Introduction

Food has figured in Singapore's post-war, postcolonialindependence as a cultural anchor in times ofdisorientation. It has been part of thetransformation of relationships between people,physical spaces, and with people's relationshipswith food itself – as both commodity and wholefood.In this chapter, we look at the act of producingfood in Singapore as a political act of civicurbanism. We argue that discussions about foodpractices are not only cultural or historical, butpolitical in the context of neoliberalized economiessuch as Singapore: encouraging individual andcollective actions that prefigure a more dynamicculture of civic urbanism.

Through this, we respond to Cho, Križnik, and Hou's(this volume) provocation for more discussions onthe role of citizens and civil society, given theirdiscursive absence in studies of developmentalstates within the neoliberal restructuring ofstate–market relations. While Singapore's centralplanning incorporates new ideas rapidly, this ispremised on the continual repositioning of the stateas provisioner of imaginaries, socialities, andpossibility. We argue, alongside other chapters inthis book, that an overt focus on the state's rolerenders people's work of imagining other forms ofcitizenship invisible. This chapter focuses onalternative practices of building collectivity:building the independence and capacity for people tocontest undesirable futures emerging fromcentralized food production networks, while buildingcollective capacity to surpass the individualizingframe of neoliberal self-help.

To reflect how plural perspectives and actions mayshape the way a network's work emerges, we havechosen to write as a group.