Selvaraj Velayutham

Everyday Cosmopolitanism and the Labour of Intercultural Community

The oft-proclaimed ‘crisis of multiculturalism’ has entailed a raft of both theoretical and political criticisms. Theoretically, the identity focus of multiculturalism is seen to be incapable of capturing the cultural complexity of contemporary societies. Politically, as a set of policies and programmes, it is seen to be inadequate for servicing that complexity, or addressing concerns around cultural division and the desire for social cohesion. In its place, a clutch of ideas has emerged to fill this void and offer alternative visions for grappling with the consequences of diversity in an increasingly globalised world. The interest in notions of cosmopolitanism is central here because they shift the focus away from a politics of identity, which reifies categories of ethnicity, towards an ethics of cohabitation. This shift, however, has not been without its problems — cosmopolitanism has been too often constrained by its philosophical and ethical orientation, and its preoccupation with elites, and rarely used to explore the pragmatics of living with difference in diverse settings.

Conviviality in everyday multiculturalism: Some brief comparisons between Singapore and Sydney

This article considers the question of conviviality in everyday multiculturalism. It elaborates the concept of ‘convivial multiculture’ through case studies from Sydney and Singapore. In comparing these two contexts, the article considers what underpins conviviality across three themes: spatial ordering, where consideration is given to the role of built environment and material furnishings of place in shaping encounters with difference; connecting and bridging work, where we discuss the concept of ‘transversal enablers’, and intercultural gift exchange; and intercultural habitus, where disposition, habit and linguistic accommodation are discussed. It closes with some reflection upon larger forces that mediate local encounters, and the necessity to consider the full range of interactions, patterns, behaviours and meanings at work, and the interconnection between ‘happy’ and ‘hard’ forms of coexistence.

Introduction: Multiculturalism and Everyday Life

The food court of our local suburban shopping mall is deliciously rich with everyday multicultural encounters. We live in a suburb where more than 70 languages are spoken and on a typical day a good portion of these can be heard in this food court. The food stalls include an Indian place run by Tamil speakers from South India who’ve modified their menu to encompass more North Indian dishes because most of the international students living nearby are Punjabis. Next door is a Thai place popular with everyone, and next to them a Chinese buffet, a sandwich shop owned by Chinese, a Turkish kebab house, and the usual big fast-food outlets. There is a distinct temporal rhythm to the space. On weekdays one length of tables are occupied by a group of ten or so elderly Italian men who meet there each morning to talk, debate, play cards, and generally while away the time. They buy their coffee from the Italian-themed coffee shop owned and run by local Chinese immigrants. Large-screen TVs hanging above hum with the sound of Oprah or the news. The tables in the middle are occupied by a few elderly white men (we suspect widowers living alone), usually with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. Typically they’ll be sitting alone but apparently enjoying the light-touch company of others occupying this public space. There is a soup kitchen up the road so there are often homeless men occupying tables near the TVs and we’ve seen the Chinese coffee shop owners give free coffee and cake to a couple of them who come regularly.

Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore

Despite unprecedented levels of global interconnectedness, little academic attention has been paid to how governments actively deal with the challenges globalization poses for national identity. This book investigates the Singapore Governments approach to the construction of national identity and the shifting ways in which Singapore has been imagined in official discourses.This book focuses on the global/national nexus: the tensions between the necessity to embrace the global to ensure economic survival, yet needing a committed population to support the perpetuation of the nation-state and its economic success.

Precarious experiences of Indians in Australia on 457 temporary work visas

The study of temporary skilled migration in Australia is relatively new. As a rapidly emerging source of labour and settlers for Australia’s immigration programme, temporary skilled migration will have a major and potentially long-lasting impact on Australia. Since the mid-1990s, temporary skilled migration (under the subclass 457 visa programme) has overtaken permanent migration to Australia. India is now the largest and fastest growing source of temporary skilled migrants. This is a major new development in Australian migration history; yet, to date, there has been little qualitative research into the subjective experiences, motivations and settlement patterns of Indian temporary skilled migrants in Australia, from the perspective of the migrant. This article presents findings from a 3-year qualitative study on the experiences of temporary skilled migrants from India living and working in Australia. It argues that many of the quantitative studies on this topic fail to offer a nuanced reading of these workers’ experiences in Australia, in particular, their situations of vulnerability engendered by the recruitment process, visa conditions, unlawful employment practices and living arrangements.

Everyday Racism in Singapore

In 1992, in a parliamentary speech, MP Choo Wee Khiang remarked ‘one evening, I drove to Little India [an Indian shopping enclave and popular tourist destination in Singapore] and it was pitch dark but not because there was no light, but because there were too many Indians around’. Choo later apologised in Parliament, though his disparaging and racist remarks had earned him no censure there. There was no public outrage against Choo’s comments either. His ability to get away with the audacious witticism that pitch-darkness around Little India was due to the high number of (dark skinned) Indians in the area seems to suggest that there was tacit approval of his comments by other members of parliament.

Second-generation Tamils and cross-cultural marriage: Managing the translocal village in a moment of cultural rupture

The paper is based on an auto-ethnographic study of transnational Tamils living in Singapore who retain strong links to their village in India. We explore the challenges posed by increasingly hybrid cultural practices and cross-cultural connections among the second-generation members of this translocal village which spans India, Singapore and Australia. Through a case study of a cross-cultural and ‘out-marriage’ which took place in the village in India, we explore how those charged with maintaining and reproducing the cultural boundaries of the village in transnational circumstances responded to this cultural ‘rupture’. We analyse some of the factors that were pivotal in reproducing the continued viability of the moral economy of this translocal village and explore some of the means deployed to maintain the boundaries of this social field. We develop the concept of ‘transnational affect’ to describe the function of bodily emotions such as shame and pride that compel participation in and conformity to the transnational social field. We also discuss the deployment of strategies of creative improvisation such as the filling-in of ritual gaps in order to maintain ritual integrity. We show how this ensures that the role of ritual in reproducing membership and a sense of obligation to the community is not disrupted.

Affect, materiality, and the gift of social life in Singapore

This paper draws on research data gathered from an Internet discussion forum, e-mail survey, and newspaper report to examine the question of national identity and belonging in Singapore. It considers how Singaporean citizens relate to the kinds of discourses on national identity presented by the government and articulate their experiences and sense of belonging to the Singapore nation. It argues that the governments approach to nation-building based on economic developmentalism and survivalism has created an ambivalent and tenuous relationship of mutual obligation between the individual and the nation-state. It is therefore crucial that the basis of national identity is dislodged from the ideology of survivalism if an ethical practice of obligation/reciprocity is to emerge.

Dissent and cultural resistance in Asia's cities

This book documents urban experiences of dissent and emergent resistance against disjunctive global and local capital, technology and labour flows that converge and intersect in some of Asia’s fastest growing cities. Rather than constructing occupants of the city as simply passive victims of globalisation or urbanisation, it presents ways in which people are using everyday strategies embedded in cultural practice to challenge dominant socio-economic and political forces impacting on urban space. Taking the city as a site of contestation and a stage where social conflicts are played out, the book highlights the connections between urban power and dissent; the nature and impact of resistance; how the spatiality and built environment of the city generates conflict and, conversely, how protagonists use the cityscape to stage their everyday and public dissent. The contributors explore the conditions, strategies, and outcomes of such dissent and forms of cultural resistance, and explore the following themes: the impact of urban development, gentrification and ghetto-isation; urban counter narratives and the re-imagining of city spaces; the role of grassroots activism and social movements; cultural resistance in the creation of neighbourhoods and communities; the impact of gender, class and the politics of identity on forms of dissent; the formation of transgressive spaces.

Dancing with Ga(y)nesh: rethinking cultural appropriation in multicultural Australia

Into the asserted authenticity or continuity of tradition, ‘secular’ blasphemy releases a temporality that reveals the contingencies, even the incommensurabilities, involved in the social transformation. 1 The discourse and practice of ‘ofe cial’ multiculturalism is always constituted through cultural hegemony, struggles over representation and prevailing ideological norms. It is not surprising that these processes are also played out in everyday encounters. When multiculturalism is celebrated because it is socially and culturally enriching, this hegemonic ideal renders all forms of cultural borrowing and appropriation as positive contributions to the multicultural project. While multiculturalism offers a space for the intermingling and mutual borrowing of ‘difference’, rarely are the ethical and discursive dimensions of such practices debated. Here, our aim is to examine these dimensions in relation to the question of the very thin (and dife cult to discern and dee ne) line between positive ‘enrichment’ and problematic ‘appropriation’. Our argument here is that multiculturalism should be conceived as lived practice, rather than reie ed cultural formation. Such a move highlights the need for sustained analysis of contextual and situated instances of intercultural and intercommunal interaction and borrowings. In this paper, we will examine the ethical and discursive dimensions of one particular act of cultural borrowing, where, in the view of some, this line was crossed. The paper offers a brief analysis of the appropriation of Hindu religious imagery at the 1999 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Sleaze Ball, themed ‘Homosutra’. Our discussion is primarily directed at understanding the distress this ball caused Indian communities in Sydney and abroad. At the centre of this debate were the twin issues of religious appropriation and the preservation of religious tradition. Our concern therefore is to critically examine the ethical dimensions of cultural appropriation, in relation to questions of power and social context, and the implications for intercommunal relationships in multicultural Australia.