Liew Kai Khiun
Biographic Data
| ID | 291570 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Liew Kai Khiun |
| GIVEN NAMES | Liew Kai |
| FAMILY NAME | Khiun |
| SIGNATURE | KHIUN L K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nanyang Technological University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5737-6004 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Outside your area: Negotiating K-pop fan zones in a Blackpink concert
From 13 to 15 January 2023, the Korean pop (K-pop) idol group Blackpink held a three-day concert in Hong Kong, the first large scale event for the city still emerging into a post-COVID normality. Based on an ethnographic participatory observation of the activities around the premise, this article seeks to draw out a more dynamic initiatives of committed individual fans or ‘fan volunteers’ in active negotiations with frontline venue managers to pe…
The transnational homoroman-tivist: Charting queer televisual Asiascapes in Handsome Stewardess and Getaway
Old “cowboy towns”: Enduring democratic enclaves as Singapore’s alternative digital histories, 1994–2011
Once overshadowed in a tightly controlled media environment, alternative voices in contemporary Singapore found new avenues through the emerging cyberspace from the 1990s. As irreverent satire, critical commentaries, community networks and knowledge repositories blogs, websites and forums, they came to reflect the digital presence and extension of a nascent, autonomous and enduring digital public culture. Extending the discussion of democratic en…
Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore by Steve Ferzacca
Reviewed by: Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore by Steve Ferzacca Liew Kai Khiun Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore, by STEVE FERZACCA. Singapore, National University of Singapore Press, 2020. 228 pp. ISBN 978-981-3251-08-3 From Rock n' Roll in the 1950s to Black Metal in the 2010s, modern pop music has sat uncomfortably as dissonance and noise to the postcolonial governments in Southeast Asia. Youthf…
Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National, Edna Lim (2018)
Review of: Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National , Edna Lim (2018) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 201 pp., ISBN 978-1-47440-289-7, PDF, £70
K-pop boot camps in choreographic co-creative labor
The worldwide popularity of South Korean popular music has generated global consumer demand for variations of its grueling training regimen offered by talent recruitment agencies and dance studios. Using the case study of the South Korean popular music boot camps offered by the Australia-based agency, The Academy, this article seeks to frame these performative engagements along more cosmopolitan notions of choreographic co-creative labor. In cont…
Suturing the Nation in South Korean Historical Television Medical Dramas
Introduction: Confucian values and television in East Asia
Once accused for the inertia of Chinese feudalism in responding to Western modernity, Confucianism has been attributed to the resurgence of East Asian economies a century later. From the propositio
Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Years by Adil Johan, and: Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National by Edna Lim
Reviewed by: Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Years by Adil Johan, and: Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National by Edna Lim Liew Kai Khiun Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Years Adil Johan Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2018, 376 pp. Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National Edna Lim Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 216 pp. …
Skeuomorphic Domestic Television’s Analog Divide: Television and Social Stratification in Singapore
Through the ethnographic survey of the ownership, use, and display of television-related devices of forty households in Singapore, this article frames the concept of Skeuomorphic Domestic Television. This term describes the continued centrality of the traditional “living room television” amid digital media’s portability. Results from the stocktaking of the ownership of television-related devices in the surveyed households point to the narrowing o…
Liberalizing, Feminizing and Popularizing Health Communications in Asia
Contents: Introduction, Liew Kai Khiun Part 1 Liberalizing Health: Mediations of health and the development of a nation: late Suharto and late modernity, Steve Ferzacca Reporting HIV and its broader impact in Asia: the case of Papua New Guinea, Trevor Cullen Reading HIV/AIDS in the Indian media: social, cultural and economic constructions, Shaunak Sastry and Mohan J. Dutta Press coverage of bird flu epidemic in Vietnam, Annick GuA(c)nel and Sylvi…
Televised minority beauties: Ethnocultural mobility and femininity in Singapore’s television beauty contests
Drawing on two beauty contests Ratu Suria (2012) and Miss Vasantham (2004-present) from the minority Malay and Tamil television stations in Singapore as case studies, this article seeks to map out the contours of ethnocultural scripting of gender and femininity. Rather than finding idealized beauties, these contests have brought to the surface anxieties of ethnocultural incompleteness. More importantly, they also reveal the extent of ethnocultura…
Asianism and the Politics of Regional Consciousness in Singapore
Beneath the glittering new skyscrapers that define the island city-state has been decades of systematic framing and reframing by the Singapore officialdom of its cultural identity. Often articulate
Fuming and fogging memories: Civil society and state in communication of heritage in Singapore in the cases of the Singapore Memories Project and the ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ of 1987
This paper seeks to discuss the ecology of memories in contemporary Singapore as reflective of emerging tensions between the state and civil society in remembering the development of the nation-state for close to about five decades of independence. At the core of the tension are competing efforts to curate public memories through traditional and new media. As the state establishes a nostalgic community that sentimentalizes the dominant narrative …
Remembering digitally: New media and the communicating of new memories
Once contained in personal diaries, family photo albums and scrapbooks of small groupings of friends, the private and intimate realms of memories have now made a huge jump into the public domain of
Neoliberal visions, post-capitalist memories: Heritage politics and the counter-mapping of Singapore's cityscape
This paper argues that the move towards a neoliberal vision of the city-state in the postindustrial era in Singapore has not gone unchallenged. With alternative resources of collective memory, the innovations of the social media and openings within the state dominated press, the authors seek to illustrate the process of counter-mapping of Singapore's cityscape by conservation groups. The relationship between technological affordances and citizen …
Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life
Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life." East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 8(1), pp. 141–142
Industrial railroad to digital memory routes: Remembering the last railway in Singapore
The Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) Berhad railway line was a crucial mode of transport for goods and passengers moving between Singapore and its neighbouring country Malaysia. Tanjong Pagar railway station – the terminus of the KTM railway line in Singapore – ceased operation from 1 July 2011, and KTM railway tracks in Singapore were slated for removal, after the relocation of the terminus to a border station between the two countries. This event ha…
Rewind and recollect: Activating dormant memories and politics in Teresa Teng’s music videos uploaded on YouTube
Posted mostly by consumers rather than industry players, music videos on video-sharing websites like YouTube have been instrumental in expanding the circulation of audio-visual materials in cyberspace. In transnational Chinese pop music, with shared memories engendered by viewers’ nostalgic comments on clips, particularly the older ones, uploads promise the possibilities of transcending existing geopolitical divides between Mainland China, Taiwan…
Vestigial Pop: Hokkien Popular Music and the Cultural Fossilization of Subalternity in Singapore
As part of its modernization project, the postcolonial Singapore state has systematically marginalized the vernacular cultures of the country’s colonial-era immigrant society. Nevertheless, Hokkien popular music has persisted not only in the street festivals that were so characteristic of the colonial port city but also in local movies. A combination of official discouragement and changes in education levels and demography has diminished the sign…
Intersecting Anglicization and Sinicization: Hong Kong cinema and the modernized colonial
10.1080/09502386.2012.697738
Transnational television
St John's Ambulance Brigade and the Gendering of ‘Passive Defence’ in British Malaya, 1937-42
The St John's Ambulance Brigade established itself in British Malaya in the 1930s, as part of efforts to mobilise and train the colony's subjects for civil defence as the geo-strategic climate in the Pacific deteriorated. This article demonstrates how the provision of emergency medical care was a gendered and racialised undertaking in the colonial context. Unlike the military, comprising mainly European and ‘trusted’ ethnic Indian soldiers, the r…
Post-Confucian East Asian television dramas: Staging medical politics inside the White Tower
Between 2003 and 2007, three versions of the Japanese novel, Shiroi Kyotou ( The Great White Tower) were screened as television drama serials in Japan (2003), Taiwan (2006) and South Korea (2007). The phenomenon of White Tower reflects the vibrant multiculturality and transnationality of East Asian television dramas. Accordingly, this article seeks to use the various narratives of White Tower as manifestations of the underlying tensions of post-a…
Planters, Estate Health & Malaria in British Malaya (1900–1940)
Planters, Estate Health & Malaria in British Malaya (1900–1940) Liew Kai Khiun (bio) With the emphasis on the health of plantation workers, this article explores the contestations between planters and the state over the demarcation of public health responsibilities in rubber estates. Arguments over the provision of hospital beds and medical staff were complicated by new understanding of the epidemiology of malaria, which raised questions of anti-…
Neoliberal visions, post-capitalist memories: Heritage politics and the counter-mapping of Singapore's cityscape
This paper argues that the move towards a neoliberal vision of the city-state in the postindustrial era in Singapore has not gone unchallenged. With alternative resources of collective memory, the innovations of the social media and openings within the state dominated press, the authors seek to illustrate the process of counter-mapping of Singapore's cityscape by conservation groups. The relationship between technological affordances and citizen …
Liberalizing, Feminizing and Popularizing Health Communications in Asia
Contents: Introduction, Liew Kai Khiun Part 1 Liberalizing Health: Mediations of health and the development of a nation: late Suharto and late modernity, Steve Ferzacca Reporting HIV and its broader impact in Asia: the case of Papua New Guinea, Trevor Cullen Reading HIV/AIDS in the Indian media: social, cultural and economic constructions, Shaunak Sastry and Mohan J. Dutta Press coverage of bird flu epidemic in Vietnam, Annick GuA(c)nel and Sylvi…
Conjuring the tropical spectres: Heavy metal, cultural politics in Singapore and Malaysia
The evolution of moral panics is dependent on the particular social context and the ability of certain issues to trigger concern within society. In this paper, the authors have employed a cross-comparative study of the heavy metal music subcultures in Singapore and Malaysia to understand the differences in the issues that generate such panics based on the socio-political context of each country and its current concerns. Although the youth involve…
Limited pidgin-type patois? Policy, language, technology, identity and the experience of Canto-pop in Singapore
This article explores the interactions and tensions arising from a vibrant Canto-pop industry exported from Hong Kong to an interventionist nation-state of Singapore bent on discouraging the use of dialects by its ethnic Chinese population. Aside from highlighting the roles of technological and commercial factors behind the regional music networks, it seeks further to position this contemporary relationship within the larger historical and cultur…
Post-Confucian East Asian television dramas: Staging medical politics inside the White Tower
Between 2003 and 2007, three versions of the Japanese novel, Shiroi Kyotou ( The Great White Tower) were screened as television drama serials in Japan (2003), Taiwan (2006) and South Korea (2007). The phenomenon of White Tower reflects the vibrant multiculturality and transnationality of East Asian television dramas. Accordingly, this article seeks to use the various narratives of White Tower as manifestations of the underlying tensions of post-a…
Labour Formation, Identity, and Resistance in HM Dockyard, Singapore (1921–1971)
For close on half a century, the British naval dockyard in Singapore was a prominent employer in the colony. The huge facility attracted migrant workers from the region, and entire settlements and communities were established around the premises of the dockyard as well. This article seeks to place the legacy of Singapore's naval-base workers within the historical contexts of the entanglements between imperialism, diaspora, social movements, and l…
Vestigial Pop: Hokkien Popular Music and the Cultural Fossilization of Subalternity in Singapore
As part of its modernization project, the postcolonial Singapore state has systematically marginalized the vernacular cultures of the country’s colonial-era immigrant society. Nevertheless, Hokkien popular music has persisted not only in the street festivals that were so characteristic of the colonial port city but also in local movies. A combination of official discouragement and changes in education levels and demography has diminished the sign…
The Anchor and the Voice of 10,000 Waterfront Workers: Jamit Singh in the Singapore Story (1954–63)
Jamit Singh's legacy as a charismatic trade unionist and political activist on Singapore's waterfront coincided with its changing political developments. He was instrumental in bringing about this change by transforming the dock workers into an effective political force. His subsequent banishment by the People's Action Party government brought an end to a colourful episode in the history of Singapore's harbour
Planters, Estate Health & Malaria in British Malaya (1900–1940)
Planters, Estate Health & Malaria in British Malaya (1900–1940) Liew Kai Khiun (bio) With the emphasis on the health of plantation workers, this article explores the contestations between planters and the state over the demarcation of public health responsibilities in rubber estates. Arguments over the provision of hospital beds and medical staff were complicated by new understanding of the epidemiology of malaria, which raised questions of anti-…
Terribly Severe Though Mercifully Short: The Episode of the 1918 Influenza in British Malaya
The influenza epidemic swept through our midst in September and October, unhappily with fatal consequences to a number of friends in the Tamil community. We are glad to say that though terribly severe while it lasted, its duration was mercifully short. On the other hand, the great news that the armistice has been signed filled us with unaccustomed joy
Asianism and the Politics of Regional Consciousness in Singapore
Beneath the glittering new skyscrapers that define the island city-state has been decades of systematic framing and reframing by the Singapore officialdom of its cultural identity. Often articulate
Fuming and fogging memories: Civil society and state in communication of heritage in Singapore in the cases of the Singapore Memories Project and the ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ of 1987
This paper seeks to discuss the ecology of memories in contemporary Singapore as reflective of emerging tensions between the state and civil society in remembering the development of the nation-state for close to about five decades of independence. At the core of the tension are competing efforts to curate public memories through traditional and new media. As the state establishes a nostalgic community that sentimentalizes the dominant narrative …
Industrial railroad to digital memory routes: Remembering the last railway in Singapore
The Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) Berhad railway line was a crucial mode of transport for goods and passengers moving between Singapore and its neighbouring country Malaysia. Tanjong Pagar railway station – the terminus of the KTM railway line in Singapore – ceased operation from 1 July 2011, and KTM railway tracks in Singapore were slated for removal, after the relocation of the terminus to a border station between the two countries. This event ha…
Transnational television
Of Lives, Lungs and Limbs: Workers at Sea and Onshore in the Twentieth Century
Limited pidgin-type patois? Policy, language, technology, identity and the experience of Canto-pop in Singapore
This article explores the interactions and tensions arising from a vibrant Canto-pop industry exported from Hong Kong to an interventionist nation-state of Singapore bent on discouraging the use of dialects by its ethnic Chinese population. Aside from highlighting the roles of technological and commercial factors behind the regional music networks, it seeks further to position this contemporary relationship within the larger historical and cultur…
The Anchor and the Voice of 10,000 Waterfront Workers: Jamit Singh in the Singapore Story (1954–63)
Jamit Singh's legacy as a charismatic trade unionist and political activist on Singapore's waterfront coincided with its changing political developments. He was instrumental in bringing about this change by transforming the dock workers into an effective political force. His subsequent banishment by the People's Action Party government brought an end to a colourful episode in the history of Singapore's harbour
Nature in the Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia . Edited by P AUL G Reenough and A NNA L Owenhaupt T Sing . New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2003 Civilising Natures: Race, Res…
Nature in the Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia. Edited by PAUL GREENOUGH and ANNA LOWENHAUPT TSING. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2003 Civilising Natures: Race, Resources and Modernity in Colonial South India. By KAVITA PHILIP. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2003 - Volume 39 Issue 3
Conjuring the tropical spectres: Heavy metal, cultural politics in Singapore and Malaysia
The evolution of moral panics is dependent on the particular social context and the ability of certain issues to trigger concern within society. In this paper, the authors have employed a cross-comparative study of the heavy metal music subcultures in Singapore and Malaysia to understand the differences in the issues that generate such panics based on the socio-political context of each country and its current concerns. Although the youth involve…
Labour Formation, Identity, and Resistance in HM Dockyard, Singapore (1921–1971)
For close on half a century, the British naval dockyard in Singapore was a prominent employer in the colony. The huge facility attracted migrant workers from the region, and entire settlements and communities were established around the premises of the dockyard as well. This article seeks to place the legacy of Singapore's naval-base workers within the historical contexts of the entanglements between imperialism, diaspora, social movements, and l…
Terribly Severe Though Mercifully Short: The Episode of the 1918 Influenza in British Malaya
The influenza epidemic swept through our midst in September and October, unhappily with fatal consequences to a number of friends in the Tamil community. We are glad to say that though terribly severe while it lasted, its duration was mercifully short. On the other hand, the great news that the armistice has been signed filled us with unaccustomed joy
Making Health Public: English Language Newspapers and the Medical Sciences in Colonial Malaya (1840s–1941)
The print and broadcast media are traditionally vital vehicles for both the transmission of information and framing of discussion on health, medicine, and diseases. However, their roles have been largely peripheral in medical historiography. In this respect, this paper explores the position of English language newspapers in colonial Malaya in identifying and disseminating epidemiological data as well as commentaries on public health issues and po…
Planters, Estate Health & Malaria in British Malaya (1900–1940)
Planters, Estate Health & Malaria in British Malaya (1900–1940) Liew Kai Khiun (bio) With the emphasis on the health of plantation workers, this article explores the contestations between planters and the state over the demarcation of public health responsibilities in rubber estates. Arguments over the provision of hospital beds and medical staff were complicated by new understanding of the epidemiology of malaria, which raised questions of anti-…
Transnational television
St John's Ambulance Brigade and the Gendering of ‘Passive Defence’ in British Malaya, 1937-42
The St John's Ambulance Brigade established itself in British Malaya in the 1930s, as part of efforts to mobilise and train the colony's subjects for civil defence as the geo-strategic climate in the Pacific deteriorated. This article demonstrates how the provision of emergency medical care was a gendered and racialised undertaking in the colonial context. Unlike the military, comprising mainly European and ‘trusted’ ethnic Indian soldiers, the r…
Post-Confucian East Asian television dramas: Staging medical politics inside the White Tower
Between 2003 and 2007, three versions of the Japanese novel, Shiroi Kyotou ( The Great White Tower) were screened as television drama serials in Japan (2003), Taiwan (2006) and South Korea (2007). The phenomenon of White Tower reflects the vibrant multiculturality and transnationality of East Asian television dramas. Accordingly, this article seeks to use the various narratives of White Tower as manifestations of the underlying tensions of post-a…
Intersecting Anglicization and Sinicization: Hong Kong cinema and the modernized colonial
10.1080/09502386.2012.697738
Rewind and recollect: Activating dormant memories and politics in Teresa Teng’s music videos uploaded on YouTube
Posted mostly by consumers rather than industry players, music videos on video-sharing websites like YouTube have been instrumental in expanding the circulation of audio-visual materials in cyberspace. In transnational Chinese pop music, with shared memories engendered by viewers’ nostalgic comments on clips, particularly the older ones, uploads promise the possibilities of transcending existing geopolitical divides between Mainland China, Taiwan…
Vestigial Pop: Hokkien Popular Music and the Cultural Fossilization of Subalternity in Singapore
As part of its modernization project, the postcolonial Singapore state has systematically marginalized the vernacular cultures of the country’s colonial-era immigrant society. Nevertheless, Hokkien popular music has persisted not only in the street festivals that were so characteristic of the colonial port city but also in local movies. A combination of official discouragement and changes in education levels and demography has diminished the sign…
Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life
Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life." East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 8(1), pp. 141–142
Industrial railroad to digital memory routes: Remembering the last railway in Singapore
The Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) Berhad railway line was a crucial mode of transport for goods and passengers moving between Singapore and its neighbouring country Malaysia. Tanjong Pagar railway station – the terminus of the KTM railway line in Singapore – ceased operation from 1 July 2011, and KTM railway tracks in Singapore were slated for removal, after the relocation of the terminus to a border station between the two countries. This event ha…
Asianism and the Politics of Regional Consciousness in Singapore
Beneath the glittering new skyscrapers that define the island city-state has been decades of systematic framing and reframing by the Singapore officialdom of its cultural identity. Often articulate
Fuming and fogging memories: Civil society and state in communication of heritage in Singapore in the cases of the Singapore Memories Project and the ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ of 1987
This paper seeks to discuss the ecology of memories in contemporary Singapore as reflective of emerging tensions between the state and civil society in remembering the development of the nation-state for close to about five decades of independence. At the core of the tension are competing efforts to curate public memories through traditional and new media. As the state establishes a nostalgic community that sentimentalizes the dominant narrative …
Remembering digitally: New media and the communicating of new memories
Once contained in personal diaries, family photo albums and scrapbooks of small groupings of friends, the private and intimate realms of memories have now made a huge jump into the public domain of
Neoliberal visions, post-capitalist memories: Heritage politics and the counter-mapping of Singapore's cityscape
This paper argues that the move towards a neoliberal vision of the city-state in the postindustrial era in Singapore has not gone unchallenged. With alternative resources of collective memory, the innovations of the social media and openings within the state dominated press, the authors seek to illustrate the process of counter-mapping of Singapore's cityscape by conservation groups. The relationship between technological affordances and citizen …
Liberalizing, Feminizing and Popularizing Health Communications in Asia
Contents: Introduction, Liew Kai Khiun Part 1 Liberalizing Health: Mediations of health and the development of a nation: late Suharto and late modernity, Steve Ferzacca Reporting HIV and its broader impact in Asia: the case of Papua New Guinea, Trevor Cullen Reading HIV/AIDS in the Indian media: social, cultural and economic constructions, Shaunak Sastry and Mohan J. Dutta Press coverage of bird flu epidemic in Vietnam, Annick GuA(c)nel and Sylvi…
Televised minority beauties: Ethnocultural mobility and femininity in Singapore’s television beauty contests
Drawing on two beauty contests Ratu Suria (2012) and Miss Vasantham (2004-present) from the minority Malay and Tamil television stations in Singapore as case studies, this article seeks to map out the contours of ethnocultural scripting of gender and femininity. Rather than finding idealized beauties, these contests have brought to the surface anxieties of ethnocultural incompleteness. More importantly, they also reveal the extent of ethnocultura…
Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Years by Adil Johan, and: Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National by Edna Lim
Reviewed by: Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Years by Adil Johan, and: Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National by Edna Lim Liew Kai Khiun Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Years Adil Johan Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2018, 376 pp. Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National Edna Lim Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 216 pp. …
Skeuomorphic Domestic Television’s Analog Divide: Television and Social Stratification in Singapore
Through the ethnographic survey of the ownership, use, and display of television-related devices of forty households in Singapore, this article frames the concept of Skeuomorphic Domestic Television. This term describes the continued centrality of the traditional “living room television” amid digital media’s portability. Results from the stocktaking of the ownership of television-related devices in the surveyed households point to the narrowing o…
Political science (24 works) · Sociology (22 works) · History (18 works) · Law (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Socioeconomic Development in Asia (15 works) · Asian Culture and Media Studies (14 works) · Media studies (14 works) · Art (13 works) · History (13 works)