INTRODUCTION
In Singapore, we are familiar with the assertion that we live on an island with no natural resources and that human labour is therefore the most important resource that our development has depended on. As Singapore pushes towards the commoditization of labour power, what aspects of our development story remain silenced? Is there any relationship between our development rhetoric and the attainment of cultural hegemony by some local groups over others?
In this chapter, I present my observations of processes that have led to a very specific type of Malay cultural hegemony over other groups that had formerly shared the same natural environment on the north coast of Singapore. My argument is that this cultural hegemony has been aided by government programmes for resource management in Singapore in general and on the north coast in particular. These processes have remained largely undocumented. They form part of the “unsaid” knowledge that has shaped what are today thought of as legitimate and inevitable development processes on the one hand and as existing cultural possibilities on the other.
This discussion is based on two of the three villages on the north coast of Singapore where I did fieldwork in 1985 and 1986. Those villages, Tanjong Irau (located in the Sembawang area) and Kampong Wak Sumang in Punggol (located to the east of the Johor causeway) no longer exist today.
CULTURAL HEGEMONY AND THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE
People structure the world around them on the basis of cultural knowledge invented and reinvented over time, and communicated from person to person in daily interaction. These conceptual structures constitute the system of rationality upon which their choices are made and actions regulated. Preference for a particular natural habitat and its exploitation is therefore culturally learned and institutionalized. For every choice made, there are cultural rationalizations that, in a taken-for-granted fashion, assist individuals to focus on the advantages of making that choice in the face of competing possibilities. This rationalization process is embedded in one or other culturally transmitted mode of coherence (Benjamin 1985, 1993).