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AbstractSoutheast Asia has come under scholarly focus for the contradictions of rapid development and environmental protection, and the ensuing politics. Most give Singapore a miss because it is a "strange" case that does not fit into a region where affected local peoples, "middle class" activists and developmental states struggle over the exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation. This paper claims that analysis of the "quiet" politics of environment in Singapore is instructive, and can correct the materialist bias evident in the understanding of Southeast Asian political economy/ecology. It argues that urban "middle class" environmental activism is a manifestation of resistance to enlarging systems of governance allied with capital. Environmentalism can be seen as a response against the encroachment of the system into the intimate living places of the lifeworld. This response is embedded within an international public sphere that enables environmental politics. These activists derive their motivation and political strength from public moral discursive actions. Environmentalism is a contemporary reflection of a fundamental sociological theme, the discontents' moral struggle for the good society, not necessarily reflecting parochial class interests.

AbstractIn the past two decades, the dramatic growth of Protestant Christianity in Singapore, fuelled by the worldwide Christian Charismatic Renewal, has attracted sociological attention. This paper discusses the historical development of Singaporean modernity and the concomitant rise of the existential self. The argument is that increasing distantiation of individuals from rationalizing societal and cultural institutions in modernity leads to increasing self-consciousness and simultaneously, the transcendentalization of the individual's phenomenological consciousness. This condition threatens to reveal the constructed nature of erstwhile-reified social objects and categories, allowing individuals to realize freedom while posing anguish. The latter is postulated as driving individuals to resolve their existential selves using transcendent or transient cultural resources. Based on ethnographic data from six months of fieldwork, this paper argues that Protestant Charismatic fundamentalism, the most popular option for Christian converts, is particularly suited to resolve the existential self in Singaporean modernity. This is because it offers both resolutions in an intense and balanced combination, while situating these resolutions in relationships of the self with others; and provides a worldview that helps the existential self make sense of everyday life in global modernity.