Contesting space

power relations and the urban built environment in colonial Singapore

Edición de la obra Contesting space

The urban built environment of colonial Singapore is conceived as a contested terrain of discipline and resistance between a colonial institution of control - the Municipal Authority of Singapore - and the Asian communities who lived their everyday lives according to their own values, priorities, and resources. The built environment bore the imprint of the disciplinary power of the authorities in their efforts to order, sanitize, and render the city amenable to regulation. At the same time, the spaces of the city were continually reinterpreted by the Asian communities who resisted the imposition of an all-encompassing colonial structure. The result was a built environment which embodied and expressed the tensions and negotiations between the different groups in their attempts to shape the city in their own image. These theoretical perspectives are empirically developed in the book, with specific chapters on municipal government, housing regulation, sanitary surveillance, urban signification, conflicts over public space in the form of the verandah, and controversies over the sacred spaces of Chinese burial grounds. This book is a welcome contribution to the study of colonial urbanization. It draws on a wide range of scholarly literature in cultural and social geography, post-colonial historical discourse, and social theory, combining these perspectives with archival research.

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