Submissions

The Department publishes reports of ongoing research by staff members, postgraduate students and visitors to the Department in its Working Paper Series. The editors are Maribeth Erb and Alexius Pereira. Enquiries about the Series should be sent to socmerb@nus.edu.sg or socaap@nus.edu.sg.

All submissions to the Series should be sent to:
The Editor
Working Paper Series
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore
11 Arts Link, Singapore 117570
Fax: (65) 67779579

Electronic copies: Adobe Acrobat files open up in a new window. Please note that the usual copyrights apply to the working papers.

Note to authors and publishers: If a working paper listed here has been published in a journal or book, please notify the webmaster with details of the publication. We will take the electronic copy off-line and list the appropriate citation.

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190. Wei-Jun Jean Yeung. The Days of the Week: Intra-family Childcare Time Distribution, 35 pp. Download pdf

Abstract. This paper examines the distribution of intra-family childcare time during the course of a week. The analyses are based on children’s time diaries collected in the Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from a national sample of children aged 0-12 who lived with both parents. We tested existing theories of intra-family division of labor. Our results show that the time parents spend with their children is complementary rather than substitutable. There is a high positive correlation between parents’ time with children, which holds by days of the week, with a stronger relationship observed on weekend days. We propose a parental joint value perspective to explain this pattern. We also find that parents with a college education spend more time with their children on achievement-related activity, and much of these activities take place on weekend. Family time use remains gendered as boys spend more time with the father on leisure activities and girls spend more time with the mother on household activities.

Wei-Jun Jean Yeung is Professor at the Department and Asia Research Institute. She has almost 20 years of university teaching and research experience, particularly in quantitative sociology.  Before coming to NUS, she was with the Institute for Social Research in University of Michigan and the Department of Sociology in New York University. Among her many achievements are being a co-principal investigator of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, one of the longest running social science panel surveys, and receiving many prestigeous research awards. She has served on the editorial board for the Journal of Marriage and Family and Child Development. She is a Board member of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. Her current research and teaching focus on intergenerational studies, family and children’s well-being and policies, social inequality and China’s demographic and family transitions.

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189. Yuko Okubo. The Localization of Multicultural Education in Osaka, Japan: With a Focus on the Concept of “Native Speaker”, 35 pp. Download pdf

Abstract. The concept of “native speaker,” which is conventionally associated with homogeneous national and ethnic subjects, is often used as a model or norm for teaching language. Previous studies such as Sakai (1997) critiqued the homogeneity of “native” and “non-native” speakers as well as a conceptual distinction between the two, but few ethnographic studies examine this issue beyond that. This paper attempts to deconstruct the notion of homogeneous “native speakers,” by documenting the ways in which the notion of “native speaker” is being reproduced and by demonstrating the effects and dilemmas involved in this process in ethnographic detail.

Yuko Okubo is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department. Her most recent work is “Analysis of the Discourse of Mother Tongue in Teaching the Japanese Language to the ‘Newcomer’ Children: From a Case Study of the Japanese Language Classrooms for the Chinese Returnees and Vietnamese  Residents (in Japanese)”. In Bunka, Kotoba, Kyoiku: Nihongo/Nihon no Kyoiku no “Hyojun” o Koete (Culture, Language, and Education: Beyond the “Standard” of the Japanese Language and Japanese Education), edited by Shinji Sato and Neriko Doerr. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten. Pp. 239-266.

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188. Ho Kong Chong. Meandering beyond the Single Case in Urban Studies, 17 pp. Download pdf

Abstract. One strand of urban studies has had a long distinguished history of developing insights based on a single case study using ethnographic methods where the lone researcher invests a significant amount of time with informants (indiviudals, families, businessees) in local communities which are represented groups in place-based settings. But as communities are sucked into globalization’s embrace, sociologists who continue to take an active interest in understanding the city have good cause to go beyond single case studies. If we believe that the local matters in reshaping and modifying the effects of globalization, then the purpose of comparison lies in the ability to uncover different agencies on the ground over a range of issues. This focus on understanding global-local intersections will require the researcher to think more conceptually and comparatively. The paper introduces three multi-site fieldwork approaches and discusses the relationship between theory and data, site selection, and the limits of researcher roles and claims.

Ho Kong Chong is Associate Professor at the Department. His most recent editorial work is co-editing Globalization, the City and Civil Society in Pacific Asia: The Social Production of Civic Spaces, with Mike Douglass and Ooi Giok Ling (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).

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187. Gloria Arlini. (Mis)remembering Soe Hok Gie:Transmitting and (re)constructing social memory in turbulent Indonesia, 20 pp. Download pdf

Abstract. This paper looks at how intergenerational transmission of social memory took place in Indonesia during two of its most turbulent periods: the 1966 Tritura demonstration that ended the Old Order, and the 1998 student demonstration that brought down Soeharto’s New Order regime. I seek to find out how Indonesians in the 1960s and the 2000s remember Soe Hok Gie (1942-1969), a Chinese Indonesian activist who was a central figure in the 1966 student demonstration. The method employed is by analyzing two documents that function as “sites of memory” (Nora, 1996) upon which the collective memory of Soe is centred. These documents are his diary, published under the title of Catatan Seorang Demonstran (1983), and a biographical feature film entitled Gie (2005, dir. Riri Riza). By comparing the portrayal of Soe in the diary and the movie, Gie provides a platform to analyze how present day Indonesians as a specific “interpretive community” (Plummer, 2001:43) (re)interpret and (re)negotiate their history and memory. This paper therefore views Gie as a medium through which one understands how modern Indonesia remembers its past.  

Gloria Arlini is a Masters student in the Department. She is an alumni of NUS Sociology and her thesis is titlted (Re) Interpreting Cheng Ho – Contesting the History of Chinese Indonesian and the Islamization of Indonesia. 

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186. Justin Lee. Conditions for Progressive Research Programs in ‘Qualitative’ Sociology, 2007, 33pp. Download pdf

Abstract. I assess certain ‘qualitative’ approaches in sociology as technologies of research in order to determine what ‘technical’ aspects (rather than ‘social’ conditions) are necessary for engendering progressive research programs. Although hugely influential and thriving, symbolic interactionism, Goffmanian analysis and ethnomethodology have failed to become high consensus and rapid progress research programs. On the other hand, conversation analysis has been quite successful, but not without tradeoffs. They have focused on the task of explication at the cost of foreclosing other levels of meanings sociologists are interested in.

Justin Lee is PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at University of California, Los Angeles. He is an alumni of NUS Sociology and is currently teaching at the Department while writing his doctoral thesis on the institutional integration of psychotherapy.

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185. Noorman Abdullah. Rave Encounters and the Meaningfulness of ATS Use:
Realms of ‘Alternative’ Possibilities in Singapore, 2007, 28pp. Download pdf

Abstract. Illicit drug use among young people is oftentimes configured in terms of ‘social problems’ and ‘solutions’, which, in effect, constructs the recreational use of such stimulants, and those engaged in such activities, as ‘wrong’, and ‘immoral’. Using the case of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) in rave settings, this paper questions the nature of such a ‘problem’ in Singapore and argues that the imposed constructions of the ‘drug problem’ neglect a complex of personal and social meanings of ATS users, many of whom have transformed the original authoritative and homogeneous descriptions to possibly include multiple, negotiated meanings collated from their social worlds. These experiences are meaningful for users and that rave-related ATS use and activities provide new possibilities as alternative spaces for users to connect and bond with one another. As such, it gives particular attention to the uses, meanings, and experiences as active ATS users themselves report them. Three broad themes of the ATS experience emerge from the study, namely connectivity, which includes sex and sensuality, altered states of consciousness, and ‘resistance’.

Noorman Abdullah is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University. He is an alumni of the Department and graduated as Master of Social Science in Sociology in 2005. His Master Thesis is titled Flights of Ecstasy: Youth Recreational Drug Use in Singapore.

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184. Sarbeswar Sahoo. Globalization and “the Politics of the Governed”: Redefining Governance in Liberalized India, 2007, 26pp. Download pdf

Excerpt. I argue that though the marginalized are the losers in the economic field, they have found expression in the political field, and as a result a new “politics of the governed” has emerged. The interests of the rich that were previously supported by the state have now been constrained by the rising subaltern politics in recent years. The poor have resorted to the political space provided to them by the constitutional democracy. By using this space through their increasing participation in the political sphere and demanding their due rights, they have challenged the hegemony of the elites. The question one then might ask is why they did not use this political space previously, given that it had been ensured by the Constitution long before in the 1950s? I argue that the “contradictions of globalization” i.e. rising inequality, increasing exploitation, growing unemployment and, most importantly, the state’s withdrawal from social welfare services, transformed them from what Karl Marx once called, a “class-in-itself” to a “class-for-itself”.

Sarbeswar Sahoo is a PhD Candidate at the Department. His dissertation is titled The Dynamics of Mobilization and the Politics of Democratization: Exploring the ‘Political’ Role of Civil Society in Rajasthan, India.

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183. Vincent Chua. Social Networks and Labour Market Outcomes in the Meritocracy, 2007, 28pp. Download pdf

Abstract. The overarching contribution of this paper is to our growing understanding of the effects of context on the role of personal contacts in job searches. While it is widely documented that personal contacts are a crucial means to individuals’ job success, my findings suggest that the usefulness of personal contacts may be attenuated in highly meritocratic labour market contexts. This paper examines the case of Singapore – a labour market located at one ideal-typical extreme of a distribution of meritocracy. One of the main findings is that in labour market sectors (such as the Singapore civil service) that espouse the meritocratic selection of talent via educational credentials, personal contacts may be a rather futile means to job success. This paper also discusses an elitist paradox, that is, while using ‘high-status’ contacts do increase job earnings, such network resources remain inaccessible for those at the lower end of the social structure. Finally, by using a ‘varieties of capitalism’ framework, I argue that the difference in the use of personal contacts for job searches in the United States versus Singapore are rooted in differences in how labour supply and demand are linked in each country’s labour market.

Vincent Chua is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at University of Toronto. He is an alumni of NUS and graduated as Master of Social Science in Sociology in 2005.

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182. Vineeta Sinha. Harriet Martineau – Social Thinker and Methodologist: In Danger of Being Forgotten Once Again?, 2007, 26pp. Download pdf

Commentary. A French intellectual travels in the United States of America in the nineteenth century, returns to France and writes an important book analyzing American democracy, in which the contradiction is noted that the freest and most democratic society in the world also contains a group of enslaved people suffering the worst despotism. This is Alexis de Tocqueville and also, his contemporary and no less a sociologist, a woman called Harriet Martineau.

Associate Professor Vineeta Sinha has been a stalwart teacher of social theory in our Department for a decade. Over the years, together with Associate Professor Farid Alatas, she has pushed the canonical boundaries of the discipline (Marx-Weber-Durkheim) by including the works of non-Western and female social thinkers such as Ibn Khaldun, Jose Rizal and Martineau in the syllabus for social theory. In this working paper, Sinha reflects from her experience of teaching Martineau on, to quote from the paper, the “logic, rationale and historical process by which the sociological canon is constructed and how it notes and marks some individuals as social thinkers but not others”. Sinha is the author of A New God in the Diaspora?: Muneeswaran Worship in Contemporary Singapore (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2005).

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181. Alexius A. Pereira. Explaining the Enduring Comprehensive Developmental State in Singapore: A Class Relations Perspective, 2007, 16pp. Download pdf

Abstract. This article offers an explanation as to why the Singapore developmental state remains dominant and “comprehensive,” after 40 years of consistent economic growth. Unlike the other East Asian developmental states, it has not retreated but instead seems to be strengthening its power in society. To explain this unusual phenomenon, this paper adopts a class relations perspective to argue that the key difference is that there has been a continued absence of the domestic capitalist class, as the state constantly collaborates with transnational capital on major economic projects, while the working class has continuously been “incorporated.” To illustrate this argument, this paper not only surveys 40 years of developmentalism in Singapore, but also analyzes Singapore’s most recent developmental strategy, the biomedical sciences initiative, as all these strategies extended the rule of the comprehensive developmental state.

Alexius Pereira is Assistant Professor at the Department and author of State collaboration and development strategies in China : the case of the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (1992-2002) (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).

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180. Shane Nicholas Pereira. A New Religious Movement in Singapore:
Syncretism and Variation in the Sai Baba Movement, 2007, 24pp. Download pdf

Abstract. This paper is based on a current ethnographic project on the Sai Baba Movement in Singapore and situates itself within the sociological study of New Religious Movements. Studies dealing with the expansion of “cults” and NRMs are well documented, but little has been done to explore how such movements proceed after the initial foothold has been established in the host country, neglecting to examine the patterns of interaction with the highly plural socio-ethnic and religious elements that exist in multicultural nations, particularly in Singapore, and its social implications. The Sai Baba movement practises and preaches ethno-religious ecumenism, and allows for adherents to maintain the religious affiliations and practices of their parent or current religion. This paper seeks to explore the nature of the Sai religious framework and its apparent success in Singapore, by studying the impact of ritual variations, syncretism, and its implications through an ethnographic lens.

Shane Pereira is Teaching Assistant at the Department and a Master student currently finishing up his thesis on the Sai Baba religious movement in Singapore after thirteen months of fieldwork.

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179. Kelvin E. Y. Low. Olfactive Frames of Remembering: Notes on the Smells of Memories, 2007, 23pp. Download pdf

Abstract. Oftentimes, studies of social memories employ analytical trajectories based on social groupings, i.e. working class memories, collective memories, gender memories, or individual life histories/stories, usually with a concern on traumatic memories such as the Holocaust, or the Second World War. Instead of locating social memories through such groupings, or events-based trajectories, this paper ruminates on the role of smell in one’s recollection of the past, and how such recollections may have bearings on one’s experiences in the present. Hence, I add to the plethora of sociological studies on social memory and emotion by including the sensorial aspects linked with one’s remembrance of the past, which is often neglected or not sufficiently addressed. In this way, I argue that the study of remembering the past, needs to locate the embodiedness in which the past is being recollected. Here, I refer to olfactory sensations as employed by respondents in recounting their past through narrative interview data, and how such sensations may have bearings on their present day experiences. Therefore, smells offer what I term as olfactive frames of remembrance for social actors, in their recollections of pleasant and less pleasant memories. The paper also aims to contribute to and extend various lieux de mémoire (such as biographies, poetry, songs, monuments, films, memorabilia, photography and canvas) to include the sense of smell as an intangible but one of many crucial vehicles and nodes in triggering the remembering of one’s past. It may perhaps be plausible to argue that attention paid to olfaction may thus offer an insight into different episodes in olfactive-autobiographical memories. Smells are therefore, conduits which are often associated with experiences, people and places. In short, one’s memories are certainly richly sedimented with sensorial (or in this case, olfactive) experiences.

Kelvin Low is Teaching Assistant at the Department currently on study leave. He is a PhD Candidate in the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University.

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178. Liang Yongjia. Fertility, Kingship and Ethnicity: the Gwer Sa La Festival of the Bai in Southwest China, 2006, 26pp. Download pdf

177. Volker H. Schmidt. Varieties of Social Policy: East Asian Welfare Capitalism in Comparative Perspective, 2005, 23pp. Download pdf

176. Lim Bee Fong Lisa. Hegemony, Dominance and Resistance in Singapore: Pulau Ubin as a Case Study, 2005, 19pp. Download pdf

175. Noorman Abdullah. Exploring Constructions of the ‘Drug Problem’ in Historical and Contemporary Singapore, 2005, 38pp. Download pdf

174. Douglas Farrer. Deathscapes of the Malay Martial Artist, 2005, 35pp. Download pdf

173. Kelvin E. Y. Low. Olfaction and the Presentation of Self, 2005, 29pp. Download pdf

172. Syed Farid Alatas. Ideology and Utopia in the thought of Syed Shaykh Al-Hady, 2005,31pp. Download pdf

171. Habibul Haque Khondker. Globalization to Glocalization: Evolution of a Sociological Concept, 2004, 18pp. Download pdf

170. Volker H. Schmidt. Multiple Modernities or Varieties of Modernity? 2004, 25pp. Download pdf

169. Shi Fayong. Social Capital and Collective Resistance in Urban China Neighborhoods: A Community Movement in Shanghai, 2004,47pp. Download pdf

168. Noorman Abdullah. (Re) thinking the Categories of Halal and Haram: Notes on Islamic Food Rules in Singapore, 2004, 37pp. Download pdf

167. Eric C. Thompson. Tribal Signifiers and Intersubjectivity in a General Theory of Group Indentity, 2004, 36pp. Download pdf

166. Volker H. Schmidt and Lim Chee Han. Organ Transplantation in Singapore: History, Problems, and Policies, 2003, 24pp. Download pdf

165. Volker H. Schmidt. Models of Health Care Rationing, 2003, 24pp. Download pdf

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