Social Cultural Engineering and the Singaporean State

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Khun Eng Kuah

   Pages 1-12

3. Confucian Ideology and Social Engineering

   • Khun Eng Kuah

   Pages 13-25

4. Buddhism, Moral Education and Nation-Building

   • Khun Eng Kuah

   Pages 27-42

5. Maintaining Ethno-Religious Harmony

   • Khun Eng Kuah

   Pages 43-62

6. Inventing a Moral Crisis: Women and Family

   • Khun Eng Kuah

   Pages 63-86

7. Strategic Partnership between Buddhism and State in Delivering Welfare Services

   • Khun Eng Kuah

   Pages 87-101

8. Development and the Reinvention of Bugis Street

   • Khun Eng Kuah

   Pages 103-125

9. Conservation and Ethnicization of Little India

   • Khun Eng Kuah

   Pages 127-151

10. Conclusion: The Future of the Nanny State

    • Khun Eng Kuah

    Pages 153-156

11. Back Matter

    Pages 157-160

    PDF

This book, a collection of previously published articles, focuses on the role of the Singaporean State in social cultural engineering. It deals with the relationship between the Singaporean state and local agencies and how the latter negotiated with the state to establish an acceptable framework for social cultural engineering to proceed. The book also highlights the tensions and conflicts that occurred during this process. The various chapters examine how the Singaporean state used polices and regulatory control to conserve and maintain ethno-cultural and ethno-religious landscapes, develop a moral education system and how the treatment of women and its morality came into alignment with the values that the state espoused upon from the 1980s through the 1990s.

• Ethnicisation of culture in Singapore
• Social engineering in Singapore
• Cultural policy in Singapore
• Ethno-religious harmony
• Nation building
• Socio-cultural anthropology
• Cultural engineering
• Singaporean state
• Moral crisis of Singapore
• Conservation of culture in Singapore
• Political anthropology

• Visiting Academic, School of Social Sciences (Sociology), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

  Khun Eng Kuah

Kuah Khun Eng is currently visiting the Division of Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Prior to this, she was Professor of Anthropology and Head of the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Monash University Malaysia and Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong. She was also a visiting scholar and coordinate research scholar of Harvard-Yenching Institute at Havard University and a visiting professor at University of Paris Diderot. Her research focus is on Chinese Diaspora-Mainland Connections and Religion and Politics, focusing on Buddhism, politics and philanthropy, gender and social movements. She conducts her research primarily in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. She is the author of 2 books, editor/co-editor of 9 edited books, guest editor/co-editor of 4 journal issues and numerous journal articles and book chapters.

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