Doctoral Dissertation Research: Beyond Developmentalism: State Institutions, Private Lives, and the Production of Singapore Citizens

这个项目提出了一个问题：国家如何构建和维持合法性？一个民族国家的合法性取决于它在产生公民方面的效力，这些公民认为他们参与经济，政治和社区总体上符合他们作为个人和集体国家机构的最佳利益。本论文以新加坡为例，探讨了这些问题。新加坡是一个民族国家，它在几个方面都很特殊：它不是严格的独裁主义，但肯定不是民主的;它有一个看似温顺的公民，但却积极参与国家的众多经济和社会项目;它的“现代性”取向并没有阻止国家制定鼓励受过大学教育的妇女生育更多孩子的政策。人们不禁要问：近距离观察，新加坡的统治是什么样子的？如果一个国家显然既不是民主国家，也不是独裁政权，那么它是如何组织起来的呢？这一规则是在什么条件下建立起来的，又是在什么条件下得以维持的？这种类型的规则对那些被统治的人来说实际上意味着什么？他们如何参与其中？ 通过分析住房、生育和婚姻这三套制度，本项目旨在解决这些问题。研究将沿着沿着三条路线进行：（1）对关键社会政策进行密切的文本分析，（2）对谈判这些政策的公民进行访谈，（3）将新加坡和马来西亚的案例并列。 本文旨在深化和复杂化现有的理解，发展中国家如何获得稳定的统治，并产生公民主体，他们在参与国家的“发展”意象中找到意义。“该项目对社会学的贡献将是获得对国家统治的更全面的看法，将对国家在经济领域所做的事情的理解与他们在社会-政治-文化领域所做的事情相结合，研究社会分工的原则，如性别和种族以及他们在“生产公民”中所扮演的角色，这些公民理解并认为他们参与国家的国家发展项目是有意义的。

This project asks the question: how do states construct and maintain legitimacy? The legitimacy of a nation-state depends upon its efficacy in producing citizens who see their participation in the economy, politics and the community in general, as in their best interests as individuals and as a collective national body. The proposed dissertation takes up the case of Singapore to address these issues. Singapore is a nation-state that is peculiar in several ways: it is not strictly authoritarian but certainly not democratic; it has a seemingly docile citizenry that nonetheless participates actively in the state's numerous economic and social projects; and its orientation toward "modernity" does not stop the state from formulating policies encouraging college-educated women to have more babies. One is led to ask the following questions: up close, what does Singapore's rule look like? How is rule organized if it is obviously not a democracy, but also not an authoritarian regime? Under what conditions has this rule been constructed and under what conditions has it been sustained? What does the type of rule actually mean for those being ruled over, and how are they participating in it? By analyzing three sets of institutions--housing, reproduction, and marriage--this project aims to address these questions. The research will be carried out along three lines: (1) a close textual analysis of key social policies, (2) interviews with citizens who negotiate these policies, and (3) by juxtaposing the cases of Singapore and Malaysia. This dissertation aims to deepen and complicate existing understandings of how developing states come to have stable rule and produce citizen subjects who find meaning in their participation in the state's imagery of "development." The project's contribution to sociology will be to gain more holistic views of state rule, integrate understandings about what states do in the economic realm with what they do in socio-politico-cultural realms, examine principles of social division such as, gender and ethnicity and the roles they play in "producing citizens" who understand and find meaningful their participation in the state's national project of development.