Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof C.J. Wee Wan-ling, Nanyang Technological University

ABSTRACT

In the current context of severe urban housing shortages globally, the issue of housing as social right, enfolded into right to the city, has generated much debate in academic housing studies. Postcolonial states that are still trying to establish themselves generally lack the resources to institute any liberal social rights. Conversely, building the new sovereign nation urgently requires citizens to make three essential contributions, namely, military service, active employment and replenishing citizens, in exchange for their claims to state provision of social welfare and social security. This paper argues that adequate housing, with its immediate beneficial impact on a range of everyday trajectories, beyond physical security, is more effective than the other social welfare services in engendering contributory citizenship in the complex process of postcolonial state formation. This argument is substantiated by showing how postcolonial Singapore is able to instrumentalize the eligibility criteria to access to subsidized public to extract the citizens’ contributions, with minimum coercion, for successful nation building.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Chua Beng Huat is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology, Distinguished Professorial Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS); and Visiting Fellow at the Social Sciences and Urban Institute at Singapore Management University. His research areas include urban and public housing studies, political economy of Singapore and Cultural Studies in Asia. He is the author of Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore (2017), which was on the list of Best Books of 2018 by Foreign Affairs journal and Public Subsidy, Private Accumulation: The Political Economy of Singapore’s Public Housing (2024) among others.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this hybrid talk has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to ziqi@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.