GEK2001/SSA2202/GES1003

Changing Landscapes of
Singapore
Bicentennial Version
(2019 only)
LECTURE 7: LANDSCAPES OF
FAMILYHOOD AND COMMUNITY

DR . KAMALINI RAMDAS
 Recap
Housing during colonial times: not a concern for colonial government
or private landlords. Housing conditions were very poor

Urban renewal through the public housing development . Political

legitimacy- new government could provide for the population,
improvement in standard of living, demonstrate SG was modernising,
and produce discipline workforce(Ie. Good workers)

Building a nation-sense of place, pride and belonging:

stakeholdership, design elements to bring people together.
(Community building  design element enough?
Building a global city- SMART nation and more…sustainability and
improve quality life. Political patronage?
(How to support the population? Improving quality of life?)
Incentifies ppl to go to work then make them own a home (so that
they will go and work and pay for it)
Govt made it possible for ppl to own a home (affordable)  using a
fraction of their payThrough home ownership (feel rooted in sg)
 sense of belonging, stakeholdershipDesign element (park?
Playground?)Community building  is design element enough? In
neighbourhood or beyond neighbourhoodGlobal city  more ppl
coming into Singapore
(need to think how sustainable is public housing, energy
sustainability?)Looking at quality of life (more than just standard of
living)
Outline
 Mini Quiz
 Recap – public housing landscapes
 Today’s objectives
 Some definitions
 Dominant landscapes of familyhood and community: family
values and community-building
 Landscapes that demonstrate contestation
 Recent issues on landscapes of familyhood and community
 Summary
Today’s Objectives
 Familyhood and community in Singapore: turning
space into place  shared values
 Landscapes demonstrate the nature of social
relations (between different groups): positive and
more challenging aspects
 Dominant landscapes and alternative landscapes
(HDB vs Pink Dot) and (comparative examples
within HDB) (contested?)
 How dominant landscapes are contested (curry
incident)
Key definitions to better
understand social relations
 Sex
 Gender
 Sexuality
 Heteronormativity
 Community
 Nation
 Singapore’s Shared Values
Sex, Gender and…
 Sex: a natural category based on the biological
difference between men and women
 Gender: social constructions organised around
the biological sexes of male and female. How we
perform , how we show we are men ? Such as a masculinity and
femininity ( gay , lesbian ?)
 In other words, an individual may be born male
or female but over time acquires a gender
identity of what it means to be male or female.
Sexuality
 Sexuality: “both physical and socio-cultural
dimensions of sexual desire and the wider
expression of different sexual identities” (Panelli
2004: 116).
What is Heteronormativity?
Heteronormativity is based on the assumption that
“heterosexuality is both natural/normal” (Panelli
2004: 245).

In Singapore state policies and laws promote

heteronormativity by endorsing families in which
men and women marry to form a family unit (e.g.
Singapore’s public housing policies), and where
homosexuality is criminalised (Section 377A of the
Penal Code).
Section 377A of Penal Code
in Singapore
Section 377A of the penal code states “Any male
person who, in public or private, commits, or abets
the commission of, or procures or attempts to
procure the commission by any male person of, any
act of gross indecency with another male person,
shall be punished with imprisonment for a term
which may extend to 2 years.” Penal Code, Chapter
224 (or Cap. 224).
 Nation
 “a community of people whose members are bound
together by a sense of solidarity rooted in an historic
attachment to a homeland and a common culture”
(Johnston et al. 2000: 532).
 “imagined community” (Anderson, 1991)
 members of even the smallest nation will never
know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or
even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the
image of their communion.
 Communion: based on territory, history, common
culture, shared values
Gender, Sexuality, and the
Nation
 Nationality: tied to familial reproduction:
“descent-based theory of the nation” (Pratt and
Yeoh, 2003).
 We obtain our nationality from our parents, ‘by
birth’.
 Ideal family: married heterosexual couples and
their children.
Community
 Communities can be homogenous and self-
contained
 “common needs and goals, a sense of the
common good, shared lives, culture and views of
the world, collective action” (Silk, 1999:6)
 Singapore is made up 4 main ethnic communities
 Building cohesive communities (tied to
neighbourhood) important for nation-building in
Singapore.
Family, Community, Nation
 Multiracial Singapore: C-M-I-O as separate racial
categories
 How is it possible to keep them separate?
Is by the families marrying within their race with their own
ethic grp.
 What is the link between heteronormative family,
ethnic community and nation?
 Imagined space of the nation is the outcome of
social relations and biological reproduction
Importance of Family,
Community to the Nation:
Identity formation
“Some Singaporeans are concerned about the rapid
changes in our society, and feel a sense of dislocation and
unfamiliarity. We will manage the pace of change... Even
as we change, we must hold fast to certain constants: the
core values which help Singapore to succeed; the
heritage and cultures which make us Asian and
Singaporean... We need immigrants to reinforce our
ranks, but we must maintain a clear majority of local-born
Singaporeans who set the tone of our society, and
uphold our core values and ethos...”
- PM Lee’s Chinese New Year message, The New Paper, 2 February 2011 (my emphasis).
Singapore’s Shared Values
 Family as the basic unit of society: What type of
family?
◦ Heteronormative, children look after parents (inter-
generational responsibility), where Asian culture and
tradition are ‘passed down’
 Cohesive communities (multi-racial, separate but
equal)
 Consensus not conflict: to manage racial/religious
differences
Singapore’s Shared Values
 Individuals adopt ‘Asian values’ (Confucian): Filial
piety, nation before community and society above
self
 Meritocracy – individual success through hard work,
not special treatment (all treated the same
regardless of race, language, religion)
Ideals values and bring us together.
Share values that are aspirational
State’s role in promoting
family values
 Only married Singaporeans have easiest access to
housing (most grants, support from government)
 Singles must wait until 35 years to buy flat
 Since 1978 – schemes introduced to help married
children and their elderly parents to live in
adjoining blocks or flats within the same estate
◦ joint balloting scheme
◦ mutual exchange scheme
◦ Proximity housing grant
State’s role in promoting family
values
 Policies in response to worries of an ageing
population within the older housing estates like
Tiong Bharu, York Hill, Outram Park etc: upgrade
older estates so younger families can move into
these estates make use of proximity housing
grant
 New flat types: multi-generational flats or jumbo
flats to promote inter-generational living
Recap from last week:
Boost for first-time home buyers
 Higher Grants and increased income ceiling for first time
home buyers: Making flats more affordable
 More choices of size and location of flats for “for example,
some couples might want to buy new flats in mature
estates to live near to their parents, while others may want
larger flats because they intend to have more children in
the future, or accommodate their family members”-
Lawrence Wong, Minister for National Development
(Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/housing/more-first-time-hdb-flat-
buyers-to-get-higher-grants-income-ceiling-for-eligible
)
HDB: Building Cohesive Communities
 Inter-class mixing through estate upgrading and building
flats for varied income groups in estates (2-, 3-, 4-, 5-room
flats and executive condominiums).
 Inter-ethnic integration through ethnic quotas
Have a minimum number of each ethnic grps in the a HDB estate
 Diffusing the potential ‘threat’ of ethnic enclaves in HDB
landscapes
 How successful?
 Promote multi-racialism and multi-religiosity
 Promote civic mindedness, good citizen behaviour
HDB: Landscape of
Communityhood – more in
coming lecture

Has it successfully encouraged community spirit and

involvement?
“I would not say that the direct link has been forged yet
between residents and the Town Councils. But Town Councils
have been successful in getting the grassroots leaders to
understand the linkage between what Town Councils can do
and what the people must do”
- SM Goh, 27 June 2009
But landscapes of familyhood
and community are contested
 Communities are negotiated and contested.
 E.g. are there alternative forms of familyhood?
 How have we adapted to these? Change in housing policy
for singles in the past and more recently for divorcees.
 What are some of the contested landscapes of
familyhood and community we see in Singapore?
Contested Landscapes:
Familyhood and
Community - Sexuality

PINK DOT
Pink Dot: Contestation of
Heteronormative Familyhood
Pink Dot: name of the group that organises an annual
gathering in Hong Lim Park: freedom to love; equal right
for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and heterosexual
people in Singapore to love (2009).
Pink Dot: A form of
community-building around
alternative values
 Bringing together gay and straight Singaporeans as a
community that believes in the freedom to love?
 Multiracial celebration at Pink Dot
 Solidarity amongst foreigners and locals (even if they
cannot enter the space or form the dot)
 Community-building from the bottom up
 But it is also resisted by religious groups: the Wear White
movement
Resistance against Pink Dot
‘Traditional values’ wear white campaign on Pink Dot
weekend  (2016)
Resistance against Pink
Dot
Contested Landscapes:
Community - Ethnic
Relations

CURRY INCIDENT
The Curry Incident: Multiracial
HDB as Contested Landscape
 Chinese national family complained about the smell of curry
coming from a neighbour’s HDB apartment
 Community Mediation Centre stepped in
 Indian family agreeing to cook curry only when their neighbours,
a Chinese national family, were not home.
 The case made public in the newspaper, led to an online furore.
 Foreigners don’t understand what it mean to be Singaporean? Or
is this xenophobia at work: differentiating between Singaporean
Chinese different from Chinese from China?
National Cook Curry
Day, 21 August 2011

What can we learn from the
Curry Incident?
 Perhaps ethnic integration policy promote multi-
racialism is not enough?
 Does not allow for different understandings of
being Chinese (e.g. Singaporean Chinese vs.
Chinese nationals)
Culturally are different in terms of way of life
 Other efforts? Interest group to bring cohesiveness
Complexity
Landscapes of Community:
Interest-based not
proximity alone
 Recent Issues: Void-decks in HDB
estates: Providing space for
community building
• Residents of HDBs efforts to create a sense of community:
The case of Art in void decks and Community Gardens
• Provides opportunity and purpose to meet,
interact and bond together as a community
• Fulfils State’s role in promoting racial harmony
through collective living and community efforts
• We can also think about what forms of
art/activities are allowed by the state and what
the community envisions to do, and how these
aspirations are controlled/shaped by state
policies

Source:
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/residents-transform-hdb-spaces-in-bid-to-liven-up-the-1
1564908
Community Gardens in HDBs

Gardens as community spaces.

These spaces work with limited resources
and state regulations, but can provide
alternative spaces for not only community
building but also for food cultures.
Many gardens specialise in herbs and plants
that are indigenous to the region or the
community.
State’s initiative “Community in Bloom”:
Community gardens as city-greening
practices
Summary
 Key terms: gender, sexuality, heteronormativity,
nation, community and shared values.
 Landscapes of familyhood and community key to
understanding nation-building in Singapore
 Families that count, communities as ideal
 Landscapes that reflect contested nature of family and
community: Pink Dot and the Curry Incident
 Others? Complaints during Hungry Ghost Festival,
noisy funerals and weddings?
 How to manage living in a diverse society