IN SEARCH OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY
Singapore is a tropical island where eating is a national past-time but also an addiction. An addiction to perpetuate, to reinforce and to validate our sense of national identity. Anywhere we go, we will find some place to eat. For a nation of over 4 million people, there are over 20,000 eating establishments, including over 120 Hawker Centres and many more Food Courts scattered over the island. These cultural icons – Hawker Centres and Food Courts – not only just provide us with a place to enjoy delicious and reasonably priced food, they serves as a reflection of our Singapore identity.
Be it next to a wet market, in residential areas or housing estates, in shopping malls or within commercial areas, there is bound to be either a Hawker Centre or a Food Court, or both (and then maybe some more) to be found. There is no such thins as going out of one’s way to get food, it is unnecessary for people to travel long distances to satisfy their cravings. Time and energy is saved on traveling. Hawker Centres and Food Courts usually operate the whole day everyday (some even operate 24 hours every day), so you can have breakfast, lunch or dinner at any time you want, whenever is best for you. Moreover, at Hawker Centres and Food Courts, there are many stalls that sell different varieties of cuisines. Therefore people can enjoy diverse cuisines in the comfort of a single location. Again, time and energy is saved, without have to go to the trouble of finding different places to enjoy different cuisines. Although in Hawker Centres customers are sometimes still require to wait to be served after ordering their food, stalls are increasingly operating like those in Food Courts where the customer is served almost immediately upon ordering and they practise self-serving. Here time and energy is saved on waiting for food. Clearly, Singaporeans are a bunch that values convenience and efficiency a lot. Practical by nature, they do not appreciate spending so much time and energy unnecessarily.
Hawker Centres have been around for a long time, since the 1950s when the government abolished the practice of street hawking. With the introduction of the air conditioned Food Courts, which are generally more hygienic and orderly, many Hawker Centres have either been replaced by or are being renovated to be more like Food Courts. These Food Courts are more often than not franchised – the leading Food Court brands include ‘Kopitiam’ and ‘Banquet’ - and the methods of food preparation pale in comparison to that of supposed culinary masters in Hawker Centres, most of who have honed their skills for many years. Thus, inevitably, food standards and quality are generally lower in Food Courts than in Hawker Centres. This, however, does not deter Singaporeans from patronizing the Food Courts. In many instances it is because the Food Courts have air conditioning and better sanitary conditions. This preference of material comforts over food quality is symbolically reflective of how Singaporeans’ pursuit of the material – the 5 Cs (or is it 6 now?) - has led to the subsequent negligence of the quality of life.
What is this blind pursuit of the 5 Cs – the epitome or emblem of materialism? It seems like the whole purpose of Singaporeans’ lives, the finish line in this rat race is when one attains all 5 Cs – Career, Car, Condominium, Credit Cards and Cash (or some say Country Club membership but you get the picture). There is this invisible driving force enveloping the city, making Singaporeans always wanting to change for the better, to improve and to always excel in everything they do. The whole country is always changing always upgrading. Even Hawker Centres are not left behind. Hawker Centres and now increasingly being replaced by better, cleaner, and more importantly, cooler Food Courts and even is they are not replaced, they are undergoing renovation or upgrading to become better, cleaner. Nothing stays the same in Singapore; it must always become better. Driven by the principle of meritocracy, Singapore’s economy always favours those who excel, forming an innate Singaporean need for self improvement and this is manifested and perpetuated by the constant upgrading of Hawker Centres into Food Courts. Is this truly who Singaporeans are or is it merely a system imposed on Singaporeans by the government?
As time changes and the world becomes closer through globalization, there is always a struggle between wanting to keep up with the world and at the same time holding on to our traditional, cultural or even national roots. To avoid standardization, people fervently embrace their cultural differences while increasingly more people call out for a national identity. Not one to lose out, Singapore is too, fighting to keep up with globalization. Singaporeans see the need and the government highlights the need to be in touch with the world around us, to be more international. This is even reflected in the operations of Food Courts. Although Hawker Centres still typically serve local and traditional food (“Western Food” is arguably local), it is not surprising to find stalls in Food Courts serving international cuisines such as Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and many others. Granted they may be served to cater to tourists or expatriates in Singaporean, but who is not to argue that they are also means of enabling the people with lower income, who cannot afford to patronize fancy restaurants selling international cuisine, to join in the globalization phenomenon. Yet at the same time, the government perpetuates or reinforces the notion of a national identity by enthusiastically promoting Singapore tourism through Hawker Centres and celebrating the claim that they are indigenous to the region and endorsing it as a national or cultural icon.
Singaporeans readily embrace this idea or notion of a national identity or culture in form of a food culture, in form of Hawker Centres and Food Courts, be it due to the lack of other significant national or cultural icons or otherwise. Can this truly be reflective of Singaporean culture or are Hawker Centres and Food Courts mere tools of the government to construct a cultural ideal by which they want us Singaporeans to live by?
We have already come across how the government uses the upgrading of Hawker Centres and the proliferation of Food Courts as a means of disseminating their belief in the principle of meritocracy, of constantly needing to change for the better. By expounding on Hawker Centres being national icons of Singapore, the government uses them as mechanisms to promote cultural diversity and to signify racial harmony and tolerance. The whole premise of a Hawker Centre is to bring people of different races and ethnicity together under one roof, too cook as one family and to eat as one family. Citizens dining in the mass communal eating area are a simulation of a family gathering together, eating together. The standardization of food found in Food Courts is symbolic of a united Singaporean entity. Whichever Food Court one patronises, one will find stalls selling the same or similar varieties of food. On top of all these, the government exploits the indigenity and allure of Hawker Centres as a revenue making institution by promoting it as a tourist attraction. Renovation works on one of the previously most celebrated local Hawker Centre, Newton Food Circus, have turned it into a full fledged tourist attraction complete with signboards explaining the origins of Hawker Centres and even a ‘Top Ten list of Local Hawker dishes’ one must try.
In Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, he proposed the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community. “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”
The concept of Hawker Centres as a national icon, our way of consumption as an idea of national identity, could all just be a construct of the government to create this imagined communal identity for Singaporeans to believe in.
James Donald’s How English is it? draws on Anderson’s imagined community and carries on to say “the apparatus of discourse, technologies, and institutions (print capitalism, education, mass media and so forth) produces what is generally recognized as ‘the national culture’.” “ ‘the nation’ is an effect of these cultural technologies, not their origin. A nation does not express itself through its culture: it is culture that produces ‘the nation’. What is produced is not an identity or a single consciousness – nor necessarily a representation at all – but hierarchically organized values, dispositions and differences.”
The government uses Hawker Centres as institutions to create a ‘national culture’ and this ‘national culture’ is in fact a set of beliefs and values that the government wants us to believe is our own culture, is the make up of our identity – the values of racial harmony, of meritocracy etc.
Going back to even before the 1950s when there were no Hawker Centres, there only existed hawkers and their mobile stalls, selling their food from street to street. This was the true Singaporean culture. To think that the government then had initially intended to abolish street hawking altogether before coming up with the idea of housing them under one roof. The whole practice of street hawking is a tactic – there were no laws permitting or forbidding the practice of street hawking and hawkers went about their business always on the look out for fear of being stopped on the grounds of blocking traffic or not having substantial sanitary standards. By housing the Hawkers together under one roof and then market them as Hawker Centres, the government succeeded in repackaging and reproducing what is Singapore culture and creating a national identity, and at the same time take over what was essentially a tactic and then reinventing it into a strategy of its own.
Singapore is a tropical island where eating is a national past-time but also an addiction. An addiction to perpetuate, to reinforce and to validate our sense of national identity. Anywhere we go, we will find some place to eat. For a nation of over 4 million people, there are over 20,000 eating establishments, including over 120 Hawker Centres and many more Food Courts scattered over the island. These cultural icons – Hawker Centres and Food Courts – not only just provide us with a place to enjoy delicious and reasonably priced food, they serves as a reflection of our Singapore identity.
Be it next to a wet market, in residential areas or housing estates, in shopping malls or within commercial areas, there is bound to be either a Hawker Centre or a Food Court, or both (and then maybe some more) to be found. There is no such thins as going out of one’s way to get food, it is unnecessary for people to travel long distances to satisfy their cravings. Time and energy is saved on traveling. Hawker Centres and Food Courts usually operate the whole day everyday (some even operate 24 hours every day), so you can have breakfast, lunch or dinner at any time you want, whenever is best for you. Moreover, at Hawker Centres and Food Courts, there are many stalls that sell different varieties of cuisines. Therefore people can enjoy diverse cuisines in the comfort of a single location. Again, time and energy is saved, without have to go to the trouble of finding different places to enjoy different cuisines. Although in Hawker Centres customers are sometimes still require to wait to be served after ordering their food, stalls are increasingly operating like those in Food Courts where the customer is served almost immediately upon ordering and they practise self-serving. Here time and energy is saved on waiting for food. Clearly, Singaporeans are a bunch that values convenience and efficiency a lot. Practical by nature, they do not appreciate spending so much time and energy unnecessarily.
Hawker Centres have been around for a long time, since the 1950s when the government abolished the practice of street hawking. With the introduction of the air conditioned Food Courts, which are generally more hygienic and orderly, many Hawker Centres have either been replaced by or are being renovated to be more like Food Courts. These Food Courts are more often than not franchised – the leading Food Court brands include ‘Kopitiam’ and ‘Banquet’ - and the methods of food preparation pale in comparison to that of supposed culinary masters in Hawker Centres, most of who have honed their skills for many years. Thus, inevitably, food standards and quality are generally lower in Food Courts than in Hawker Centres. This, however, does not deter Singaporeans from patronizing the Food Courts. In many instances it is because the Food Courts have air conditioning and better sanitary conditions. This preference of material comforts over food quality is symbolically reflective of how Singaporeans’ pursuit of the material – the 5 Cs (or is it 6 now?) - has led to the subsequent negligence of the quality of life.
What is this blind pursuit of the 5 Cs – the epitome or emblem of materialism? It seems like the whole purpose of Singaporeans’ lives, the finish line in this rat race is when one attains all 5 Cs – Career, Car, Condominium, Credit Cards and Cash (or some say Country Club membership but you get the picture). There is this invisible driving force enveloping the city, making Singaporeans always wanting to change for the better, to improve and to always excel in everything they do. The whole country is always changing always upgrading. Even Hawker Centres are not left behind. Hawker Centres and now increasingly being replaced by better, cleaner, and more importantly, cooler Food Courts and even is they are not replaced, they are undergoing renovation or upgrading to become better, cleaner. Nothing stays the same in Singapore; it must always become better. Driven by the principle of meritocracy, Singapore’s economy always favours those who excel, forming an innate Singaporean need for self improvement and this is manifested and perpetuated by the constant upgrading of Hawker Centres into Food Courts. Is this truly who Singaporeans are or is it merely a system imposed on Singaporeans by the government?
As time changes and the world becomes closer through globalization, there is always a struggle between wanting to keep up with the world and at the same time holding on to our traditional, cultural or even national roots. To avoid standardization, people fervently embrace their cultural differences while increasingly more people call out for a national identity. Not one to lose out, Singapore is too, fighting to keep up with globalization. Singaporeans see the need and the government highlights the need to be in touch with the world around us, to be more international. This is even reflected in the operations of Food Courts. Although Hawker Centres still typically serve local and traditional food (“Western Food” is arguably local), it is not surprising to find stalls in Food Courts serving international cuisines such as Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and many others. Granted they may be served to cater to tourists or expatriates in Singaporean, but who is not to argue that they are also means of enabling the people with lower income, who cannot afford to patronize fancy restaurants selling international cuisine, to join in the globalization phenomenon. Yet at the same time, the government perpetuates or reinforces the notion of a national identity by enthusiastically promoting Singapore tourism through Hawker Centres and celebrating the claim that they are indigenous to the region and endorsing it as a national or cultural icon.
Singaporeans readily embrace this idea or notion of a national identity or culture in form of a food culture, in form of Hawker Centres and Food Courts, be it due to the lack of other significant national or cultural icons or otherwise. Can this truly be reflective of Singaporean culture or are Hawker Centres and Food Courts mere tools of the government to construct a cultural ideal by which they want us Singaporeans to live by?
We have already come across how the government uses the upgrading of Hawker Centres and the proliferation of Food Courts as a means of disseminating their belief in the principle of meritocracy, of constantly needing to change for the better. By expounding on Hawker Centres being national icons of Singapore, the government uses them as mechanisms to promote cultural diversity and to signify racial harmony and tolerance. The whole premise of a Hawker Centre is to bring people of different races and ethnicity together under one roof, too cook as one family and to eat as one family. Citizens dining in the mass communal eating area are a simulation of a family gathering together, eating together. The standardization of food found in Food Courts is symbolic of a united Singaporean entity. Whichever Food Court one patronises, one will find stalls selling the same or similar varieties of food. On top of all these, the government exploits the indigenity and allure of Hawker Centres as a revenue making institution by promoting it as a tourist attraction. Renovation works on one of the previously most celebrated local Hawker Centre, Newton Food Circus, have turned it into a full fledged tourist attraction complete with signboards explaining the origins of Hawker Centres and even a ‘Top Ten list of Local Hawker dishes’ one must try.
In Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, he proposed the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community. “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”
The concept of Hawker Centres as a national icon, our way of consumption as an idea of national identity, could all just be a construct of the government to create this imagined communal identity for Singaporeans to believe in.
James Donald’s How English is it? draws on Anderson’s imagined community and carries on to say “the apparatus of discourse, technologies, and institutions (print capitalism, education, mass media and so forth) produces what is generally recognized as ‘the national culture’.” “ ‘the nation’ is an effect of these cultural technologies, not their origin. A nation does not express itself through its culture: it is culture that produces ‘the nation’. What is produced is not an identity or a single consciousness – nor necessarily a representation at all – but hierarchically organized values, dispositions and differences.”
The government uses Hawker Centres as institutions to create a ‘national culture’ and this ‘national culture’ is in fact a set of beliefs and values that the government wants us to believe is our own culture, is the make up of our identity – the values of racial harmony, of meritocracy etc.
Going back to even before the 1950s when there were no Hawker Centres, there only existed hawkers and their mobile stalls, selling their food from street to street. This was the true Singaporean culture. To think that the government then had initially intended to abolish street hawking altogether before coming up with the idea of housing them under one roof. The whole practice of street hawking is a tactic – there were no laws permitting or forbidding the practice of street hawking and hawkers went about their business always on the look out for fear of being stopped on the grounds of blocking traffic or not having substantial sanitary standards. By housing the Hawkers together under one roof and then market them as Hawker Centres, the government succeeded in repackaging and reproducing what is Singapore culture and creating a national identity, and at the same time take over what was essentially a tactic and then reinventing it into a strategy of its own.
posted by Joyce Huang at
4:25 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home