By the time Singapore celebrated 25 years of nation building in 1984, the city-state was being praised for its “good governance” and economic achievements. However, what has constantly been overlooked is that these achievements were the result of a compliant civil service. After the People’s Action Party (PAP) was elected to office in 1959, it cracked down on its leftist political opponents and the press, while introducing “attitudinal reform” of the civil service. Civil servants learned very quickly that they were not supposed to question the wisdom of the ruling party. While Singapore today continues to highlight the Westminster system of government as a positive legacy of British colonialism, the reality is that the civil service is no longer politically neutral. This article explains how the PAP government worked to dominate the civil service in the 1960s before using it to serve its own political interests by the 1980s.

This essay recounts and critically examines the anti-drug campaigns in the Philippines during the presidencies of Joseph Estrada (1998–2001) and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001–10). In January 2000 Estrada’s secretary of the interior, Alfredo Lim, embarked on a spray-painting campaign that was short-lived but nonetheless galvanized public awareness of the “drug menace.” Three years later Estrada’s successor, Arroyo, would launch a “drug war” that mobilized various sectors of society. Rooted in a long-standing moral panic around drugs since the 1970s and the emergence of a “methamphetamine epidemic” in the 1990s, these campaigns were characterized by a willingness to resort to extrajudicial measures, the institutionalization of a (more) punitive drug regime, the politicization of drugs, and a discourse that constructed young people simultaneously as victims and criminals. Such approaches and the paradigm behind them foreshadowed Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs more than a decade later and underscore the enduring valence of drugs and drug issues in contemporary Philippine society.

This article examines the effects of coal-mining water infrastructure on the waterscape, farmers’ practices, and ethics in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Focusing on the Pond, a water infrastructure built by a coal mining company, the study reveals its contradictory effects on the local waterscape. Rather than effectively managing wastewater, the Pond produces inconsistent water supply. It generates conflict between farmers and the mining company, creating unequal relationships and increasing vulnerability and dependence. Ecological changes and water uncertainties compel farmers to alter their pest-control practices, compromising their ethic of sama-sama cari makan (“foraging together,” or “surviving together”). Closely connected with Islamic values and local mythology, this ethic promotes thoughtful pest-control practices as it recognizes the existence of pests as rightfully equal to humans in the farm ecosystem. This ethic of relatedness is possible through and within watery connections. This article highlights forms of slow violence, showing how the Pond, as extractive infrastructure, disrupts the waterscape, generates insecurities, and erodes ethics. In a broader context, it explores human-water relationships amid large-scale resource extraction and development in Indonesia.

This study explores one of the untold histories at the margins in Philippine society during the Japanese occupation, focusing on the informal economic activities of marginalized people. Most works on the social history of the Philippines during the Japanese occupation tend to highlight the sufferings that Filipinos went through due to the wartime violence inflicted by Japanese soldiers. But it is important to point out that some people at the margins accumulated their wealth navigating between resistance and collaboration. Their activities in the informal wartime economy have long been ignored in Philippine historiography even though these activities contributed to transformations in local society after the war. Although many works of broader economic history have been published on the wartime economy in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia, analysis of the activities of minor players in the microeconomic sphere—such as the black market, buy-and-sell activities, local gambling, and outlaw activities (including the organization of gangs)—remains fragmented and underexplored. The present study examines two cases during the Japanese occupation to show how marginalized individuals rose to prominence in local society, often through violent means—whether by collaborating with the Japanese or through contacts with guerrilla forces.

This research examines the visual narratives and cultural transformation associated with the ngepan Iban in Borneo through the lens of colonial photographic imagery. During the colonial period various European powers undertook extensive documentation of Indigenous cultures, producing a rich repository of images that have since become critical sources for historical and anthropological analysis. This study explores how these colonial images influenced the representation and understanding of the cultural practices, social structures, and identity associated with the ngepan Iban. By analyzing a selection of historical photographs and illustrations, this research aims to uncover the ways in which colonial visual documentation has both reflected and shaped the perceptions of ngepan Iban culture, highlighting the intersections of colonialism, visual representation, and Indigenous identity. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the impact of colonial documentation on Indigenous cultural narratives and offer insights into the broader implications of visual representation in historical research.