Introduction
The contents of this book concern one of the most urgent problems on the global scene today: how can a nation become a cohesive, successful society despite the presence of potential faultlines? We study this question by looking at Singapore, a multicultural nation comprising Chinese, Malays, Indians and others that on one hand, is characterised by peaceful relations between ethnic groups and, on the other hand, has created a system of winners and losers through its system of meritocracy. With the potential faultlines of race and class never far behind, Singapore is an interesting case study of how social cohesion is achievable under conditions of ethnic and religious diversity, meritocratic competition, and inequality.
This book highlights the role of social networks in adding to, or detracting from, the extent to which Singapore is a cohesive society in the sense that its people identify as members of Singapore society and not just members of their respective subgroups. It reviews the social history of Singapore, the reasons for the patterns of identification found today, the role of networks linking subgroups in promoting cohesion, the sources of such integrative networks, and areas in which inter-group relationships are not emerging as well as they could and should. It illuminates the ways government efforts to promote cohesion have had mixed results and suggests ways to foster social integration and national unity.
The book showcases the “social capital of Singapore.” By social capital, we mean “network diversity”—the extent to which ties connect subgroups to create a cohesive society. In populations characterised by social diversity, marked by a rich variety of races, religions, nationalities, and class groups, the challenge is how to integrate all groups enough to foster a cohesive society. It underscores the power of social relationships. Values such as multiculturalism, meritocracy, and tolerance may have the potential to rally a people, but relationships with one another, connecting different groups, make national unity an experiential reality at the level of everyday life.
Political economy: A multicultural meritocracy
It is virtually impossible to write about Singapore without evoking the form of its political economy—a modern-day meritocracy that is multicultural yet meritocratic at the same time. This “multicultural meritocracy” contains a significant reservoir of racial and religious harmony, the work of decades, not occurring by accident or “because Singaporeans are a uniquely virtuous people,” but because of “a set of constitutional, political, and social structures”—a point reiterated by the Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong at the Appeal of Conscience Foundation Annual Awards Dinner, where he accepted the World Statesman Award from the New York-based interfaith group (The Straits Times 24 September 2019). But, the application of meritocracy has yielded a paradox: after decades of doing this, we see a society segregated by the winners and losers of meritocratic competition, who increasingly have entered their own orbits of social living with little mixing between them. These form the contextual backdrop of our inquiry—the study of social networks set against a multicultural and meritocratic and thereby unequal society. The ties within it form the basis of our empirical analyses.
Social networks are best understood within a broader societal context, as American sociologist Mark Granovetter (2002) has argued: “Simply evoking network structure is causally insufficient without a more developed sociological understanding of the historical context… [N]etwork analysis should be less formal and methodological and more linked to standard sociological concerns with power, social structure and institutions than is now the case” (Feenstra and Hamilton 2006:22–23). Our book, thus, joins the work of many other scholars probing the fit and interaction between institutions and social structures on one side, with social networks on the other, to provide evidence-based insights to scholars on social capital in multicultural and capitalist cities around the world.
Social capital has been variously described in terms of its value for building communities. For example, Robert Putnam (2000) describes it as follows: “The core idea of social capital theory is that social networks have value… whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (Putnam 2000:18–19). Other scholars have described social capital as “trust,” the expectation that others will adhere to the norms of society, thus making social exchange possible (Fukuyama 1995; Powell 1990). The disadvantage of these definitions, however, is the omission to clarify the kinds of social capital that matter, much less under what circumstances. If networks are valuable, what kinds of social relationships matter, for what purposes, and under what conditions?
This book promotes the idea that social capital can be thought of in terms of “network diversity”—as ties that link and/or bridge different groups in society. Network diversity captures the idea that social networks connecting different milieus are generative of a larger, more inclusive sense of social cohesion and identification. Specifically, we map the social networks of a sample of 3,000 Singapore residents (citizens and permanent residents) to show that intergroup ties foster cohesion and government policies are relevant to the extent to which such ties emerge. Our aim in this project was to paint a comprehensive picture of the ties making up Singapore society using survey research. We asked respondents to share information about their personal connections. This yielded a total of 17,413 ties, granting us rich insight into their social networks and inspiring us to write this book.
Our current research interest was sparked by a number of questions. What do personal networks in Singapore look like? Do the ties within these networks cross the social divides of race, religion, nationality, and class? How can we build more of such ties to strengthen social cohesion? Ultimately, what are the factors that unify multiple groups within a nation? And how do social ties interact with institutional characteristics to contribute to nation building?
The Singaporean brand of meritocracy is widely known as a unifier, endorsing the equal treatment of all identity groups. By creating an open system of competition which removes barriers to social mobility, it enables bright children no matter the background to enter the same schools (Back to Raffles@Bras Basah 2019). But, we suggest the meritocracy is also a divider. It stratifies talent and puts different performers onto different academic and professional tracks, giving rise to the segregation of high performers from the rest and resulting in social polarisation (Murray 2012; Putnam 2015). This sets in motion a set of conflicting forces, both integrating and segregating. In such a context, we asked: Is social cohesion achievable at all? How do we curb the social closures and silos created by meritocratic sorting?
To begin to answer these questions, we examined an important facet of social cohesion, “national identity”: the extent to which people identify with the nation and not just with their own groups based on ascriptive or other deep-set forms of identity. We considered the role played by network diversity in the formation of such a sense of nationhood, testing the idea that network diversity—ties to different parts of society—is generative of a larger national sense of affinity and consciousness. We hypothesised that the more diverse people's networks are in terms of gender, age, racial, religious, and class backgrounds, the greater their sense of connection to the nation. Through diverse relations, they learn to accommodate and even absorb different cultures and milieus which, for a young nation like Singapore, is critical for cohesion and self-image.
The most influential writers on nationalism—e.g., Benedict Anderson (1983, on print capitalism), Ernest Gellner (1983, on high culture), and Eric Hobsbawm (1992, on narratives)—have examined the role of large structures in the building of nations. We argue for something more regular, more mundane, routine, and perhaps subterranean, but no less significant and felt. We contend that social relationships generate feelings of national identity through the sharing of support in everyday life, and these build a nation (Appiah 2006; Fox & Miller-Idriss 2008; Wimmer 2018). Through “one tie at a time” among family members, colleagues, neighbours, acquaintances, and strangers, especially through bridging forms (as opposed to bonding) of social capital, social divides diminish and communities come together.
Placing social connections at the centre of the inquiry driving this book, we probed the following three areas:
Patterns: How do Singaporeans connect? Are their social relationships boundary-spanning ones that crosscut the social divisions of age, gender, race, and class? Or are the ties characterized by social closure? If so, on what dimensions do they close in?
Sources: Acting under the assumption that network diversities are boundary-spanning ties and, as such, are valuable public goods for social cohesion, what kinds of domains and social infrastructures generate them? What are the organizational drivers and platforms of network diversity?
Consequences: What are the individual and collective effects of network diversity? Why should we invest in diverse contacts? What are the private and public payoffs? Do diverse connections amount to a greater sense of national affinity and consciousness? Do they boost social trust between groups?
Answering these questions yielded a set of findings we did not expect.
First, we did not see the usual faultlines of race and religion come to the fore. Instead, class segregation, a lack of social mixing between elites and non-elites, between public and private housing residents, emerged as the unmistakable pattern. We have a system that encourages ethnic social mixing among neighbours and workers, but at the same time, relies on the meritocracy to sort and track its students and workers by measurable indicators such as grades, which in the end must produce what we have today, a class society.
Second, we found schools, workplaces, and voluntary associations (including those in sports and culture) generated a significant amount of all types of network diversity, but with a twist. The effects were unequal across groups. For example, although schooling increased network diversity for all age groups, this rate of increase was slower for more recent cohorts (those between 21 and 34 years) than older cohorts (35 years and more), suggesting that class circles have tightened with each successive cohort. Encouragingly, however, the boundaries seemed to blur as students transitioned into the workplace, with more social mixing after graduation.
Third, there was a robust link between different types of network diversity and the collective outcomes of social trust and national identity. Respondents who reported high levels of network diversity, whether gender, race or class, were also likely to report a high level of national identity. In other words, the more they associated with people from different parts of the social structure, the more they felt a sense of belonging to the nation as a whole. This allows us to suggest that there can be no national identity without real intergroup connections; it is not values alone that meld a nation. Nations are more than imagined communities, relationships between you and me are what make a nation. Without these everyday networks, a state would simply fail to become a nation.
