Introduction
Cultures are learned, shared knowledge. In this short write up, we will be discussing on the issue of whether there is a Singaporean culture to speak about. Do Singaporeans have something that they can call uniquely theirs? Or are we just sponges absorbing foreign ideas in this increasingly globalised age?
In this debate, I hold firm that Singapore does have its own culture to speak off and we do have the agency to create what is uniquely ours.
Together yet different
From the very beginning, Singapore has always been a culturally diverse society, with our predecessors being migrants from various parts of the world, China, Europe, India and Malaysia, (thinkquest) each of these groups bringing their own sets of cultural ideas, practices and traditions to this little red dot. This separation of groups was further reinforced by the legislation, where all identity cards, passports and official documents would never fail to have the field of “race”. Diversification has also rapidly grown today with the spread of foreign ideas through the mass media resulting in the rise of many subcultures.
With such distinctions, one may question the possibility of a common culture being shared among this diverse group of individuals. I however, remain optimistic that a commonality can still be created and this can be established through two main mechanisms, hybridisation and governmental influence.
Hybridisation
Hybridisation can be defined as the blending of cultures, generating new forms and making new connections with each other. (Wang and Yeh, 2005) This can be seen most prevalently in the colloquial Singaporean English, or commonly known as Singlish. Through anthropological linguists’ deeper analysis into the language they found that Singlish was actually evolved through the mixing of the various races’ native languages. (Platt, 1975) For example, terms such as “Kaypoh” (busybody) and “agak agak” (estimate) came from the Cantonese and Malay languages respectively. (Rebecca Yeo, 2010) Hence as we can see, Singaporeans do share a common culture through the mixing of their originally foreign cultures to form a hybrid form which can be classified as “Singaporean”.
Governmental Influences
Through the implementation of policies, the government too contributes their part to the creation of this cultural fabric of Singapore. For example, the electronic road pricing (ERP), could be seen as a unique system born of the government to manage traffic congestion in Singapore which worked effectively well that eventually even the London officials used the ERP as a reference for their traffic systems. Also the Certificate of entitlement (COE), which is an adaptation to assist us with the coping of limited land spaces, could possibly be a means necessary only for this country of 714.3 sq. km (Department of Statistics Singapore). These policies grant people living within this space, a common experience that is uniquely theirs.
Cultures are learned, shared knowledge. In this short write up, we will be discussing on the issue of whether there is a Singaporean culture to speak about. Do Singaporeans have something that they can call uniquely theirs? Or are we just sponges absorbing foreign ideas in this increasingly globalised age?
In this debate, I hold firm that Singapore does have its own culture to speak off and we do have the agency to create what is uniquely ours.
Together yet different
From the very beginning, Singapore has always been a culturally diverse society, with our predecessors being migrants from various parts of the world, China, Europe, India and Malaysia, (thinkquest) each of these groups bringing their own sets of cultural ideas, practices and traditions to this little red dot. This separation of groups was further reinforced by the legislation, where all identity cards, passports and official documents would never fail to have the field of “race”. Diversification has also rapidly grown today with the spread of foreign ideas through the mass media resulting in the rise of many subcultures.
With such distinctions, one may question the possibility of a common culture being shared among this diverse group of individuals. I however, remain optimistic that a commonality can still be created and this can be established through two main mechanisms, hybridisation and governmental influence.
Hybridisation
Hybridisation can be defined as the blending of cultures, generating new forms and making new connections with each other. (Wang and Yeh, 2005) This can be seen most prevalently in the colloquial Singaporean English, or commonly known as Singlish. Through anthropological linguists’ deeper analysis into the language they found that Singlish was actually evolved through the mixing of the various races’ native languages. (Platt, 1975) For example, terms such as “Kaypoh” (busybody) and “agak agak” (estimate) came from the Cantonese and Malay languages respectively. (Rebecca Yeo, 2010) Hence as we can see, Singaporeans do share a common culture through the mixing of their originally foreign cultures to form a hybrid form which can be classified as “Singaporean”.
Governmental Influences
Through the implementation of policies, the government too contributes their part to the creation of this cultural fabric of Singapore. For example, the electronic road pricing (ERP), could be seen as a unique system born of the government to manage traffic congestion in Singapore which worked effectively well that eventually even the London officials used the ERP as a reference for their traffic systems. Also the Certificate of entitlement (COE), which is an adaptation to assist us with the coping of limited land spaces, could possibly be a means necessary only for this country of 714.3 sq. km (Department of Statistics Singapore). These policies grant people living within this space, a common experience that is uniquely theirs.