Young Singaporeans Reading History and the Politics of Age

Presented at the forum on 2009 Year in Review, organised by The Online Citizen, 29 December 2009

2009 was a return to history. Men in White, written by three Straits Times journalists, appeared noisily in September, purporting to tell the ‘untold story’ of the PAP, including that of the ‘losers’. It was, however, one of the ‘victors’ who made an eye-catching critique of the book the following month. Yoong Siew Wah, former Director of CPIB and ISD, complained on his blog, Singapore Recalcitrant, that the authors had taken at face value a statement by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew on Yoong’s alleged mishandling of an investigation into lawyer Francis Seow in 1971. The authors hastily apologised and promised to withdraw the offending point from subsequent prints of the book. For Yoong, now 82, reading Men In White was about restoring his reputation.

Younger Singaporeans have also been reading Men in White for political errors and suspicious silences, although for quite a different purpose. Before the book’s official launch, film-maker Martyn See posted an entry on his blog, responding to a preliminary news report on the book. Martyn raised two questions on the book’s credibility: that the report made no mention of Operation Coldstore, in which over a hundred leading leftists in Singapore were detained in 1963, and that the authors had not contacted two of the PAP’s main opponents in the early 1960s: Dr Lim Hock Siew and Dr Poh Soo Kai. In responding to Martyn’s queries, the authors, well, defended their work, stating that they did approach Dr Lim but he refused to be interviewed. They of course used his oral history interview at the National Archives of Singapore which many researchers are aware of, but this, I think, was not Martyn’s point. And there were many other instances of ‘history watching’. In a subsequent column in the Straits Times, one of the authors, Sonny Yap, lamented that the numerous salvoes, many in cyberspace, fired in their direction were ‘factually off the mark’.

Regardless of whether the allegations were true, I believe Sonny Yap missed the point. He should have been happy, rather than flabbergasted, that so many netizens, especially young Singaporeans, responded so acutely to a book on Singapore history. This is a country where Singaporeans born after the 1950s and 1960s are periodically reprimanded by the state for not showing interest in the country’s past. The responses to Men In White demonstrate that this is not entirely true. What is important is not whether the allegations were accurate, but that they were allegations. They revealed what histories, and whose histories, mattered to the Singaporeans born after independence. In comparison to the former ISD Director, their concerns have greater import.

I wish to talk about the possibilities and pitfalls of young Singaporeans reading our country’s history today. This is an enterprise which is crucially important but also perilous, both academically and socially. Writers of history, whether it is historians or the participants, inevitably select their facts, interpret their data and make their claims. The readers likewise: how they read will be largely determined by their views and values, by the social and political context, by their age.

There is a tendency for young Singaporeans to read our past for inspiration and vilification. This is not surprising and is part of the enduring appeal of history. Inspiration because the past provides positive precedents, or heroes, of an earlier generation of Singaporeans (also young and idealistic then) struggling to make Singapore a better, fairer and more open society. Vilification because history also provides what appears to be proof of what some present day young Singaporeans want to believe – that the government is repressive, manipulative and narrowly neo-liberal. In short, we read Singapore history for Lim Chin Siong and Operation Coldstore.

This is to some extent unavoidable. I have had my own ‘honeymoon’ with Lim Chin Siong, this formidable, yet humble, political and labour activist who could bring 40,000 people to their feet with a few choice words of Hokkien, whose work was destroyed in the making of Malaysia. Lim Chin Siong has passed into legend in Singapore’s cultural imagination, which makes writing and reading about him doubly difficult.

One of the first living leftists I met in 2005 left a lasting impression. Walking up to him in Toa Payoh MRT station, he looked no different from many other ah peh in the graying estate. He firmly grasped my hand and lowered his head in greeting. I never forgot that sense of humanity he conveyed in that single moment. He was Lee Tee Tong, a labour unionist in the Singapore Bus Workers’ Union, who in 1963 stood and won in Bukit Timah (the old constituency of Lim Chin Siong), but never took his seat as he was arrested and detained without trial shortly after for 16 years. I interviewed Lee Tee Tong on a later occasion for over five hours about his life, work and politics.

Writing history for me is about getting ‘inside’ the past, achieving empathy and then crafting an independent narrative and analysis. I have researched on different facets of the Singapore left: trade unions, university political clubs and rural associations. I find a good number of possibilities for writing the subject. We can frame the left as offering the alternative ‘paths not taken’ to a different (maybe better?) Singapore. Or as pathbreakers whose work made possible the PAP’s success, visionaries whose ideas enabled the making of modern Singapore. Or as nationalists who were outmaneuvered in the geopolitics of the Cold War and then forgotten. Still, I am concerned with what the left did for Singapore and how that contribution has for so long been ignored.

The possibilities are closely related to the pitfalls. The left’s history is far richer than the themes of inspiration and vilification. The left fought for a union of Singapore and Malaya – in fact, this belief was unquestioned to a point which most young Singaporeans born into a sovereign state would have difficulty imagining. The left’s ideology was socialist, although that some radicals were less doctrinaire than others. Socialism as a doctrine entails a belief in radical change and transformation, of both nature and human nature, no less radical than the development pursued by the government since the 1960s. Will Singapore be necessarily better, fairer and more open under a socialist regime? I believe deeply in the need for greater social justice in Singapore; much of my research has been on marginalised groups in Singapore history. But I doubt the road of socialism leads to a just society any more than the highway of neo-liberalism.

These are aspects of the history of the left which we should also read and consider. I recognise the complete history is yet to be written, but at the same time, we have a moral duty to be more creative, more rigorous in the ways we explore our history. Above all, we need to ask new questions. Lee Kuan Yew gave a grudging stamp of approval to Men In White but still deemed it necessary to repeat his charge that Lim Chin Siong was a communist. I think most of us here have no interest in reviving that question, much less the answer. Each generation writes its own history but this cannot begin until we first ask new questions, questions for a new era, for a new purpose. And young Singaporeans cannot simply inherit the perspectives of the older generation.

That generation of leftists is already writing its own histories. Men In White was quickly followed by The Fajar Generation, a book by former members of the University Socialist Club in the 1950s and 1960s (a subject which I have also been working on separately). The Fajar Generation is a collective biography, a classic example of a generation writing its own history. But it also significantly blurs the line between biography and history because, as far as I know, it is the first instance where the participants have relied not just on their own memories, but also the colonial archives, to establish their views. Young Singaporeans who seek only inspiration and vilification in history will find much of both in The Fajar Generation. My suggestion is we read the book as a collective biography, and then ask ourselves, why are the former leftists now writing their histories, and what else do we want to know?

The politics of age lies between generations of Singaporeans. Another plane of the divide is on social history. In my interviews with leprosy sufferers, kampong dwellers, fire victims, and British base workers, I have come to sense something of the collective psyche of ordinary elderly Singaporeans – what they feel about the breaking events of our recent history; about politics under the PAP government; about the regimen of life and work in a ferociously developmental state.

I bring up social history because it provides new insights into the past, because it allows us to explore ‘politics’ more broadly, but also simply because we really haven’t spoken enough to our elders about the past. Our nation’s history is not simply about the struggle between the left and the Lee Kuan Yew group. One thing which struck me in my interviews with elderly people is the ambivalence in their memories of life, housing, family, work, and change in Singapore. Leprosy sufferers tell me that ‘our lives are bad but our luck is good’; they have been forcibly segregated from society and relocated from their homes several times in their lives. One victim of the 1961 Bukit Ho Swee fire wanted to find a new attap house to live in and did not want to move to an emergency HDB flat, yet recalls Lee Kuan Yew as very hiong as the prime minister in tackling the country’s challenges at the time; young Singaporeans, she insists, have had it much easier. Many elderly Singaporeans firmly support the development of Singapore and the authoritarian government which has made it possible, but are also aware of the personal and social price that they – we – have had to pay in the process. They are also the keepers of memories of events and people which can serve as a valuable counterpoint to the Singapore Story, which will help us to bridge not only generational, but also mental, divides. In listening to them, we realise that history is not painted in black and white, that there are many more ‘untold stories’ to uncover. We will find new ways to look at our history in the last 50 years which will enable us to re-imagine the future.

The Weakening of Empathy: A University Case

Presented at Teaching History in Singapore: The State of the Craft
A Roundtable Presented by the Singapore Heritage Society
Monday 30 November 2009, National Library Building
By Loh Kah Seng

‘When someone is expressing ideas, do not say, I don’t like the idea, because you are discouraging them’.

‘It was basically a struggle to get past his lessons. When he asks us questions then we answered him, he will ask us more questions about the answers. This in turn creates a never ending cycle of questions until class ends. When I leave class, I end up with more questions in my head than answers as he never said the answers in the first place! This is a very bad thing and it will not obviously help me in my examination’.

‘Tutorial is about discussion and the free rights to exchange personal opinions albeit biased or judgmental. However the tutor is always correcting the students’ personal views and saying they are wrong. I think it is very unfair’.

These are critiques from my student feedback when I was teaching Singapore history modules in the university. They were Singapore Studies modules, general courses which are compulsory for undergraduates except those from Medicine, Dentistry and Law. Besides highlighting, rather painfully, that I was not always an effective tutor, they also open windows into how university students believe history should be taught. They allow us to return to the themes I brought up earlier, on ‘class struggles’ and teaching students in the postmodern age.

The criticisms concern the issue of historical empathy, the act of ‘getting into someone else’s shoes’. The importance of not just knowing about Singapore but also doing it from a Singapore vantage point is implicit in NUS’s official statement on the purpose of Singapore Studies: they are meant to ‘strengthen a student’s understanding of the economy, geography, history, politics, and society of Singapore’ and ‘expose students to different perspectives on the critical issues confronting Singapore, and a deep appreciation of the conditions affecting decision-making in a Singapore operating within a regional and global context’.

While many students from different faculties did well in my classes, a large number were bewildered and frustrated by my lessons, particularly when I attempted to engage them in more open-ended and provocative questions. That intellectual and emotional displeasure later led the students to express critical feedback on my teaching.

My ‘class struggles’ involved mostly passive resistance. I argue that they represent a widening gap in historical empathy, rather than knowledge, between the teacher and the taught. I do not seek to place the blame on the students for their academic frustration or ignore other factors which might have led them to feel this way. Many Singapore Studies students hail from outside the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and have a very basic understanding of Singapore history. A tutor may have a class of 25 with very different backgrounds in and aptitudes for history. Some students, particularly the foreign students from the region and China, have virtually none of these. They also have to struggle with the demands of writing, speaking and thinking in English and crafting argumentative essays. But even local students with a sound command of English and good writing skills have been resistant to approaching Singapore Studies from new angles.

I will draw from my experience two test cases of historical empathy. As a social historian, my approach has to offer to students a corrective to the standard Singapore story, by standing in the shoes of ordinary Singaporeans. One case is the notion of space, dirt and disease held by the people in colonial Singapore. How did they live in a tiny cubicle without light and good airflow? How did they warmly embrace the attap house with very basic amenities and a pail toilet built over a river? Why did they refuse to visit modern hospitals and take Western medicine when they fell sick? So I played the devil’s advocate and challenged the students with historical situations that appeared plainly irrational. Sometimes, logic led to empathy. If the shophouse cubicles were cramped, stuffy and dark, the residents simply spent most of their time outside, in the verandahs, the streets, the kopitiams, coming home only to sleep. I was then able to get the students to critique the notions both of an Eurocentric modernity and a linear history. But frequently, other students found it psychologically easier to dismiss such ways of life as inferior, as dangerous, and support the perspectives of the colonial state. In doing so, they reinforce their own notions of modernity, urban space, dirt, and disease.

The other instance lies at the other end of the social spectrum, when ordinary people refused to tolerate difficult living conditions and responded in collective anger. On the 1955 Hock Lee Bus strike, I posed the question, can the strike be seen as more than a riot and disruption of the socio-political order? I challenged the students to consider this: if it was morally justified for the weak to utilise their weapons, even if the consequence was to bring about a great deal of inconvenience for those who used public transport? I asked them, what if they had booked a flight only to find that the airline employees had gone on strike? For many students, this was a bridge too far. It was easier for them to criticise the workers for disrupting industrial peace and stand on the side of those who desired a disciplined labour and economic progress. There is a ready-made historical explanation the students can turn to: the workers must have been exploited by the communists. I suggested that workers in postwar Singapore were not morons – they didn’t go on strike because someone stepped onto a stage and began agitating them! I asked them if they would do the same if someone came to the class and urged them to demonstrate at Speaker’s Corner? Most of them smiled.

So this is the context. Those of us involved in Singapore Studies and Social Studies run two risks. One is to run afoul of students who dismiss National Education as state-disseminated propaganda. The other is to be accused of correcting students, imposing our ideas on them, violating their rights as students. This comes from local students who have been brought up in a society which does not know strikes, kampongs and anti-colonialism. This also comes from foreign students who have recently come to Singapore and admire its stability and progress. One of my foreign students explained, Singapore is so successful today, Lee Kuan Yew had to suppress the communists. These are claims from the postmodern classroom in Singapore which we cannot afford to ignore.

Class Struggles and Postmodern Classrooms: The State of History Teaching in Singapore

TEACHING HISTORY IN SINGAPORE: THE STATE OF THE CRAFT
A Roundtable Presented by the Singapore Heritage Society
Monday 30 November 2009, National Library Building
Opening remarks by Loh Kah Seng

Dear teachers, students, historians, and members of the public

Ten years ago, history teacher Shirley Wilton reflected on the changes in the craft in the United States. In the 1960s, she first stepped into a community college and the idealistic world of teaching and social change. She observed the ‘class struggles’ now taking place between older teachers who breathed the rarified air of the era of the counter-culture, and students of Generation X whose guiding philosophy is ‘consumerism, entertainment and entitlement’. These students of the postmodern age, Wilton insisted, possess a hunger for history, but it is for a history with no fixed answers, and in which they are not passive rote learners but active participants. And teachers have to adjust the ways they teach.

In Singapore, the situation is arguably more complex. There are struggles taking place in our classes as in the American colleges, but the defining dynamic in these struggles is not merely between teachers and students. Yes, we will hear later about the increasing academic and non-academic demands being placed on teachers. We will also learn both about the claims and distractions which are redefining the traditional role of students in our schools.

Yet, there are also other vectors of change weighing heavily on history education in Singapore. The nation seeks to transform itself into a global city. Over the course of the last two decades, this has meant an unceasing process of destruction and restructuring in the discipline. The ministry has attempted to trim the content, introduce historical sources, encourage new methods of inquiry, de-emphasise examinations, and cultivate thinking skills. Above all, it seeks to forge the young historian and active citizen. History is not the only subject so affected, but it is telling that it is the past which is strongly regarded as the pathway to the imagined future. There are more changes on the horizon, to further encourage students to work like historians, build bridges between history and other disciplines and move to a more inclusive approach in National Education. In the scale of changes which have transformed the subject, history teaching in Singapore has truly entered a postmodern age.

So, this roundtable is about teachers and students, but it is also about context, which shapes the culture of the classroom, demands of the curriculum, and consequences of policies. We have a real opportunity to reflect on our individual efforts and the larger forces which enhance or deflect them. I must emphasise that we make our presentations in our personal capacity, and they are also often anecdotal and not necessarily representative. But I think it is because our thoughts are informal and earnest that they serve their purpose in getting to the heart of the issues. At the very least, the reflections will underline what teachers and students think. But more than that, they may enable us to assess the state of history teaching in Singapore. Some of what we say may not be new but we seek to explore the issues more deeply and to explain them. The reflections may provide a platform for teachers, students, curriculum planners, and historians to imagine ways to reshape the craft in the future. We aim to return.

Programme: Teaching History in Singapore

Pls register at:

http://golibrary.nlb.gov.sg/Event.aspx?EventID=30573

TEACHING HISTORY IN SINGAPORE: THE STATE OF THE CRAFT

A Roundtable Presented by the Singapore Heritage Society

Imagination Room, Level 5, National Library, 30 November 2009

Time	Speaker	Topic
0830-0845	Loh Kah Seng Nanyang Technological University	Welcome and opening remarks
0845-1010	PANEL I: LEARNING HISTORYModerator: Loh Kah Seng, Nanyang Technological University
0845-0900	Suhaimi Afandi & Mark Baildon National Institute of Education	Towards a responsive pedagogy: engaging students’ ideas to enhance history teaching and learning
0900-0915	Candice Alexis Seet CHIJ Secondary (Toa Payoh)	What were you thinking? Entering the minds of students
0915-0930	Kevin Blackburn National Institute of Education	‘I don’t know who Lim Bo Seng is … I only know Lee Kuan Yew’: forgetting what my teacher and textbook told me
0930-0945	Henry Liu & Joshua Jeyaraj Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)	Conceptions, communication and confidence: challenges to studying history
0945-1000	Eisen Teo Straits Times	History in the university: beyond the facts and exams
1000-1015	Discussion
1015-1025	Break
1025-1200	PANEL II: TEACHING HISTORYModerator: Alvin Tan, Raffles Girls’ School
1025-1040	Lim Cheng Tju Riverside Secondary School	The reality of teaching (history) in Singapore
1040-1055	Lee Si Wei Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)	Sources in social studies beyond assessment needs
1055-1110	Gullnaz Baig National Institute of Education	Adopting the historical reasoning framework in the classroom
1110-1125	Junaidah Jaffar Tao Nan Primary School	Singapore history and the Singapore Story: the roles they play in citizenship education and the forging of the ‘Singapore DNA’
1125-1140	Loh Kah Seng Nanyang Technological University	The weakening of empathy: a university experience
1140-1200	Discussion & closing remarks

Abstracts

Towards a Responsive Pedagogy: Engaging Students’ Ideas to Enhance History Teaching and Learning. Suhaimi Afandi & Mark Baildon

Among the fundamental questions about history teaching in Singapore is the role of the prior ideas students have about the past. Yet, it is unclear whether teachers consider these preconceptions of history. In using the concept of ‘responsive pedagogy’, we posit that 1) students have a range of initial ideas about the nature of history; 2) teachers should engage these understandings to help students make sense of new knowledge and develop their appreciation of the past; and 3) tensions and constraints within the education system be resolved in order to develop both a teaching approach and learning experience that engages the students’ ideas about history.

What were you thinking? Entering the Minds of Students. Candice Alexis Seet

Teachers struggle to engage unmotivated students who would rather style their hair than lift a finger to flip open their textbook. In light of such struggle, what quality of work do we expect our students to produce to demonstrate that some learning has taken place? Moving away from historical content, what about citizenship education? How effectively are students able to internalise values that the curriculum hopes to instill in them? Should the teacher be the voice of authority or should students reason the issue out for themselves?

‘I don’t know who Lim Bo Seng is … I only know Lee Kuan Yew’: Forgetting What My Teacher and Textbook Told Me. Kevin Blackburn

This presentation examines the impact of compulsory history education. For history enthusiasts in Singapore, Lim Bo Seng is a national icon, a war hero, who looms larger than life in the primary school studies syllabus and secondary history syllabus. But a surprising number of young university students just out of the Singapore state education system have no recollection of him. Why does the such figure like Lim Bo Seng and other iconic historical characters and moments in Singapore’s national history generally make such a faint impression on students fresh out of the education system? Is historical knowledge just confined to individuals who have an interest in history, with the general population unable to recall little more than the barest knowledge of the national past? This presentation includes a few minutes of a vox populi, ‘voice of the people’, video of interviews with the undergraduates on campus to basic questions about the past.

Conceptions, Communication and Confidence: Challenges to Studying History. Henry Liu & Joshua Jeyaraj

This presentation explores challenges faced by students in our study of history. Notably, the conception that correctness is valued above validity and the resultant lack of confidence in expression and communication are identified as inhibitors. At times, these undermine key fundamentals of the discipline. Usual assets for study, such as extensive historiography, even become stumbling blocks that detract us from what is truly important. Instead of being holistic thinkers in development, we slip into the rigid organisation of other’s ideas, and hence lose the full potential of the experience.

History in the University: Beyond The Facts and Exams. Eisen Teo

Local university students of history experience a paradigm shift from foundational to higher level modules, because while the former generally focuses on history and ‘why it happened’, the latter concentrates more on historiography and ‘how historians have tried to explain why it happened’. Might the craft be done more justice if historiography and historical methods are introduced at lower levels? Also, how useful truly is the closed-book examination for the subject? What’s the optimal class size for effective classroom interaction? These issues and more at tertiary level have implications for how history is taught and enjoyed at other institutional levels.

The Reality of Teaching (History) in Singapore. Lim Cheng Tju

Concerns about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment are common for any teacher in Singapore. But for the history teacher, the extra burden of a nation wide shortage for Humanities teachers has resulted in increased workload, class size, marking, and other demands. These issues need to be addressed.

Sources in Social Studies Beyond Assessment Needs. Lee Si Wei

Since the implementation of the upper secondary Social Studies curriculum  in 2001, students have been well-trained to excel in examinations. The official assessment needs are to test students’ ability to draw inferences, compare sources, and evaluate their utility and reliability. The larger aim, however, is to cultivate the skills of critical inquiry, investigation and reflection, so that students can appreciate how the sources throw light on important social, economic and political issues. In a neighbourhood secondary school, students can be readily horned in examination skills without necessarily grasping the underlying significance of the sources. As the study of sources is an important platform for developing students into adept thinkers, teachers need to move beyond simply satisfying assessment needs and help students understand the relevance of the sources.

Adopting the Historical Reasoning Framework in the Classroom. Gullnaz Baig

The zeitgeist of history teaching in Singapore seems to be shifting away from the orthodox content-based approach towards greater recognition of the value of inculcating key reasoning skills in our students. Indeed, the current History curriculum, as embodied in ministerial documents, provides for such an approach. Nevertheless, there seems to be uncertainty as to how such an approach can be practiced in classroom teaching. The model proposed here is based on research conducted by Drie and Boxtel who argue for the value of the ‘Historical Reasoning framework’ in developing students’ reasoning about the past. The key attraction of this model lies in the ease with which it can be applied in lesson planning without introducing radical and drastic pedagogical changes.

Singapore History and the Singapore Story: The Roles They Play in Citizenship Education and the forging of the ‘Singapore DNA’. Junaidah Binti Jaffar

On 17 May 1997, National Education (NE) was launched by Deputy Prime Minister Mr Lee Hsien Loong. NE has since been explicitly taught in the Social Studies syllabus and gradually, all subjects have become NE-infused. Simultaneously, citizenship education is arguably as important a thrust as the other learning outcomes of the Singapore education system. It is through NE that the official strain of Singapore history, popularly known as ‘the Singapore Story’, is ingrained in Singapore’s youths. This presentation attempts to delineate: (1) the role of history in citizenship education, Social Studies and National Education, with a focus on the primary education sector, (2) how educators can explore alternative narrations of the Singapore story without censure so as to provide pupils a holistic and nuanced picture of the past, and (3) the achievements and difficulties in this enterprise to synthesise all this and forge what the Director-General of Education, Ms Ho Peng, termed as the ‘Singapore DNA’ – a people imbued with resilience, tenacity and adaptability. The presentation will tap on the frameworks of NE, Social Studies, key speeches and policies, supplemented by anecdotes of practitioners of the trade.

The Weakening of Empathy: A University Experience. Loh Kah Seng

Having taught different cohorts of history undergraduates, it is becoming clear how often students are lacking in historical empathy even if they do well in other areas like reading, writing and analysis. While this may be partly due to teachers not focusing enough on empathy, the greater problem, I think, lies in the social norms and demographic trends in contemporary Singapore. Empathy for the past as a ‘foreign country’ has in some ways been dramatically eroded by the changes which have transformed the society in the last fifty years.

Seeking Stories of the British Bases and Military Withdrawal

Dear fellow Singaporeans

I am a Singaporean historian looking to speak to people who remember the British bases and their withdrawal in the early 1970s. The withdrawal was the first major crisis independent Singapore faced. The 56 bases, contributing a fifth of the country’s GDP, were its largest industry, and the pullout threatened the livelihood of one-sixth of the labour force, including an estimated 8,000 amahs.

The pullout also transformed the economy, society and landscape of Singapore in the 1970s. Most of the bases were converted to commercial use, while many base workers underwent a 3-month retraining crash course. Technical and vocational education also expanded, as new laws sought to increase labour productivity and attract foreign capital investment.

These developments resonate with us today: the retraining programmes, the mobilisation of the young, the philosophy that ‘no one owes Singapore a living’. There is also a forgotten social history to unearth: how retrenched base employees coped with the crisis and how workers adjusted to new work routines.

If you remember the British bases and rundown, or have a family member, relative or friend who does, kindly contact me to lend your voice to an important episode of our national story.

Please pass this message along to those who might be interested.

Thank you.

Loh Kah Seng (Dr)

Visiting Research Fellow

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Email: LKSHIS@GMAIL.COM

Mobile: +65 81981172

CFP Conference on Historical Fragments in Southeast Asia 23-24 June 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS
Conference on Historical Fragments in Southeast Asia:
At the Interfaces of Oral History, Memory and Heritage
Organised by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and Singapore Heritage Society
23-24 June 2010

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, together with the Singapore Heritage Society, is revisiting oral history in Southeast Asia two decades since it co-organised the first conference. Historical Fragments in Southeast Asia will bring together the latest oral history and ethnographic research on the region and explore its links with two exciting fields which investigate the same content in different ways, namely, memory and heritage studies.

Historical Fragments in Southeast Asia serves as an important platform to explore the interfaces between oral history, memory and heritage and formulate new ways of approaching Southeast Asia’s fragmented pasts. Traditional oral history work in the region, which seeks to retrieve what Paul Thompson called ‘the voices of the past’ to complete or contest historical narratives, has largely been concerned with questions of objectivity and reliability. Memory studies, by contrast, has attempted to analyse the deeper politics and subjective meanings of the fragments that people remember or forget. Both oral testimonies and memories are also closely connected with the emerging and topical field of heritage in its intangible, cultural and everyday forms.

Important note: Proposals should make an attempt at this preliminary stage to consider oral history’s convergences with memory and/or heritage and not merely situate the discussion within the originating discipline or methodology. Proposals should be centered around oral history or ethnographic work. We welcome submissions from, among others, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, architects, public officials, activists, and social workers, as well as approaches from academic and advocacy perspectives.

The conference organisers are pleased to be able to offer partial financial support to participants, although they are also encouraged to seek funding from their home institutions. Selected papers from the conference will further explore the interfaces between the three fields and will be published in what we hope to be a path-breaking edited volume.

Submission of Proposal
Those interested in presenting a paper at the conference are invited to submit a proposal which includes a working title, 500-word abstract, CV, and an indication of your funding requirements by 14 December 2009 to Dr Loh Kah Seng kahseng@iseas.edu.sg.

Suggested Themes
Crisis of Memory. What and how Southeast Asians remember or forget are often narrowly channeled into narratives of loss or nostalgia. What are the influences of major historical and contemporary forces on oral history such as colonialism, developmentalism, urbanism, architectural modernism, cosmopolitanism, and globalisation? What will these developments mean for the forms of heritage that Southeast Asians can adopt? What is the impact of Internet technologies in rendering oral histories and individual memories public?

Politics of Memory. Oral history remains a deeply contested field in an era of Southeast Asian nationalism. What are the influences of the official mass media and the prerogatives of nation-building and social engineering on memory? What are the silences or social rumours of the past? What is the role and impact of the political biography and the official myth in the region? Does oral history affirm or contest dominant narratives? Does it accentuate historical agency and empower the informants?

‘Difficult’ Heritage and Identity. The nation-state remains the primary organising actor in Southeast Asia. Yet, there are important forms of memory, heritage and identity which exist outside or even in direct opposition to the national paradigm, along the divides of locality, gender, ethnicity, class, age, among others. How can communities and oral historians attempt to recover these interstitial, everyday or local forms of heritage and memories that exist ‘between the cracks’ or ‘out of sight’ of the dominant paradigm? How should we negotiate between national, transnational, community, and local identities?

Trauma and Reconstruction. Since World War Two and the subsequent decolonisation which has transformed Southeast Asia, political conflict, economic crisis, natural disasters, epidemics, and social upheaval have been marked features of everyday life in the region. How have memory and heritage been affected by these developments and does oral history help redress the personal and social traumas experienced in the process?

Contact Details
Dr Loh Kah Seng
kahseng@iseas.edu.sg
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

book out!

Loh Kah Seng. Making and Unmaking the Asylum: Leprosy and Modernity in Singapore and Malaysia. Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2009. Pp. 189. ISBN: 9789833782765. Product ID: 434.

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‘An outstanding and timely contribution to the historiography of Malaysia and Singapore: well-written, comprehensive, compelling, and poignantly illustrated. The stories present a striking and moving narrative of life on the margins of society. Highly recommended reading on the social history of Malaysia and Singapore’. Dr Ernest Koh, Lecturer, School of Historical Studies, Monash University

‘This book awakens us to the final remaining agendum for people affected by leprosy: a challenge to society, and to each of us as members; how we chose to respond is a measure of our conscience and sense of justice’. Kay Yamaguchi, Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation

welcome

I am a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, Singapore. I have published on little-studied subjects in the urban social history of Singapore and Malaysia. My book, Making and Unmaking the Asylum: Leprosy and Modernity in Singapore and Malaysia (SIRD, 2009), has just been published, while my PhD on the role of the Bukit Ho Swee fire in the making of modern Singapore is currently under review for publication, as is another book I co-author on the history of the University Socialist Club. I have also written on labour activism and the Great Depression. My work also explores the linkages between past and present in contemporary Singapore, in issues such as the official use of history, oral history, social memory, heritage, and archival access. I was previously a history teacher in a junior college, and still speak to students about the challenges of researching the past.

Research interests:
Singapore and Malayan history (postwar, colonial)
Urban social history
Squatters and slum dwellers
History of medicine (leprosy)
Fires in history
Oral history and memory
Student activism
Archival access

Teaching areas:
Singapore history and studies
Southeast Asia
Urban history
Modern international history

Email:
lkshisATgmail.com