Elias in Singapore

Civilizing Processes in a Tropical City

Bibliographic Data

ID5013371
AuthorsGeorg Stauth (corresponding author)
Year1997
Volume50
Issue1
Pages51-70
Publication date1997-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0725513697050000005
OpenAlexW2039651000
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited20

In recent years Singapore has come to be seen as a successful project of economic transformation and capitalist development. What is more remarkable - but less discussed - is Singapore's success in building a multiethnic society and the unique concomitant civilizing processes that have accompanied this. Singapore represents today a project of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural polity and a postmodern global city that combines civility, nostalgia and economic functionality. Here it is argued that - despite some well-known and decisive dark spots on the political landscape - this success has to do with two concomitant processes. One is the functionally administered extension of the state into the meaning-sphere of the individual, totalizing it from within his own nostalgia in an exoticized urban space. The other is the soteriological transcendence of individual and intra-individual relations within and beyond the culturally recognized `communities'. Westerners will not be able to learn from the Singapore process of multi-cultural civilization should they continue to merely understand it in terms of `Asian authoritarianism

Aesthetics · Authoritarianism · Civility · Civilization · Cosmopolitanism · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Postmodernism · Sociology · Gender Studies · Globalization and Cultural Identity · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Philosophy · Socioeconomic Development in Asia

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub