limitations of coexisting with difference, I clarify how diversity is managed and negotiated in the everyday vis-à-vis uneven interconnections between people of different backgrounds. I discuss the prosaic and situated ways in which positive and strained relations can occur simultaneously and situate these in a wider structural context. I argue that the geography of coexistence is constituted through socio-spatial processes where the politics of living with diversity are mediated through, although not limited to, fleeting encounters. Gui ju clarifies the messiness inherent in shared spaces and, effectively, filter and curtail diversity by perpetuating the normativities of acceptable behaviour in public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]