London Sculptor; Asian Values

Checked out www.londonsculptor.com just now. Some of the works must literally weigh a tonne!

Am lifting some bits out from a couple of papers I'm reading for class later today.

1) Jones (1997). Asian Values and the Constitutional Order of Contemporary Singapore, Constitutional Political Economy

'The capacity of the small city-state to volatize academic discourse is curious given its relative political and economic insignificance.'

'Indeed, its cadres of scholar-bureaucrats widely promote the city-state not only as a model for development elsewhere in Asia and Africa, but also for reforming the moral blight that vitiates the contemporary western cityscape'

'Commentators of a conservative disposition derive comfort fromSingapore’s bracingly elitist education and refreshingly retributive approach to justice (seeRodan 1996:340)'

'Goh Keng Swee, Singapore’s economic planner par excellence learnt the significance of macroaggregate targeting at the L.S.E'

'In 1985, the government introduced the Social Development Unit (SDU) as a state-run matchmaker encouraging under-procreating graduates to “make a little room for love” in their overly academic lives.'

'However, the small size of the city-state, its technocratic addiction to planning and adjustingthe population to the latest macroeconomic target together with its preoccupationwith psychological defence against an external threat has actually fashioned a peculiarly anxiety-ridden national identity. Singaporeans knowfrom their socialization that the infractioneven of a minor rule evokes condign retribution. Singaporeans consequently display apreoccupation with the precise observation of rules.'

'The government, as Goh Chok Tong pointed out in parliament in January 1995, reserves a “right of reply” (Straits Times 1–24, 1995).5 In fact, the PAP has evolved a notably anti-individualistic construction of social contract theory, that grants government a right to be right.'

'The official ideology of total defense rests onthe contestible claim that the Party-engineered economic growth has transformed a fragile, resourceless island in Southeast Asia into a miracle of socially cohesive development.In order to maintain this illusion scholar-bureaucrats like Kishore Mahbubani (1994:6–8) officially promote a number of related incoherences:Singapore is a fragile Third World developingcountry, yet economically and morally superior to the fast-fadingWest; Singapore volubly promotes the WTO yet denies a free market in information; Singaporeans practice Asian values that uphold family and community yet applaud self-interested kiasuism;the Singaporean judiciary is not compliant, but to prove its case against The International Herald Tribune demonstrates that it is; finally, its “transparent legal system” systematically erodes elementary civil rights. Paradoxically, only by recourse to such irrational devices can scientific rule in pursuit of the always elusive common good be sustained.'

2) A review in Public Choice by Dorussen (1997) of Lingle's (1996) Singapore’s authoritarian capitalism: Asian values, free market illusions, and political dependency. Barcelona, Spain: Edicions Sirocco.

'Lingle is tempted to use hyperbolic language throughout his book. In light of his personal experiences this may be understandable, but it nevertheless undermines thepower of his arguments. A particularly worrisome example is his description of Singapore’s population as ‘loutish’ and ‘boorish.’ A striking sentence is:‘(e)conomic man is alive and well in Singapore, and he (she) is not a very nice person to encounter.’ It is best to reserve these nineteenth century stereotypesfor second-rate journalistic writings.'