This paper aims to examine Multiracialism in Singapore and to understand the mechanism by which people whose backgrounds are different live together in the same place.
Singapore is known to be a multi-racial society, which consists of "Chinese," "Malays," "Indians" and "Others." It is also famous for its positive policies to maintain racial harmony. The ideology behind these policies is called "Multiracialism."
Through the examination of Multiracialism, it becomes clear that it has two aspects: it breaks up the racial cohesion on one hand and reinforces it on the other. In order to understand the mechanism by which these two aspects work in the daily lives of Singaporeans, I have examined the public housing estates. The reason why public housing estates are suitable for this purpose is that they are social institutions to keep social order in the context of Singaporean society. Public housing estates house 84% of the population, and 82% of these estates are purchased ones. It means that in order to live in Singapore, one must buy a flat and live there.
The fleldwork I did in one of the public housing estates reveals that the residents have developed an autogenetic communality by themselves. However, paradoxically, its formation means the start of suppression. The example of this is the demolition of one of the "hawker centres" (general term used for the public food courts in Singapore) that has supported residents around the centre since the 1960s and has been the core of communality there.
The case mentioned above shows the mechanism of Multiracialism in the everyday lives of Singaporeans. One of the effects of Multiracialism is to break up the racial cohesion, and this plays an important role in creating the autogenetic communality which does not question one's race. However, once the autogenetic communality starts to be formed, it is destroyed by another effect of Multiracialism, which reinforces the racial cohesion.
It must be remembered that it is the autogenetic communality that supports the mechanism of Multiracialism; this is the point which can be learnt from Singapore's case.
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