Chinese ethnicities in neoliberal Singapore? State designs and dialect(ical) struggles of community associations

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, Singaporean state authorities have been increasingly marketing the city state as a knowledge-based hub between mainland China and western societies. Their focus on Mandarin-speaking mainlanders contrasts with Singapore's historical Chinese roots. By investigating the daily activities of Hokkien and Teochew community associations, I argue that these associations are finding ways to adapt to state initiatives that market a China-centric identity and target mainlanders. These dialect-based associations try to profit from state designs, while at the same time reclaiming their own historical distinctiveness. Drawing on qualitative work, I document the temporal practices of local dialect-based associations in reaction to neoliberal state initiatives that reduce Chineseness to a de-historicized skill set and stress how state–community interactions shape evolving Chinese ethnicities of the city state.

Keywords:

• Singapore
• neoliberalism
• Chineseness
• temporalization
• ethnic change
• dialect-based community associations

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this article was presented to the Association of Asian Studies in Toronto in February 2012. Thanks are due to the two anonymous referees of this journal, Dan Bousfield and Ajay Parasram for their insightful comments, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for its financial support. I remain, however, solely responsible for any errors in fact or judgement in this analysis.

Notes

1. The use of the notion of westernness throughout this article remains deliberately ambiguous, as it broadly refers to westernized, Caucasian and mainstream social practices and mentalities (Chan 2000).

2. In the Singaporean context, ‘youth’ is generally understood as encompassing people fifteen to thirty-five years of age (NYC 2012).

3. As Eugene Tan (2003, 751) indicates, Chineseness is a ‘racial-cultural identity and value system’ constructed by Singaporean state authorities to further national economic objectives, whether local or transnational.

4. The English spelling used in this article for the terms huiguan, Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan and Teochew Poit Ip Huay Kuan is based on the choice made by the SFCCA in its publications (see SFCCA 2005).

5. More specifically, the government has utilized the cultural field to better define Chineseness in recent years. This Chineseness is officially constructed as a blanket ethnic identity but finds necessary references to dialect-based Chinese ethnicities, even if obfuscated and denied. Examples include the transformations on the Singapore River, notably the relocation of the Asian Civilization Museum in the Empress Place Building, as well as the strategic and stereotypical use of dialect speakers in films and on television (Saunders 2004, 443–444; Chang and Huang 2005; Goh and Tan 2007, 2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jean Michel Montsion

JEAN MICHEL MONTSION is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Studies at Glendon College, York University.