2 results
11 - Holding Space, Making Place: Nurturing EmergentSolidarities within New Food Systems inSingapore
- Edited by Im Sik Cho, Blaz Kriznik, Jeffrey Hou
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- Book:
- Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 19 November 2022
- Print publication:
- 26 August 2022, pp 267-294
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Summary
Abstract
Today, cities depend on global food systems thatprioritize urban needs over that of other regions.These food systems are part of a model of urbanismthat works towards increasing disconnection in thefood ecosystem – ecologically andsociopolitically. By discussing our variedexperiences with a community food initiative inSingapore, Foodscape Collective, we reflect on thecollaborative aspect of making, and finding, ourplace – viewing placemaking as a process of civicsense-making and identity-formation. Through acollaboratively written set of perspectives, wesuggest how civic urbanism through dialogicalplacemaking renews our relationships with food andagriculture, by weaving together imaginaries of amore inclusive and circular food system.
Keywords: Place-making,prefiguration, network, community, foodsystems
Introduction
Food has figured in Singapore's post-war, postcolonialindependence as a cultural anchor in times ofdisorientation. It has been part of thetransformation of relationships between people,physical spaces, and with people's relationshipswith food itself – as both commodity and wholefood.In this chapter, we look at the act of producingfood in Singapore as a political act of civicurbanism. We argue that discussions about foodpractices are not only cultural or historical, butpolitical in the context of neoliberalized economiessuch as Singapore: encouraging individual andcollective actions that prefigure a more dynamicculture of civic urbanism.
Through this, we respond to Cho, Križnik, and Hou's(this volume) provocation for more discussions onthe role of citizens and civil society, given theirdiscursive absence in studies of developmentalstates within the neoliberal restructuring ofstate–market relations. While Singapore's centralplanning incorporates new ideas rapidly, this ispremised on the continual repositioning of the stateas provisioner of imaginaries, socialities, andpossibility. We argue, alongside other chapters inthis book, that an overt focus on the state's rolerenders people's work of imagining other forms ofcitizenship invisible. This chapter focuses onalternative practices of building collectivity:building the independence and capacity for people tocontest undesirable futures emerging fromcentralized food production networks, while buildingcollective capacity to surpass the individualizingframe of neoliberal self-help.
To reflect how plural perspectives and actions mayshape the way a network's work emerges, we havechosen to write as a group.
11 - Collaborative Imaginaries: Social Experiments, Free Schools and Counterpublics in Singapore
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- By Huiying Ng
- Edited by Mike Douglass, Simone Shu-Yeng Chung
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- Book:
- Hard State, Soft City of Singapore
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 29 June 2020, pp 251-274
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Summary
Abstract
In a climate of growing ecological awareness and a rising ‘counterpublic’, spaces to imagine a different city are emerging against an entrenched culture of competition, materialism and forms of alienation. Three case studies (Growell, Babel and Foodscape Collective) offer counter-narratives to Singapore's image as an ahistorical, politically apathetic city. The role of capital and consumer culture is examined by looking at spaces that attempt to offer alternatives to capitalist alienation. I discuss the case studies in terms of the way imaginaries offer transformative experiences and the form that these initiatives took, considering the temporal and spatial needs they addressed by enabling new niches for fledgling efforts and cultures to form. I frame these within discussions of the capacities needed for collaborative imaginaries and participatory co-governance in Singapore.
Keywords: commoning, collaboration, imaginaries, niche formation, participatory co-governance
Introduction
In the early 2010s, Singapore underwent a political maturing of sorts. This was the time of the post-2008 financial crisis, Wall Street protests and renewed anti-capitalist fervour, and as Singapore's 2011 General Election threw up public rumblings about labour, the environment and transport, the public began to tap into alternative media to express their frustrations. Half a decade on, Singapore's public sphere now has a greater number of citizen groups, higher expectations of governmental accountability, and more public discussion about the merits of government policies.
But to what extent do these emerging imaginaries reflect a growing investment in building creative and collaborative practices that are independent of the state? In this chapter, I use Arjun Appadurai's (1996) conceptualization of imagination as a social practice to ground my theoretical frame. He argues that the imagination itself is ‘an organized field of social practices, a form of work (in the sense of both labour and culturally organized practice), and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined fields of possibility’ (Ibid.: 31). New imaginaries grow steadily, circulating through practice in the city, and only become visible at points of disjuncture, which happen as part of global cultural shifts when different imaginaries bring embodied ideologies into contact with one another.
In this chapter, I look at three vignettes featuring civic participation in Singapore, that intentionally inhabit the city's other space-times. I consider how people rework space and time in these examples to counter the psychological and material structures that constrain civic and creative spaces.