Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Beneath the gleaming facade of Singapore lies a palpable angst among its people. Through the perceptive analysis of interviews with 92 Singaporeans of different ethnicities, classes, educational levels, occupations, genders, and marital statuses, Singaporean sociologist TEO You Yenn puts her finger  on the sore spot in her new book Unease: Life in Singapore Families . Cannily she locates this gnawing sense of unease in the gap between national aspirations and familial realities. Singapore claims to be pro-family, and yet family life is hectic, anxious, and burdensome. What follows is a fine-grained examination of societal structure (institutions, policies, etc.) and culture (norms, values, habits, etc.), the former creating the latter, the latter reinforcing the former, including a chapter devoted to gender and another to class. The book would be of interest only to scholars and Singaporeans if it does not also have penetrating things to say about inequality. The problem of inequal...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . A sociologist, a political scientist, a media studies professor, and two economists meet in a webinar to talk about Singapore beyond the pandemic. The sociologist emphasizes the social inequities surfaced by the pandemic. The political scientist urges a mindset change from profit calculation to moral reasoning in the formulation of public policy. The media studies professor warns of the dangers of fanning nationalistic rhetoric. One of the two economists argues that efficiency pursued to the detriment of social justice actually becomes inefficient. The other economist wants Singapore to change its input-based development model because it has not been working for the country for years before the present crisis. Although the webinar is not about hawker food or getting ahead in school, it attracts scores of people, partly because the speakers have strong social-media followings, and partly because it is so refr...

Weekly column for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . On Tuesday, Singapore's Ministry of Education announced that it will scrap streaming in secondary schools in 2024 and replace it with subject-based banding. Singapore Unbound supports the abolition of streaming, which has undermined and stigmatized students by labeling them as Express, Normal (Academic), and Normal (Technical). The belated change to subject-based banding, or tracking as it is called in the USA, is an improvement, but it does not go very far in addressing the inequities in the educational system. Subject-based banding will, in fact, reinforce the false idea that the current system is based on meritocracy. Even with the change, schools will still be measuring student performance based on different student starting points and unequal access to resources (families, schools, and communities). There is no acknowledgement of prevailing social and economic injustices in society, as piercingl...

This collection of closely-linked essays by sociologist Teo You Yen challenges the reader to look closely at the portrait of poverty and inequality in Singapore. It is not a pretty sight, the precarious existence of many Singaporeans living in the richest country in Asia. How did we get here? The book has many answers, big and small, the most important of which is that poverty is not an exception to the much-touted system, but is, rather, the result of the structures, policies, and procedures pursued by government and people to increase wealth. Poverty is the result of inequality. Teo describes with sympathetic insight and keen detail the lives of Singaporeans living in poverty. She is an excellent writer whose expositions are lucid and descriptions vivid. Significantly, she locates herself in her study, as a means of contrasting her better position (university professor, married with children) with that of the disadvantaged. What would hammer home her argument is a companion volume de...