科研成果详情

This chapter unearths how the leftists in the early days of the Republic of Singapore were influenced by Maoism and posed a challenge to Singapore's nation-state building in the context of the Cold War. It uses a thorough reading of the rarely referenced publications by the now-defunct Barisan Sosialis, the most powerful opposition party and leftist force in the history of the republic. The origins of Singapore's public housing and homeownership scheme as the Singapore government's bloodless way of combating the radical leftist challenges posed by the Barisan Sosialis are traced by documenting and analyzing the ruling party's countermeasures in the field of urban planning. The chapter conceptualizes Singapore's public housing as a miniature of the struggles between Malayan nationalism/communism on one side and conservatism/anti-communism on the other in the context of the global Cold War. In short, Singapore's domestic constructions are also Cold War landscapes.