Identity and Politics

A nation is different from a state.
A state is that which has the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a given territory and contains institutions, population and territory (of course, already said it).
Nation is more, it is a community where members recognize rights and duties to each other. A community where people do not really know each other but feel as though they do.

Nation can be understood in 2 ways.
1. Primordialism: it is the culture, language, religion or which defines a nation. People are innately differentiated and can only feel comfortable with their own kind.

Primordialism has some value but is nearly pointless to mention in a globalized world where no nation is a nation because of some innate thing.

Instead, we can think of nations in the situationalist framework.
National integration is something which is continually negotiated and is always evolving and subject to change.
In this sense, nation building is a non-completable project.


The challenge for Singapore is that we are a nation of migrants, with little to no essentialist characteristics to manipulate for identity rhetoric. LKY admits that Singapore is still in the midst of nation building which may fail and cause the country to fall apart (typical of his siege mentality talk).

Furthermore, our recent statehood means that citizens have not undergone crises and difficulties together, making the fostering of mutual trust a very time taking process.

Singapore has employed these strategies. Notice that they are all processes of iconization: taking something which is contingently so (or not even so) and making it appear essential and innate.

First, the shared values of Singapore is an attempt to create and ideological consensus amongst Singaporeans and an establishment of duties of one individual to another which Singaporeans actually need not subscribe.

Next, the costly HDBs ground Singaporeans by giving them a sense of stake in the country which they need not have.

The National Service also allows races (at least for males) to work together, creating this racial cooperation which need not really happen.

The use of symbols and various celebrations of identity are aimed at pretending that there is unity, or at least, to celebrate it until it becomes reality. These include Singapore day for overseas Singaporeans, national day and racial harmony day for locals.

However,
1. Policy ambivalence sabotages this effort. For instance, the insistence of racial self-help groups, the rigidity of the MT policy all points towards this unwillingness for the mixing of ethnic groups despite all the hot talk about racial harmony.

2. It is a fact that the ethnic minorities, e.g., malays, happen to be performing poorly economically. This coinciding of ethnic identity and socio-economic plight inevitably results in sentiments of neglect by the government.

3. Globalization means that there is now a new clash between the more globalized and the less globalized, the heartlander versus the shenton way guy. Also, there is the issue of foreigners versus locals.

4. Statistically, there is much distrust amongst the races and towards the foreigners.
For instance, only 44% of the Chinese are willing to trust someone from another race and only 66% of youths and business owners welcome foreigners.