Kampong, fire, nation: Towards a social history of postwar Singapore

An important but little-studied act in the history of postwar Singapore was played out at the margins of the city. Here, the state was involved in a major campaign to socialise the ‘squatters’ of urban kampong into citizens of a high modernist state. The fire hazard in these settlements also contrib...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of Southeast Asian studies (Singapore) Vol. 40; no. 3; pp. 613 - 643
Main Author:	Seng, Loh Kah
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01-10-2009
Subjects:	Analysis Annual reports Asia Asian history Cities Citizenship City councils Cold War Communism Ethnology Fire Fire hazards Fire services Fires Geography Historians Historical source materials Historiography History House fires Houses Housing Idealism Labor unions Low income groups Modernization Nation building Policy analysis Political activism Political history Political Socialization Politics Public housing Reconstruction Singapore Singapore history Social change Social Development Social history Social housing Social relations. Intercultural and interethnic relations. Collective identity Social structure and social relations Sources and methods Squatters State-society relations Transnationalism Urban communities Urban history War World War II Southeast Asia Singapore Social development Social history Squatter Historiography Fire Post-war period Citizen Politics Socialization Hazard
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Summary:	An important but little-studied act in the history of postwar Singapore was played out at the margins of the city. Here, the state was involved in a major campaign to socialise the ‘squatters’ of urban kampong into citizens of a high modernist state. The fire hazard in these settlements also contributed significantly to the process, as the residents were mobilised into fire-fighting squads and politicians acted on behalf of the victims of infernos by rehousing them in emergency public housing. This article proposes a new approach to postwar Singapore historiography at the interface between politics and social developments. It underlines the social agents, spatial dimension and historical continuity uncovered in the venture.
Bibliography:	istex:CE80153ED916D825C6640487149957EC68151F19 PII:S0022463409990099 ark:/67375/6GQ-78215CGC-4 Loh Kah Seng is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, Singapore. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, which examined the role of the 1961 Kampong Bukit Ho Swee fire in the making of modern Singapore. Loh has published on little-studied subjects in the urban social history of Singapore and Malaysia, such as leprosy, the Great Depression and labour and student activism. He has also written on the official use of history, heritage, oral history and social memory in contemporary Singapore. He was previously a history teacher in a junior college, and still teaches and speaks to students about the challenges of researching the past. Correspondence in connection with this paper should be addressed to: lkshis@gmail.com. ArticleID:99009 ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-2 ObjectType-Feature-1
ISSN:	0022-4634 1474-0680
DOI:	10.1017/S0022463409990099