Doctoral Dissertation Research: "Contrary to Public Interest": Technology, Citizenship, and Nationalism in Contemporary Singapore

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Graduate student Robert Phillips, supervised by Dr. Thomas Boellstorff, will undertake research on the new and complicated linkages between emerging technologies, personal citizenship, and nationalism. He will focus on a case study of one controversial identity community in Singapore that has made extensive use of the internet. The researcher, who has a working knowledge of Chinese, will use a combination of social science research methods, including structured surveys, ethnographic participant observation, and semi-structured interviewing. The researcher hypothesizes that the unique spatial location of Singapore and the unique qualities of cyberspace work together to conflate the boundaries between the global and the local. Together, they may create a new kind of place for Singaporeans to form non-mainstream personal identities and mainstream national identities at the same time. This ethnographic case study of the effects of technology on national and sub-cultural identity will contribute to the academic debates surrounding nationalism, globalization, and new and emerging mass media. By focusing on how Singaporeans in particular use media and technology, the researcher seeks to tease out the differential effects of local, regional, and global factors in producing societal change. Sub-cultural change in Singapore will be seen as window into understanding the nature of more general changes taking place within and across cultures in the wake of new technologies.This research will further social science investigations into how the worldwide internet is translated into local cultural terms and local social effects. The project will also contribute significantly to the education of a graduate student.