The Management of Globalization in Singapore: Twentieth Century ...

Marystella Amaldas., Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (Japan)This paper, however, highlights some of the social andeconomic dimensions of Singapore’s transition andadaptation to globalization in the last eight years of the newcentury.The paper has identified only some aspects ofglobalization for in-depth analysis. Being a global city allissues may be interrelated. The first part of the paperexamines the theoretical perspectives of globalization byusing the work of leading commentators on Singapore. Thenext section examines the parameters of globalization thatSingapore has imposed on itself. This is followed by a sectionon embracing global economic ethos while rejecting sociallyundesirable trends. The issue of immigration is examined inthe next section. The responses to the growing income-gap inthe context of globalization are taken up in the sixth section.The conclusion provides an overview of the strategies ofglobalization in Singapore.Many scholars regard globalization as a force whichwill inevitably bring about the decline (Held 1995), erosion(Hall 1991) or the end (Ohmae 1995) of the nation-state. Asthe argument goes, the process of globalization in its variousmanifestations is increasingly undermining the territorialboundedness, sovereignty and traditional role of the existingsystem of the modern nation-state. These processes, oftenperceived in terms of disjunctive cultural “flows” as theorizedby Appadurai (1996) and others, have necessitated therethinking of the nation-state. As a territorially andsymbolically bounded “imagined community” (Anderson1983), the result then is a call to think beyond the nationstate,emphasizing the transnational, deteritorialized andcosmopolitan forms of imagined communities.The objective of nation building in Singapore was tobring together the heterogeneous immigrant populationunder a common and collective banner of the nation-state.The government hoped that through this process a distinctlySingaporean identity would evolve and that the populationwould identify with the nation. Later, the government fearedthat Singaporeans were becoming too “Westernized” andlosing their “Asian” identity. It responded strongly byasserting and defending Singapore’s identity as an Asian983