Kah Seng Loh
Biographic Data
| ID | 291275 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kah Seng Loh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kah Seng |
| FAMILY NAME | Loh |
| SIGNATURE | LOH K S |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Western Australia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9128-9855 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Origins of Urban Renewal in Singapore: A Transnational History
This article examines the origins of urban renewal in Singapore through a transnational history lens. It focuses on the role in particular of two United Nations–led teams of experts one headed by Erik Lorange and the other by Charles Abrams in the early 1960s and the impact these had on how urban renewal proceeded in Singapore’s central city area. This approach broadens the focus to encompass more than just the role played by Singapore’s Housing …
The International Campaign against Leprosy, 1948-2005
Semi-archives and Interim Archives: A History of the National Wages Council in Singapore
Writing social histories of Singapore and making do with the archives
Postwar urban planning in Singapore rehoused squatters and slum dwellers in emergency public housing and socialized them as model citizens. To write a social history of this urban development is to tangle with historiographical and methodological issues stemming from the use of various archives: the documents of the state, obviously, but also ‘alternative archives’ – namely, the oral histories of former squatters-turned-public-housing owners. His…
Behind barbed wire: Chinese new villages during the Malayan emergency, 1948–1960
Behind Barbed Wire describes the making of post-colonial Malaya from the margins and from the experiences of people who were forced to play a part in it. Drawn from Tan Teng Phee’s doctoral dissert
Unsafety and Unions in Singapore’s state-led industrialization, 1965–1994
Industrial hazards are a neglected part of the history of Singapore’s successful industrialization since independence in 1965. Our paper investigates risk in the competitive shipbuilding and repair industry across three decades and four serious accidents in the industry. The risk was determined by a group of factors: the political economy of the state-led industrialization program, the nature of work within the industry, the degree of supervision…
Ashen History: Narrating the Fire at the Origin of Modern Singapore
Oral histories of former squatters trace the origins of modern Singapore to its largest and historically most important fire at Bukit Ho Swee on 25 May 1961. The inferno not only razed an urban kampong, it also set the stage for the government to transform Singapore into an organized public housing state of governable citizen-workers. The storytellers' ashen histories highlight the grey area colored by the memory of the inferno; they straddle nat…
Tuberculosis – The Singapore Experience, 1867–2018: Disease, Society and the State
Through a rich account of tuberculosis in Singapore from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, this book charts the relationship between disease, society and the state, outlining the struggles of colonial and post-colonial governments to cope with widespread disease and to establish effective public health programmes and institutions. Beginning in the nineteenth century when British colonial administrators viewed tuberculosis as a racial…
Open or Bordered? Singapore, Industrialisation and Malaysian Workers
This article offers a new approach to the study of Singapore history through an interrogation of the city-state’s borderedness and openness to Malaysian workers during the 1970s and 1980s. This was the period in which the foundations of modern Singapore were laid, as the state opened its borders to meet the demand for labour in the industrialisation program. Yet, this open-border policy was overlaid by a state system of work permits, levies and p…
Mental Illness in Singapore: A History of a Colony, Port City, and Coolie Town
The case of Singapore explores the history of mental illness in a British colony, port city, and Chinese coolie town. As a colony, Singapore not only received Western psychiatric expertise from the metropole but also suffered from the inner contradictions and failings of colonial rule. The mental asylum thus had a both modernizing and marginal role. As an international port city, Singapore was a major center for internationally crisscrossing flow…
Emergencities
Western planning experts, beginning with the United Nations Mission of Experts on Tropical Housing in 1950–1951, undertook major interventions in what they described as a zone of urban crisis across Southeast Asia after the Second World War. In various ‘emergencities’, allegedly threatened by expanding squatter settlements, the experts proposed robust and immediate state action to organise a comprehensive regime of planning to replace the unautho…
Michael D. Barr. The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014, 200p
is usually represented in discourse as "overseas Chinese," "Chinese diaspora," and "Sinophone," respectively.Tan thus cogently argues that Sinophone identities are translational, i.e. both relational and translatable, as they are formed by the coexistence of national, regional, ethnic, and local identities (p.18).Sinophone communities, Tan underscores, assume and integrate traits from other cultures to build and rebuild their distinguishing Sinop…
Controlling Nature, Disciplining Human Nature: Floods in Singapore and Metro Manila, 1945–1980s
A history of urban floods underlines the state's efforts to discipline people as well as to control floodwaters. We focus on two big cities in Southeast Asia—Singapore and Metro Manila—in the period from after World War II until the 1980s. During this period, both cities traversed similar paths of demographic and socioeconomic change that had an adverse impact on the incidence of flooding. Official responses to floods in Singapore and Manila, too…
Oral History in Southeast Asia
Using the presence of the past as a point of departure, this books explores three critical themes in Southeast Asian oral history: the relationship between oral history and official histories produced
Oral History in Southeast Asia: Memories and Fragments
Controversial History Education in Asian Contexts
Section 1: Settings 1. Introduction: Controversy, History, and History Education in Asia Loh Kah Seng, Mark Baildon, Ivy Maria Lim, Gul Inanc, and Junaidah Jaffar 2. Teaching Controversial Issues in the Classroom: The Exciting Potential of Disciplinary History Stuart Foster Section 2: Controversies in History Textbooks 3. The Battle Over Memory of the Nation: Whose National History? Helen Ting 4. The Other Side of Silence: Religion and Conflict i…
The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity
Ross King. Reading Bangkok. Singapore: NUS Press, 2011, 272 p
No more road to walk: Cultures of heritage and leprosariums in Singapore and Malaysia
This paper examines how the state, social activists and former sufferers of leprosy participate in an international heritage discourse and how they construct the history of leprosy in contemporary Singapore and Malaysia. This paper finds both dissonances but also convergences between these different interests. The emergence of such entangled narratives is taking place at a time when the leprosariums are threatened by redevelopment and while socia…
Black Areas: Urban Kampongs and Power Relations in Post-war Singapore Historiography
SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthrop…
Records and Voices of Social History: The Case of the Great Depression in Singapore
Black Areas: Urban Kampongs and Power Relations in Post-war Singapore Historiography
SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthrop…
No more road to walk: Cultures of heritage and leprosariums in Singapore and Malaysia
This paper examines how the state, social activists and former sufferers of leprosy participate in an international heritage discourse and how they construct the history of leprosy in contemporary Singapore and Malaysia. This paper finds both dissonances but also convergences between these different interests. The emergence of such entangled narratives is taking place at a time when the leprosariums are threatened by redevelopment and while socia…
Writing social histories of Singapore and making do with the archives
Postwar urban planning in Singapore rehoused squatters and slum dwellers in emergency public housing and socialized them as model citizens. To write a social history of this urban development is to tangle with historiographical and methodological issues stemming from the use of various archives: the documents of the state, obviously, but also ‘alternative archives’ – namely, the oral histories of former squatters-turned-public-housing owners. His…
Behind barbed wire: Chinese new villages during the Malayan emergency, 1948–1960
Behind Barbed Wire describes the making of post-colonial Malaya from the margins and from the experiences of people who were forced to play a part in it. Drawn from Tan Teng Phee’s doctoral dissert
Open or Bordered? Singapore, Industrialisation and Malaysian Workers
This article offers a new approach to the study of Singapore history through an interrogation of the city-state’s borderedness and openness to Malaysian workers during the 1970s and 1980s. This was the period in which the foundations of modern Singapore were laid, as the state opened its borders to meet the demand for labour in the industrialisation program. Yet, this open-border policy was overlaid by a state system of work permits, levies and p…
Emergencities
Western planning experts, beginning with the United Nations Mission of Experts on Tropical Housing in 1950–1951, undertook major interventions in what they described as a zone of urban crisis across Southeast Asia after the Second World War. In various ‘emergencities’, allegedly threatened by expanding squatter settlements, the experts proposed robust and immediate state action to organise a comprehensive regime of planning to replace the unautho…
Records and Voices of Social History: The Case of the Great Depression in Singapore
Black Areas: Urban Kampongs and Power Relations in Post-war Singapore Historiography
SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthrop…
No more road to walk: Cultures of heritage and leprosariums in Singapore and Malaysia
This paper examines how the state, social activists and former sufferers of leprosy participate in an international heritage discourse and how they construct the history of leprosy in contemporary Singapore and Malaysia. This paper finds both dissonances but also convergences between these different interests. The emergence of such entangled narratives is taking place at a time when the leprosariums are threatened by redevelopment and while socia…
The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity
Ross King. Reading Bangkok. Singapore: NUS Press, 2011, 272 p
Oral History in Southeast Asia
Using the presence of the past as a point of departure, this books explores three critical themes in Southeast Asian oral history: the relationship between oral history and official histories produced
Oral History in Southeast Asia: Memories and Fragments
Controversial History Education in Asian Contexts
Section 1: Settings 1. Introduction: Controversy, History, and History Education in Asia Loh Kah Seng, Mark Baildon, Ivy Maria Lim, Gul Inanc, and Junaidah Jaffar 2. Teaching Controversial Issues in the Classroom: The Exciting Potential of Disciplinary History Stuart Foster Section 2: Controversies in History Textbooks 3. The Battle Over Memory of the Nation: Whose National History? Helen Ting 4. The Other Side of Silence: Religion and Conflict i…
Michael D. Barr. The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014, 200p
is usually represented in discourse as "overseas Chinese," "Chinese diaspora," and "Sinophone," respectively.Tan thus cogently argues that Sinophone identities are translational, i.e. both relational and translatable, as they are formed by the coexistence of national, regional, ethnic, and local identities (p.18).Sinophone communities, Tan underscores, assume and integrate traits from other cultures to build and rebuild their distinguishing Sinop…
Controlling Nature, Disciplining Human Nature: Floods in Singapore and Metro Manila, 1945–1980s
A history of urban floods underlines the state's efforts to discipline people as well as to control floodwaters. We focus on two big cities in Southeast Asia—Singapore and Metro Manila—in the period from after World War II until the 1980s. During this period, both cities traversed similar paths of demographic and socioeconomic change that had an adverse impact on the incidence of flooding. Official responses to floods in Singapore and Manila, too…
Mental Illness in Singapore: A History of a Colony, Port City, and Coolie Town
The case of Singapore explores the history of mental illness in a British colony, port city, and Chinese coolie town. As a colony, Singapore not only received Western psychiatric expertise from the metropole but also suffered from the inner contradictions and failings of colonial rule. The mental asylum thus had a both modernizing and marginal role. As an international port city, Singapore was a major center for internationally crisscrossing flow…
Emergencities
Western planning experts, beginning with the United Nations Mission of Experts on Tropical Housing in 1950–1951, undertook major interventions in what they described as a zone of urban crisis across Southeast Asia after the Second World War. In various ‘emergencities’, allegedly threatened by expanding squatter settlements, the experts proposed robust and immediate state action to organise a comprehensive regime of planning to replace the unautho…
Tuberculosis – The Singapore Experience, 1867–2018: Disease, Society and the State
Through a rich account of tuberculosis in Singapore from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, this book charts the relationship between disease, society and the state, outlining the struggles of colonial and post-colonial governments to cope with widespread disease and to establish effective public health programmes and institutions. Beginning in the nineteenth century when British colonial administrators viewed tuberculosis as a racial…
Open or Bordered? Singapore, Industrialisation and Malaysian Workers
This article offers a new approach to the study of Singapore history through an interrogation of the city-state’s borderedness and openness to Malaysian workers during the 1970s and 1980s. This was the period in which the foundations of modern Singapore were laid, as the state opened its borders to meet the demand for labour in the industrialisation program. Yet, this open-border policy was overlaid by a state system of work permits, levies and p…
Writing social histories of Singapore and making do with the archives
Postwar urban planning in Singapore rehoused squatters and slum dwellers in emergency public housing and socialized them as model citizens. To write a social history of this urban development is to tangle with historiographical and methodological issues stemming from the use of various archives: the documents of the state, obviously, but also ‘alternative archives’ – namely, the oral histories of former squatters-turned-public-housing owners. His…
Behind barbed wire: Chinese new villages during the Malayan emergency, 1948–1960
Behind Barbed Wire describes the making of post-colonial Malaya from the margins and from the experiences of people who were forced to play a part in it. Drawn from Tan Teng Phee’s doctoral dissert
Unsafety and Unions in Singapore’s state-led industrialization, 1965–1994
Industrial hazards are a neglected part of the history of Singapore’s successful industrialization since independence in 1965. Our paper investigates risk in the competitive shipbuilding and repair industry across three decades and four serious accidents in the industry. The risk was determined by a group of factors: the political economy of the state-led industrialization program, the nature of work within the industry, the degree of supervision…
Ashen History: Narrating the Fire at the Origin of Modern Singapore
Oral histories of former squatters trace the origins of modern Singapore to its largest and historically most important fire at Bukit Ho Swee on 25 May 1961. The inferno not only razed an urban kampong, it also set the stage for the government to transform Singapore into an organized public housing state of governable citizen-workers. The storytellers' ashen histories highlight the grey area colored by the memory of the inferno; they straddle nat…
Semi-archives and Interim Archives: A History of the National Wages Council in Singapore
The Origins of Urban Renewal in Singapore: A Transnational History
This article examines the origins of urban renewal in Singapore through a transnational history lens. It focuses on the role in particular of two United Nations–led teams of experts one headed by Erik Lorange and the other by Charles Abrams in the early 1960s and the impact these had on how urban renewal proceeded in Singapore’s central city area. This approach broadens the focus to encompass more than just the role played by Singapore’s Housing …
The International Campaign against Leprosy, 1948-2005
Political science (14 works) · Law (12 works) · History (11 works) · Socioeconomic Development in Asia (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Asian Studies and History (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · History (5 works) · Media studies (5 works)