The Media, Cultural Control and Government in Singapore

Terence Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415413305
• eBook ISBN: 9781136978562
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This book explores this inherent contradiction present in most facets of Singaporean media, cultural and political discourses, and identifies the key regulatory strategies and technologies that the ruling People Action Party (PAP) employs to regulate Singapore media and culture, and thus govern the thoughts and conduct of Singaporeans.

It establishes the conceptual links between government and the practice of cultural policy, arguing that contemporary cultural policy in Singapore has been designed to shape citizens into accepting and participating in the rationales of government. Outlining the historical development of cultural policy, including the recent expansion of cultural regulatory and administrative practices into the 'creative industries', Terence Lee analyzes the attempts by the Singaporean authorities to engage with civil society, the ways in which the media is used to market the PAP's policies and leadership and the implications of the internet for the practice of governmental control.

Overall, The Media, Cultural Control and Government in Singapore offers an original approach towards the rethinking of the relationship between media, culture and politics in Singapore, demonstrating that the many contradictory discourses around Singapore only make sense once the politics and government of the media and culture are understood.

1
A mediated introduction

Culture and government in Singapore

Singapore’s historical and cultural contexts: an introduction

The discourse of the East/West divide is essential for an understanding of Singapore not only because it lies at the very historical origin of Singapore as a colonial construct, but also because […] it is structurally constitutive of Singapore as a modern national cultural entity. Many aspects of Singapore’s social and political reality have been shaped precisely by the ambivalent cultural status of the Singaporean nation-state within the modern world-system of nation-states – an ambivalence emanating from its positioning as a country which in a fundamental way, is both non-Western and always-already Westernized.

(Ang and Stratton 1995: 67)

Singapore is a case study of original authenticity being given up and of various versions of both the ‘West’ and ‘Asia’ begin used to reterritorialize cultural space. It is clear that an authentic culture as an autonomous and internally coherent universe is no longer sustainable in either the advanced or the less-advanced worlds – except, perhaps, as a simple yardstick as to what possessing a modern culture truly means, with the implication that non-Western societies will never attain that standard.

(Wee 2007: 11)

Founded as a British Trading Settlement in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles, the tiny island of Singapore became a British possession in 1824 and was made a Crown Colony of the British Empire in 1867. Singapore was accorded this status in recognition of its tremendous value as a central trading port of Asia, or more specifically, the Malay Archipelago. Except for the period of Japanese Occupation during World War II from 1942 to 1945, Singapore was under British rule until 1963 (CPDD 1999: 11). Although Singapore achieved ‘semi-independence’ as a self-governing state of the Federation of Malaya in 1959, two years after Malaya was granted similar autonomy by the British, colonial rule ‘officially’ ended with the formation of the nation of Malaysia in 1963. This was achieved by the political uniting of Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak (East Malaysia) with Malaya (West Malaysia) on 16 September 1963. The British relinquished political control that year but maintained a military presence in Singapore for defence and foreign affairs purposes until 1971. On 9 August 1965, Singapore was ejected from Malaysia under somewhat politically contentious circumstances to become a fully independent and sovereign Republic (Wee 1993: 716). With the People’s Action Party (PAP) taking office upon full administrative independence and emerging as the ruling party, governing Singapore uninterrupted for the next four decades, Singapore was destined not only to become a new political entity governed by its own constitution, legislation and will, but also a nation with its own cultural codes and practices (Mauzy and Milne 2002).¹

It is important to point out from the outset that there are appreciable limits and potential problems in talking about ‘culture’, particularly when used in a contemporaneous sense. The term ‘culture’ is considered by the late literary theorist Raymond Williams (1958 and 1976) as one of the most complex and complicated in the English language. ‘Culture’ often escapes lexical definition, especially since it is often loosely applied in varying contexts: from corporate culture to pop-culture. In considering its various historical uses and connotations, particularly within the British context, Williams suggests that there are two main senses of the term ‘culture’ (Williams 1976: 76–82). The anthropological or sociological perception is that culture represents “a whole way of life”, which incorporates virtually all forms of social and political activities; while the second and more specialized sense of culture pertains to “artistic and intellectual activities” (Williams 1981: 11). While these ‘activities’ originally referred to ‘high arts’ or elitist culture, as represented by traditional arts and forms of intellectual production, it was later extended to popular and mass-market culture, or modern ‘signifying practices’ ranging from language to philosophy to media, journalism and much more (ibid.).

More noteworthy, however, is Williams’ (1981) assertion that the two senses of the term ‘culture’ have tended to converge in contemporary life, to the extent that when the concept or word ‘culture’ is used, one invokes either all or part of the above meanings. After all, artistic and intellectual enterprises as well as the mass consumption of popular cultural items and practices are, categorically speaking, constituents of a “whole way of life” in contemporary society. As Frow and Morris have also noted, culture should be conceived “not as organic expression of a community, nor as an autonomous sphere of aesthetic forms, but as a contested and conflictual set of practices or representation bound up with the processes of formation and reformation of social groups”, or with society at large (Frow and Morris 1993: xx). The contestation that occurs when people begin to deliberate and debate about the location of culture in society makes culture, especially as understood from the late twentieth century, a site of political struggle and conflict. Since culture, in contemporary situations, is seen as “the production and exchange of meanings” (Teo and White 2003: 3), governments, authorities as well as private enterprises desiring to manage struggles over meanings have become interested in the arbitration and regulation of culture, and in doing so, begin to govern the everyday life and conduct of individuals and groups in society.

The concept of culture, though exemplifying the complexities of life in general, has represented different things at different periods of time in Singapore, even within institutional discourses and government policy. Allen Chun (1996) makes this observation when he distinguishes three phases of official cultural discourse in Singapore, beginning from its formal political independence in 1965 (Chun 1996: 60). The first phase, dating from 1965 to 1982, focused largely on the promotion of the values of ‘rugged individualism’, referring to a disciplined and achievement-oriented work ethic, not unlike Weber’s (1930) depiction of the Protestant work ethic. Driven by an ‘ideology of survivalism’, or a do-or-die mentality, after being ousted from the Federation of Malaya on 9 August 1965 (Yong 1992: 57), the fledgling nation-state of Singapore had little choice but to accentuate physical ‘nationbuilding’ through the cultural ethos of hard work and sheer grit. As Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew once remarked:

Singaporeans have only their energy, ability, and the desire to survive. To succeed, Singaporeans have had to find a working combination of programs and policies which can use this human drive.

(Lee 1979: 39)

If the aim was to turn Singapore dramatically from a “swampy fishing village to the world’s most technologically modern city”, as Neher (1999: 39) has suggested, the task of nation-building in Singapore has been phenomenally successful beyond that of basic survival. In fact, nation-building has come to be defined in Singapore as “the construction of an appropriate institutional and motivational setting for the practice of citizenship” (Hill and Lian 1995: 11). In other words, the foremost agenda of nation-building was not really about mere survival, but about the enshrining of Singapore citizenship and identity as a common pursuit and a highly valued commodity. While in most Western liberal contexts, citizenship implies both activity and reciprocity, where individual rights are balanced by the state’s accountability in attending responsibly to these rights (Giddens 1985: 199–200), citizenship in Singapore is subtly different.² Singapore citizenship is about being accepted as a privileged member of a multiracial, multicultural, multilingual and multireligious community in return for one’s tacit agreement to play a part in contributing actively to the – mostly economic – welfare of the nation (Hill and Lian 1995: 130).³

Nevertheless, one should not dismiss the central concern of ‘practical survival’ during the first cultural phase of Singapore (Chua 1995: 48; Hill and Lian 1995: 189). From the nation’s independence in 1965, led by its charismatic premier Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore was compelled to base all governmental policies upon the reason and rationale of survivalism to combat both domestic and external threats. Domestically, religious and ethnic tensions between the Malays and Chinese people were rife, so too was communism. Externally and geopolitically, as a predominantly Chinese majority state sandwiched in a sea of Islamic-Malay nations, Singapore had the potential to be perceived as a ‘Third China’ by its neighbors (Chua 1995: 48).⁴ With these concerns, coupled with an absence of natural resources to create a self-sufficient economy, Lee’s ‘human drive’ route of economic development was seen as the only solution against both internal and external threats. The socio-cultural attribute of ‘rugged individualism’ brought about by human drive was, quite plainly, the only solution available at that time.

From the early days, the importance of human resource as the most important developmental tool had been rarefied into the ruling PAP’s pervasive ideology of ‘pragmatism’. Pragmatism, in everyday language, is about maintaining a mindset of “being practical” (Chua 1995: 10, 50). While it is not necessary to elaborate on the PAP government’s embrace of pragmatism here as the subject has been much theorized,⁵ it is important to emphasize the extent to which the ideology – and culture – of pragmatism has been internalized and institutionalized within the entire governmental and civil service machinery. It is fait accompli that all exercises in government planning and policy-making since 1965 have had to adhere to this one defining criterion of pragmatism: that is, the question of whether the policy will stimulate or retard economic growth. As Singaporean sociologist Chua Beng Huat has noted:

[P]ragmatism is governed by ad hoc contextual rationality that seeks to achieve specific gains at particular points in time and pays scant attention to systematicity and coherence as necessary rational criteria for action.

(Chua 1995: 58)

The result, therefore, is a politicized ideology that readily privileges the economic over the cultural because economic growth and development is seen as the best guarantee of social and political stability.

Indeed, ‘political stability’ is one of the key traits that Neher (1999) underlines as the cause of Singapore’s remarkable success. Although Neher defines political stability as “the continuing capacity of the government to meet the changing needs of the citizenry” (1999: 45), which exhibits a deeply ingrained culture of pragmatism, he is in fact drawing attention to the PAP leadership’s relatively unhindered rule over Singapore since independence.⁶ The PAP is known to take each election with so much seriousness and deep-seated anxiety that each time a parliamentary seat is lost to an opposition ward – though this is extremely rare – the electorate would be publicly chastized for being ungrateful and unwise at the ballot box (Mauzy and Milne 2002: 150; People’s Action Party 1999: 147). This suggests that political stability – understood as stable, dominant and uninterrupted single-party rule by the PAP – is perhaps the primary driving force behind the ideology of pragmatism (see Mutalib 2003). If so, its longevity must be maintained with whatever means available at the government’s disposal.

Singapore’s foundational socio-cultural and highly politicized policy of multiracialism, which represents the Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others (CMIO) racial/ethnic structure in recognition of Singapore’s geopolitical situation, is in fact an expedient application of pragmatism (Benjamin 1976: 120). The embrace of multiracialism, along with multiculturalism, multilingualism and multireligiosity, collectively referred to as the ‘4Ms’ (Siddique 1989), has been adopted as national policy to ensure uninhibited economic growth and political dominance. Although pragmatism appears to be a purely politically motivated economic trait, it is also very much cultural as it has a major part to play, as will be presented in this book, in the content and shaping of contemporary cultural policy in Singapore. The culture of pragmatism has affected Singaporeans so much that Lee Kuan Yew himself observed in the late 1990s that the younger political leaders of Singapore are “less ideological” and “more pragmatic”, and are therefore more focused on “practical results” (People’s Action Party 1999: 135). As this book will illustrate, albeit somewhat obliquely, the ideology of pragmatism in focusing on economic returns and political dominance remains equally, if not more, pervasive in contemporary Singapore.

One of the most conspicuous displays of pragmatism in Singapore is undoubtedly the almost universal use of the English language in Singapore. The institutionalization of the English language as Singapore’s lingua franca since independence and during the first cultural phase, which doubles as a ‘neutral’ or ‘bridge language’ among the different language and ethnic groups, is classically pragmatic (Lim 1989: 530; Kuo and Jernudd 1988: 7). Concomitantly, the use of the English language to administer national affairs as well as its multicultural heritage did not mean that native languages – referred loosely as the ‘mother tongue’ in Singapore to this day – were discarded. Rather, Singaporeans are required to embrace what Pakir (1992) terms an ‘English-knowing bilingualism’, where English becomes the ‘instrument of Singaporeanization’ whilst the mother-tongue receives the status of a subsidiary language (Bloom 1986). Chinese Singaporeans would thus be taught both the English language and Mandarin Chinese, the Malays would learn the English language with Bahasa Melayu (Malay language), and the Indians were prescribed the English language with Tamil. Even though many students struggled with the difficulties of trying to master dual languages in school, the government stubbornly pressed on with its bilingualism policy through the three cultural phases in Singapore. It was not until the early twenty-first century that the government’s perseverance with its bilingual policy appeared vindicated with the economic ascension of China and India (although it remains premature to assess the extent of this apparent success). While murmurs are still commonly heard regarding the rigidity of Singapore’s bilingualism policy, complaints have more or less subsided with most Singaporeans believing that the economics of globalization necessitates the mastery of more than just the English language.

The second cultural phase from 1982 to 1990, according to Chun, was spawned by the search for an Asian ethic, using indigenous religion and ideologies as the basis for the promotion of an Asian model of modernization cum modernity (Chun 1996: 60; Wee 2007).⁷ This phase was borne out of the PAP leadership’s concern that ‘individualism’, which evolved into a form of self-centeredness rather than ‘ruggedness’, would threaten not just its political reign but also weaken the sociocultural bases of the polity. Chua calls this defining phase the ‘critical break’, or the period when individualism as a motivating force was replaced with the more efficacious concept of ‘communitarianism’, the central idea being that collective interests are placed above individual goals (Chua 1993: 27–28). The most conspicuous inscription of communitarian ideals during this cultural phase was the govern-ment’s decision to introduce the teaching of moral education and religious knowledge education in primary and secondary schools respectively (Chua 1995: 10–11). Religious knowledge as a compulsory curriculum for secondary school pupils was introduced in 1982 as an effort to shore up the moral values of an increasingly ‘individualistic’ and ‘Westernized’ (read: morally decadent) population. Students were made to study the canonical teachings of one of the following beliefs: Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism or Confucian ethics. As a non-religion and popularly subscribed as the rudiments of Chinese culture, Confucian ethics became a residual option for the majority of Chinese students who professed none of the affiliated religions.⁸

To develop a conceptual framework for a Confucian ethics syllabus that would fulfill the ideological agenda of the government, eight Confucianism scholars based in a variety of disciplines and academic institutions in the...

Table of contents

• Routledge Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 A mediated introduction
• 2 Governmentality and culture
• 3 Cultural control, policy and creativity
• 4 Gestural politics
• 5 The Internet, surveillance and technological auto-regulation
• 6 Media governmentality
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index