INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 1, I examined the particular ways in which the construction of national identity began to take shape in post-independent Singapore. This early phase of nation-building was as much about creating a unique national-societal identity as it was about reworking the nation-state norm to suit the local context. From the outset, the Western-educated PAP elite rejected the possibility of reviving the past traditions of Singapore's immigrant population and chose instead to deliberately construct a pragmatic identity based on development and economic success as the symbols of national identification. At the same time, these nation-building efforts were designed to create a bounded sense of national identity, but they disregarded the diasporic connections of Singapore's people and its transnational history. Instead, a progress-oriented transitional narrative became a central feature of the PAP's nation-building strategy. The government's pragmatic approach to identity construction based on development and economic success reinforced the idea that Singapore as a nation is always in transition — on a path towards progress. While this transitional narrative generated a perception that Singapore is always evolving, it has also been accompanied by a state-generated discourse of anxiety over its long-term economic prospects and survival as a nation.

INTRODUCTION

Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's quote provides a typically colourful account of the latest set of perceived challenges facing Singapore. Continuing my exploration into the national response to globalization in Singapore, this chapter turns its attention to the government's project of “globalizing” the nation since the early 1990s and its related efforts to create a sense of home among its citizens. I argue that going global has posed particular challenges to the government, not the least of which is a trend among Singaporeans wishing to emigrate. In this chapter I analyse one of the main governmental responses to these “unhomely” consequences of globalization: the affective citizenship-building strategies put forward in the Singapore 21 policy.

INTRODUCTION

Once again, Goh Chok Tong's colourful and tantalizing image of Singapore in the new millennium has all the hallmarks of the PAP's developmentalism, efficiency, and orderliness written over it. At the same time, it also speaks of a new kind of Singapore which is lively, innovative, fun, and exciting. The idea of Singapore as “cosmopolitan city”, although not new, is an interesting proposition as a national response to globalization. In Chapter 3, I discussed the first distinct policy aimed at developing Singapore into a global city, The Next Lap. That policy was generally confined to the material dimensions of going global: finance, transport, expertise and so forth. However, by the late 1990s the government clearly realized that becoming competitive globally also required a shift in cultural terms. The new global economy demands entrepreneurial and creative workers with the social skills to succeed in a transnationalized workforce of professional cosmopolitan elites. And cities wanting to attract global capital in this new economy, and the professionals who come with it, have to be interesting and attractive enough places. In this chapter I investigate the Singapore state's cultural policy strategies.

INTRODUCTION

In Chapters 3 and 4, I examined the specific positioning of Singapore within the globalized space of flows and the ways the Singapore government has approached the processes of globalization. The 1990s saw a significant change in the way Singapore articulated its relationship to the rest of the world. Its earlier rhetoric of Asian values and the need to preserve and safeguard the Asian cultural traditions of its people against the penetration of “Westernization” gradually gave way to a more concerted effort to transform Singapore into a global city. This gesture towards a “wannabe global city” in Asia has been fostered by marketing Singapore as a regional hub for international finance, services, telecommunications, tourism and, more recently, in the area of arts and culture. In addressing the social and cultural challenges of globalization, the Singapore government continues to maintain rhetorically the need to make Singapore a world class “home” and a cosmopolitan city. Many of its policy visions are about “place-making” and are associated with the government's fear that Singapore risks becoming a “hotel”.

The first of these quotes comes from a section in Hannerz's book,Transnational Connections, where he examines the cultural role of world cities in the context of contemporary globalization. Hannerz suggests that Singapore and Hong Kong are representative of an emerging new form of cultural life and exemplify what he has termed cities of the global ecumene (see also Hannerz 1989). This is indeed a thought-provoking assertion. These two city-states offer many possibilities for thinking about places which are distinct from, and different to, the territorially and culturally bounded form of the nation-state. Now that Hong Kong is no longer a British colonial territory, it remains to be seen whether it will be allowed to evolve as an independent cultural entity under Chinese rule. Singapore, on the other hand, is a city-state which is both a nation and, as we shall see, a world city. While nations have clearly defined territorial boundaries, continuous histories and common identities, world cities are very much of the contemporary global ecumene.

In this chapter I present an historical background to Singapore's national development from colony to early nationhood, and detail the various nation-building strategies employed by Singapore's ruling PAP. The first section of the chapter offers a critical re-reading of Singapore's historical legacy and transnational connections up until its independence in 1965.Soon after independence and over the next three decades, the Singapore political elite embarked on the project of nation-building: to create a sense of national identity amongst the heterogeneous and largely immigrant population. Through a range of institutions and institutionalized practices, an official process of national identification was put in place. I will briefly examine the different aspects of this nation-building project in the second section. In the final section, I explore how we might better conceptualize the formation of nationhood in the Singapore context.

I advance two main arguments in this chapter. One is that, because of the circumstances of the formation of Singapore, the “imagined” dimension of nationhood did not emerge smoothly. The early phase of the Singaporean nationalization project was characterized by strategies aimed at reigning in, or binding Singapore's multi-ethnic immigrant population within the boundaries of the nation-state.

FROM A BARREN PIECE OF LAND TO A THRIVING GLOBAL CITY

Just as I was writing this conclusion, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong delivered his 2003 National Day Rally speech on 17 August. In this annual address, which has become a platform for re-assessing the year's significant events (in this case: the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, the global economic downturn and the worldwide heightened threat of terrorism) and the challenges ahead, Goh pointed out that:

The gist of this statement is quite simple: what Singapore has achieved since independence is proof that it can do just about anything.