SSA2211 Lecture 10 Cosmopolitan Society

8/3/2019 SSA2211 Lecture 10 Cosmopolitan Society

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Globalisation &

Cosmopolitan Society

SSA2211


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Defining cosmopolitan

composed of persons, constituents, or elements

from all or many parts of the world

all human beings, do (or at least can) belong to

a single community, and that this communityshould be cultivated


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Cosmopolitan Singapore


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14TH

CENTURY TEMASEK


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Singapore as a traditional port society


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That is to say, Singapore itself, and the population

that arrived there after 1819, were not really a new

phenomena but rather represented a perennial

pattern that had a longstanding tradition behind it.We must assume that a similar social mix would have

characterized Riau fifty or sixty years prior to the

1820s. It would also have been true of Palembang,

Jambi, Aceh, Ayuthaya, Patani, Brunei, Saigon and

others.

--C. Trocki, Singapore: Wealth, Power and the Culture of Control (London, 2006), p.40.

A perennial pattern


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Singapore as a British trading

settlement after 1819


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19TH

CENTURY BRITISH PORT


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A plural society?

In Burma and Java, probably the first thing that strikes thevisitor is the medley of peoples European, Chinese, Indian

and native. It is in the strictest sense a medley, for they mixbut do not combine. Each group hold by its own religion, its

own culture and language, its own ideas and ways. Asindividuals they meet, but only in the market-place, in buying

and selling. There is a plural society, with different sections ofthe community living side by side, but separately, within thesame political unit. Even in the economic sphere there is a

division of labour along racial lines.

J.S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma andNetherlands India(New York, 1948), pp. 304-5.


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plural society

orcomplex social structure?


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Complex social structure

Within the basic divisions of Europeans, Chinese, Malays and Indians; ofMuslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Confucianists, Jews, Christians, Daoists and

animists; there were numerous subgroups that make these broad

classifications quite inadequate. Emigrants from China, for instance, were

more likely to identify themselves as Hokkien, Teochew or Cantonese,

while people from different parts of the Malayan peninsula would seethemselves first as Orang Kelantan or Orang Kedah rather than as Malay.

The same was true of South Asia. Moreover, once groups settled in

Singapore, differences in lifestyle, caste, education, wealth, power and

place of residence in the population made the picture more complex. Add

to this the continuing process of change over time, which did not takeplace evenly among the different communities of Singapore, as well as

the interactions between and among the various groups that came to

inhabit Singapore and the situation becomes truly intricate.

C. Trocki, Singapore: Wealth, Power and the Culture of Control(London, 2006), pp. 39-40


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Cosmopolitan colonial Singapore:

landscape and language


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Raffles Town Plan (1822): ethnic quarters


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1830

1827

Chinese campong includes

Sri Mariamman Temple (1827) and Chulia Mosque (1830)


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A street in European Town

known to the Chinese as Japan St, 1920s


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The Straits Chinese


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middlemen & boundary-crossers


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Hybridity as cultural adaptability

Out of such repeated contact at both acommercial and political level, multilingualismand a capacity to move from one public space

to another while adopting the new codes andlanguages that were appropriate flourishedamong Straits Chinese families. Culturaladaptability became the hallmark of thatparticular elite for decades to come.

Mark Frost, Emporium in Imperio: Nanyang Networks and the Straits Chinese inSingapore, 1819-1914, p.41


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Building a Singaporean community,

early 20th century


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English-medium schools

Gan Eng Seng School, visit to Siong Lim Temple, late 1920s


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Social organisations

Ladies from the Young

Womens Christian

Association, mid-1930s


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21

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CENTURY SINGAPORE


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From CMIO to Cosmopolitan?


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Glocal: whose English?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71AqG1YFURk


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Who owns Singlish?


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CONCLUSION


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Global trade local society/culture


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A nation-state

that incorporatesthe global city?

SSA2211 Lecture 10 Cosmopolitan Society

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