Global Youth Programmes
Global Perspective on Development and Social Issues
For decades, ‘development’ has been a key topic of discussion and pursuit – particularly for global south countries. But what is development? What does it look like and what can it look like? What are its key spheres of operation? How is it linked to forms of social inequality and injustice at the local, regional, and international scales? How is development pursued, by whom, and to what social effects?
Programme Contents
| Sessions | |
|---|---|
| Pre-Session 1 | |
| Welcome Speech and Introductory Briefing | |
| To welcome the students, give an overview of the programme and the group project presentations, and screen an introductory video (pre-prepared by SCALE). | |
| Instructor: Associate Professor Ho Swee Lin | |
| Session 1 | |
| Housing | |
| Singapore used to be a British Colony, like Hong Kong. Upon its attaining self-government in 1959, one of the key items on the government’s agenda was the provision of public housing. Over the last more than 60 years, corresponding to the many political and social changes occurring in Singapore, the government has set out to “house a nation”, enable home ownership, strengthen national identity, and promote social integration among the diverse ethnic, religious, and class categories. However, the housing journey has not always been a smooth one. There are challenges which entail having a government which enjoys the strong support of the people, and thereby be in a good position to think and engage in long-term planning. | |
| Instructor: Associate Professor Tan Ern Ser | |
| Session 2 | |
| Healthcare | |
| This session provides an introduction to healthcare systems with a focus on Singapore and a comparative international perspective. The session will begin with an exploration of the history of hospitals, tracing their evolution from early healing centers to modern-day medical facilities. Students will learn about the different levels of healthcare provision, including primary, secondary, and tertiary care, and their roles within the healthcare ecosystem. The lecture will also delve into health financing, examining how healthcare services are funded and managed in Singapore compared to other countries. Through this comprehensive overview, students will gain insights into the complexities and challenges of healthcare systems globally. | |
| Instructor: Associate Professor Bussarawan (Puk) Teerawichitchainan | |
| Session 3 | |
| Public Infrastructure (Transportation) | |
| This seminar will focus on transportation and its salience to society, culture, and pleasure. Through case studies and “best practices” from all over the world, students will explore the significance of transportation in shaping social relations and consolidating public life. In particular, we discuss the following topics: car culture and consumerism; public transport and sustainable development; gender and risk in transport spaces; and pleasure and recreation on the streets. The aim of the session is to discuss transportation as a humanistic and social-scientific issue and not just the domain of engineers and planners. | |
| Instructor: Assistant Professor Sneha Annavarapu | |
| Session 4 | |
| Cultural Heritage | |
| What is cultural heritage and how it is defined today in various societies? What is the role of UNESCO and its various agreements when it comes to heritage? What are the relationships between conservation and identity-building? What are the existing threats to cultural heritage and how does it relate to tourism? These are some of the questions that this workshop will tackle. After introducing students to key concepts to understand cultural heritage, we will examine various real case-studies and reflect on how politics regarding cultural heritage are operationalized on the ground and received by local communities. Special attention will be given to the relation between cultural heritage and legal aspects since there is a growing trend of countries asking the return of artefacts that were looted or indigenous people fighting in court over land rights claims or opposing archaeological excavations. | |
| Instructor: Associate Professor Anne Raffin | |
| Session 5 | |
| Group Presentations, Summary, Grading, and Issuing of Certificates | |
| The seminar is for students to present their group projects based on a topic or issue that each group has chosen during the programme. Each group will present for no more than 15 minutes, and will be given detailed feedback on their individual projects with comments and recommendations on how to enhance their analytical, research, and presentation skills. These are followed by grading of the presentations, a summary of the programme, and issuing of individual certificates. | |
| Instructors: Associate Professor Ho Swee Lin & Dr Ivan Kwek |
Course Objectives
This workshop will engage these and related questions to think about ‘development’ as a theory as well as a practice. It will do this at the heart of Singapore – a city-state internationally lauded for its exceptional development over the past decades. From here, questions of housing, infrastructure (transportation), heritage, and health will be discussed drawing on case studies from Southeast Asia, wider Asia, as well as various other parts of the world. Students will learn some of the basic concepts of development, examine its social impacts, and explore key strategies used by the public and private sectors to achieve development goals while ensuring sustainability and equity.
By the end of this programme, participants will be able to critically understand the processes involved in implementing various development projects and the challenges that different stakeholders have to manage. They will also be able to assess some of the most pressing social issues through class discussions and small-group presentations.
Programme Structure
Each session will be a 3-hour long seminar (with a break) conducted in English. Instructors will present material and content depending on the four session topics below. Students may be given short tasks to complete, and form small groups to discuss specific prompts provided by the instructors. Each session will also contain wider class discussions during which different perspectives, opinions, and experiences will be put into conversation. In this sense, active participation is essential as these are interactive sessions. Students are therefore highly encouraged to contribute to each session drawing on their own lived experiences as well as both academic and personal backgrounds.
Pre-requisites
There is no pre-requisite for this course and no prior knowledge about development topics or the case studies that will be discussed is required, though some general understanding of development would be useful.
Course Instructors
Associate Professor HO SWEE LIN
Associate Professor HO SWEE LIN has done research and published extensively on urban transformations in Asia; fieldwork methods; global financial markets; financialization of daily life; the global flows of Asian popular culture; emergent corporate cultures; changing labour practices; the commercialization of intimacy; political economy of sexuality; and social formations of gender. She worked for two decades in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the UK – as auditor, financial journalist, and corporate executive – before receiving her MA in Comparative Culture at Sophia University (Japan), followed by MSc and PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Before joining NUS, she conducted studies as a Korea Foundation Research Fellow on the gendered selfhood, nationhood, and cultural identities through the globalization of South Korean popular culture, and later taught at The Catholic University of Korea.
Her current research on the political economy of the global classical music industry extends her studies of the neoliberal transformations of work in East Asia, by examining state production and promotion of talent, creativity, and passion to propel economic growth and become global cultural hubs; and the challenges they present to individuals in pursuit of professional careers within the classical music industry. She can be reached on sochsl@nus.edu.sg
Associate Professor Tan Ern Ser
Associate Professor Tan Ern Ser, PhD, JP, is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology (until end-June 2024), and Academic Adviser, Social Lab, Institute of Policy Studies, at the National University of Singapore. He received his PhD from Cornell University, USA. He is author of “Does Class Matter?” (2004, World Scientific), “Class and Social Orientations” (2015, IPS), “Public Housing and Social Mixing” (2020, UN-Habitat); and co-author of “More than just a roof over one’s head: lifestyle diversity and dynamics in Singapore public housing” (2019, Routledge) and “Social Capital in Singapore” (2021, Routledge). He chairs the Research Advisory Panel, HDB. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace (JP) in 2013. He can be contacted at serenandetan@gmail.com
Associate Professor Bussarawan (Puk) Teerawichitchainan
Associate Professor Bussarawan (Puk) Teerawichitchainan holds joint appointments as Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Co-Director of the Centre for Family and Population Research. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Washington. She was a past fellowship recipient of Fulbright, the Social Science Research Council, and the Population Council. Her research interests lie at the intersection of family demography, social gerontology, population health, and social stratification. Her current research examines the roles of family, policy, and social structure in explaining the life course and well-being of older adults in the Asia Pacific region, particularly Southeast Asia. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses, including Medical Sociology, Population Studies, and Graduate Research Seminar. Email address: puk@nus.edu.sg
Assistant Professor Sneha Annavarapu
Assistant Professor Sneha Annavarapu is a sociologist. Her research interests centre around governance, transportation, class relations, and gender inequality in South Asia. She has published articles in academic journals such as Social Problems, Social Change, Journal of Historical Sociology, and Journal of Consumer Culture and is a regular host on the New Books Network podcast. She is also currently affiliated to the Urban Studies program at Yale-NUS College. She is reachable at snehanna@nus.edu.sg
Associate Professor Anne Raffin
Associate Professor Anne Raffin specializes in historical sociology, focusing on French colonialism in Asia and its legacies as well as heritage policies in former colonized places. She received her PhD at the New School for Social Research in the USA, under the supervision of Charles Tilly, and taught at Brigham Young University, Utah, USA before coming to NUS.
She has been researching and publishing on social transformations and historical legacies in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and India, and in 2022 received an award as Distinguished Woman Researcher in Sociology from the Venus International Foundation. She is currently researching heritage policies in the cities of Puducherry and Ahmedabad, India. She can be reached on socanner@nus.edu.sg
Dr Ivan Kwek
Dr Ivan Kwek is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, NUS. Trained as a media anthropologist at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Univ. of London), and with a prior background as a TV current affairs and documentary producer, Ivan has worked on the ethnography of media production at Suria, the minority Malay-language television channel in Singapore.
His research is focused on the so-called Malay worlds as they relate to, not just media and ethnicity, but also spaces, memories, and future-making. As an educator, he has taught visual ethnography and visual culture, race and ethnicity, media and popular culture, art, and cultural production as well as the gateway module to the newly launched Anthropology major. He can be reached on ivankwek@nus.edu.sg