EQUALITY OF SPATIAL ACCESS TO PRIMARY HEALTH SERVICES FOR SINGAPORE'S BABY BOOMERS

The ageing baby boomers in Singapore, which account for one-third of the total population in 2006, will have a profound impact on the economy, society and environment. The greatest demand is for health care services. Even though Singapore has generally been regarded as a country where primary health services are easily available to all residents, this paper identifies significant spatial variations across the island-state. In particular, accessibility in some areas with high concentration of boomers is relatively lower compared to other residential areas. This paper concludes that understanding the spatial variation in primary health service accessibility is critical to the success of future policies, which may lead to a review of the provision of such services across the island. The methodology developed in this paper is also applicable to the study of service inequalities in other Asian countries with large rural settings.     

近期新加坡华人经济展望

本文主要结合新加坡经济发展策略 ,探讨新加坡华人经济近期几个发展趋向。本文认为在世界经济的冲击下 ,特别是在政府经济发展策略的引导下 ,本世纪初的新加坡华人经济将有五个主要发展趋向 ,即华人企业的实力有所加强 ;华人将大力拓展海外发展空间 ;华人企业和人才与外国企业和人才的合作与竞争将明显增加 ;华人企业将更多地涉足知识经济领域 ;独立创业的中青年华人可望增加等     

History, Memory, and Identity in Modern Singapore: Testimonies from the Urban Margins

In 2006–2007, I interviewed elderly Singaporeans on theirexperiences of resettlement from an urban kampong (village)to emergency public housing after a great fire in 1961. I learnedmuch about the lives of semiautonomous dwellers in an unauthorizedsettlement and the individual and social transformation followingtheir rehousing. My informants also highlighted what the experiencesmeant to them and their identity in a modern city-state. Thispaper treats the testimonies as both source and social memoryand seeks to avoid the essentialism into which many social historians,oral history practitioners, and memory scholars have fallenin their approach toward the craft. As a source of social history,when used in conjunction with other historical sources, thereminiscences are patently useful for understanding the roleof public housing in transforming a marginal population intoan integrated citizenry. This enables the writing of a new socialhistory of postwar Singapore that departs from the discursiveofficial accounts of urban kampong life and of the 1961 inferno.At the same time, the oral history also underlines powerfulsocial and political influences on individual memory, beingmarked by nostalgia for the kampong and ambivalence toward theimagined character of younger Singaporeans. Statements on therumors of government-inspired arson in the 1961 calamity, however,constitute a significant countermyth in contemporary society,revealing a more critical side to the social memory.     

论二战后新加坡华人社团与教育的互动关系--社会经济的视野

本文以战后初期华人社团在新加坡华文教育发展中的作用为讨论的切入点,重点分析会馆如何重建或新办学校、筹措资金以及提供师资与领导等方面的活动.本文也将通过详细的统计资料,探讨会馆属下学校的董事、教师、学生及其家庭的社会经济和教育背景,以期厘清华文教育、会馆以及社会经济变迁这三者之间交错复杂的关系.     

Still ‘breadwinners’ and ‘providers’: Singaporean husbands,money and masculinity in transnational marriages

As international marriages continue to be on the rise around the world, and in East and Southeast Asia in particular, there is an increasing need for more focused studies on the phenomenon. While the extant literature has paid attention to the complex dynamics of marital intimacies through a ‘gender-sensitive’ lens, the experiences of men are still largely under-examined. This article considers the gendered and classed subjectivities of Singaporean husbands who have married Vietnamese wives and focuses on ‘money’ as a key vehicle through which the men are able to construct masculinities in the spaces of transnational marriage and family. We argue that these non-migrant men engage with transnational processes and practices strategically in order to reclaim respectable and honourable masculine status. In doing so, they dislodge themselves from the idiom of ‘failed masculinity’ commonly ascribed to men who seek foreign spouses, but at the same time reproduce dominant models of masculinity predicated on ‘breadwinning’ and ‘providing’. This article draws on the narratives of 20 Singaporean Chinese men from a range of social backgrounds to demonstrate the endurance of money and economic potency in the performance of masculinities.     

Between universal spaces and unique places: heritage in Universal Studios Singapore

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a case of Singapore's latest theme park, the Universal Studios Singapore (USS). While theme parks are commonly perceived as money-making entities providing entertainment to the masses, the study argues that heritage is an equally important dimension of a commercial theme park's development, identity and profile. As a heritage-rich environment, the USS is a tourism landscape shaped simultaneously by the forces of corporate heritage and local cultural considerations. ‘Glocalization’ – the interaction of global and local forces – offers a conceptual insight into understanding how themed environments are created and marketed as tourism destinations welcoming to all and yet distinctive to its community and locality. Caution, however, is also sounded as to whether an international attraction can or should ever be ‘too local’ at the risk of diluting its global brand name and broad-based appeal.     

二战前新加坡华人基督教教育探析

论文以二战前新加坡华人基督教教育为研究对象,初步考证了新加坡华人教会创办学校的历史,分析了影响新加坡华人基督教教育发展的主要因素、新加坡华人教会办学宗旨的转变以及这一转变所产生的效果。认为二战以前的华人基督教教育对教会在新加坡华人社会中传播起到了重要的促进作用。新加坡华人社会在各个时期所呈现的不同特点,也成为影响教会教育,乃至基督教传播的关键因素。正是基于华人社会的变迁,1885年前后卫理公会调整了教会学校的办学宗旨,从而使新加坡华人基督教得到了长足的发展。     

二十世纪二三十年代南洋华侨在地观念发绪及其动因初探——以新马为中心

论文梳理了前期相关的研究成果,在此基础上对南洋意识的发生和发展、南洋意识的＂具地化＂、在地观念产生和发展的动因等问题进行了分析阐述。认为20世纪二三十年代,新马华侨就一些问题已流露出程度不等的南洋意识、马来亚意识。这表明新马华侨对居住地的认同已有一定程度的发展,其在地观念已开始萌发。新马华侨在地观念发绪的原因是多方面的。适应华侨生存、发展的需要,顺应华侨社会的发展变化,受世界潮流和殖民政策的影响,受新马地区独特的历史特点影响等是主要原因。     

Reflections on ‘fieldwork and disabled students: discourses of exclusion and inclusion’

The promotion of education for sustainable development (ESD) is likely to be constrained by its compatibility with other missions and objectives of higher education institutions (HEIs). Finding space for ESD in the Enterprise Economy invites consideration of opportunities for increasing the visibility and audibility of environmental messages in HE sectors primarily committed to equipping national economies with skilled graduates. A survey of undergraduates registered for a physical geography module at the National University of Singapore was undertaken for three successive cohorts. Students fundamentally associate sustainability with resource-based definitions and usually construct environmental issues in terms of access to and utilization of the resource base. A limited articulation of environmental problems in neighbouring countries suggests that a geographical perspective (emphasizing space and scale) could be usefully enhanced. However, the role of the geography discipline in best serving ESD is ambiguous given the need to infuse ideas through traditional disciplinary boundaries. Reflections on environmental awareness and attitudes among students in Singapore concur with UNESCO recognition that models for ESD must be locally defined in culturally appropriate ways.     

Readers-in-conversations: a politics of reading in literary geographies

While the role of readers in literary geographies has been theoretically acknowledged, the methodological practice of engaging with multiple readers is little and far between. This gap between theory and practice has perpetuated understandings of texts as static representations and of readers as passive and homogeneous. Such problematic notions urgently need to be contested and this paper is one such attempt. Using a case study of Singapore poetry and its resistance to state-driven landscape change, I engage with twenty-one Singaporean readers through an online, asynchronous forum to demonstrate the challenging but rich process of studying reader reception. In doing so, I show how the dynamic co-enactment of responses by multiple readers-in-conversations leads to both complementarities and clashes. This not only reveals a more nuanced understanding of the author–text–reader(s) interactions, but also points to an inevitable politics of reading present in the study of all textual representations.