Singapore's First Year of COVID-19: Public Health, Immigration, the Neoliberal State, and Authoritarian Populism, edited by Kenneth Paul Tan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
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This book addresses the question of what Singapore's COVID-19 pandemic response in the first year can tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of the Singapore model and what its prospects might be in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous post-pandemic world. As a concise, holistic, and critical documentation of the first year of COVID-19 in Singapore, the multi-disciplinary chapters in this book provide a broad-ranging analysis of an internationally admired model of governance severely tested by a global pandemic crisis whose end is still not in sight.
The book focuses specifically on the interconnections among Singapore’s political economy, public health policies, immigration policies, and the elite and pragmatic system of state authoritarianism that, especially since the 1980s, has been at the heart of managing the tensions and contradictions of a nation-state that is also a global city, an important node in a network of goods, services, investments, wealth, people, ideas, and images, all moving rapidly. The chapters critically employ topics and concepts such as neoliberal globalization, authoritarian populism, moral panic, social stigmatization, heterotopia, spatial segregation, and others to make sense of a thoroughly complex situation.
Front MatterPages i-xi PDF
Neoliberal Globalization, Authoritarian Populism, and Moral Panics Kenneth Paul Tan Pages 1-21
Neoliberal Singapore: Nation-State and Global City Andrea Dugo Pages 23-51
Public Health Legacies: Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and SARS in Singapore Hongwu Lyu, Aymeric Vo Quang Pages 53-77
Tackling Covid-19, the Singapore Way Johanna Dirlewanger-Lücke, Junhao Li Pages 79-97
The Contradictions and Challenges of Singapore’s Immigration Policy Davide Brugola, Michael Flood Pages 99-125
Migrant Worker Dormitories: Virus in a Neoliberal Politics of Space Carolin Bernhard, Mara Ellemunt Pages 127-153
Ready for the Post-Pandemic World? Kenneth Paul Tan Pages 155-165
Back MatterPages 167-168 PDF