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eBook details
- Title: Considering "Green" Practices: Ngos and Singapore's Emergent Environmental-Political Landscape (Non-Governmental Organizations )
- Author : SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia
- Release Date : January 01, 2005
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 251 KB
Description
In his 2004 inaugural speech Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong expressed a desire and intention to make Singapore a more "open" society. Often typified as an authoritarian state, Singapore has in the past been noted for its dearth of human rights, including a lack of citizens' freedom of expression, and association. Moves towards greater openness, freedom of expression, and tolerance are therefore welcomed by many Singapore citizens, civil society groups, and NGOs, as well as proponents of democracy around the world. Yet, what this declaration of pending openness signals in practice, and the processes through which it will be attained, are very much open to question. As Rodan (2003) cautions, expansions of new or alternative spaces of political concern and practice in Singapore should not be taken at face value. They instead beg careful interrogation as to their qualitative nature and significance for political practice. Such an interrogation in turn necessitates engagement with empirically informed discussions about the current nature of the Singaporean polity, to illuminate the complex socio-political contexts that such moves occur within--a case this paper makes through two main arguments: one primarily methodological, the other an empirical commentary on one aspect of the Singapore polity. To begin with the former, this paper argues that contextual understandings of the Singapore polity are enabled by the use of qualitative research methodologies. These allow engagement with governance as a process of shifting, contingent, and emergent socio-political relations (Rose 2002). Too often a priori theorizations foreshadow discussions on the complexities of how, why, and in what ways governance is expressed in Singapore (Rodan et al. 1997; Clammer 2003). Instead of yet another rework of the concepts of the state and/or civil society, this paper suggests that explorations of discursive and bodily practices of political actors effectively illuminate the nature and the workings of existent political spaces in Singapore, situating it within a small but not insignificant literature on Singaporean spatial governance (Chang 2000; Kong 2000; Phua and Yeoh 1998; Yeoh and Huang 1998). The theoretical approach adopted here is a post-structuralist understanding of social relations, in particular a Foucaultian perspective on power that eschews analysis of sovereignty to instead look at how power is constituted through practice--that is, how it forms political subjects and systems through a multiplicity of forces and processes (Foucault 1980; Butler 1997). In this framework, the idea of hegemony is problematized. The state is thus rendered a "work-in-progress" that must constantly ensure its survival through discursive and material tactics of re-creation. For example, the Singapore government is repeatedly argued as possessing impenetrable and non-negotiable powers. Yet, in its speeches, documents, and policies the refrains of "survival", impermanence, and no-nonsense bottom-line rationalizations are ever present (Ban 1992; Taussig 1992; Yeo 2000, p. 20), suggesting its supposed iron grip of power is more fragile than is often acknowledged.