Bureaucratic Imaginations in the Global City: Arts and Culture in Singapore

Abstract

Among the many tensions in Singapore, there are few as pervasive as that between the economic desire to be a global city and the primordial need to be a nation. The island’s history as a colonial entrepôt and its unexpected independence in 1965 have been discursively synthesized by the postcolonial ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) into a durable narrative of a country that cannot survive should it ever flounder as a city open to the world. Being a global city is therefore no mere expression of state vanity but a deep-seated belief among the ruling elite that the little nation, bereft of natural resources, can only thrive if it is plugged into the international market. Speaking in 1972 to the Foreign Press Club, S. Rajaratnam, who first used the term ‘global city’ about the country, explained, ‘once you see Singapore as a Global City the problem of hinterland becomes unimportant because as a Global City, the world is its hinterland’ (Chan and Ul Haq 2007, p. 217).KeywordsGlobal CityNation BuildingStrait TimeState VanityJapanese GardenThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.