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AbstractThis paper examines the notions of "home,""nation" and "the world" among the Bengali‐speaking families in Singapore. The forces of globalization have played a significant role in making the Bengali‐speaking families transnational, first by uprooting them from Bengal, a territory now shared between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, and then re‐linking them to a complex web of relationships redefining the contours of community. The Bengali‐speaking families in Singapore belong to two distinct "communities": Bengalis from West Bengal, India who are predominantly Hindus, and Bengalis from Bangladesh who are predominantly Muslims. They formed two different "communities" not simply on the basis of differences in religion but also in terms of social networks and ties. Common language, similar food habits and love for certain cultural practices like cricket and adda, are not enough to bring them into the fold of a common Bengali community. The division in the Bengali‐speaking community is influenced not so much by religion but nationalism. Nationalism, however imagined, continues to play a powerful role in the globalized world, especially among transnational communities. Yet, the two "communities," one from Bangladesh and the other from West Bengal, are not antagonistic to one another by any means; their relationship is an ambivalent one based on a tacit principle of "civil inattention." The situation changed in the 1990s when Bengali was introduced as a second language in Singapore, and a Bengali language school was set up thereafter. The two communities were drawn into a common physical space and a new set of social ties and networks began to emerge, opening and redrawing the boundaries of community. The paper demonstrates how nations separate a people who share a common notion of home, as well as how cosmopolitan world‐views redraw the contours of community.

AbstractThis paper revisits the concept of state autonomy in the context of globalization. Earlier literature either considered state autonomy from the social forces in broad institutional and cultural terms or from the dominant classes in a restrictive sense. However, in either case the focus remained on domestic/national society, not the global society. The discussion of relative autonomy of the state began among the Marxists in the 1970s and then graduated into the mainstream social sciences in the 1980s and 1990s. In the upshot, the notions of developmental state and the embedded autonomy have significantly added to our knowledge of the role of the state. This paper broadens the idea of embedded autonomy by locating the sources of embeddedness in both local as well global institutions and norms. The paper uses the Singapore case to illustrate some of the possibilities and limitations of the reconfigured role of the state in the face of globalization.

Based on a survey of junior college and polytechnic students in Singapore, this article argues that there is a gender gap concerning sustainable interest in science. In Singapore, both male and female students perform well in science subjects in the high school leaving examination, but by the time they begin their course of studies in the junior colleges and polytechnics, the female students do not retain interest in science. The relationship between class as well as parental educational background and interest in science is not very strong. The disadvantages set by the class background are to some extent mitigated by the school system, which takes a meritocratic and thus somewhat performance-based egalitarian approach. Recommendations are made to help motivate female students to take an interest in science such as presentation of the role models of female scientists. However, the main target ought to be changes in the culture that promote more gender equality.

This paper examines the consequences of a flood disaster on rural women in northern Bangladesh. Based on fieldwork. it is argued that floods affect rural women more adversely than rural men. Floods destroy the household resources undermining the economic well-being of rural women. Researchers and authorities in charge of rehabilitation have not paid enough attention to the uneven impact of flood disasters on gender groups. Women are rarely involved in the decision-making process regarding disaster response. The lack of participation of women in particular and the local community in general in the planning and execution of counterdisaster plans insure that such issues are not noticed. Bureaucratic disaster respondents to he short term in its scope and fails to link disaster response and rehabilitation with development activities. Various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the rural Bangladesh seem to have closer ties with the local community and a better understanding of the linkage between rehabilitation and development. However, because of the limited scope of their operations and constraints of resources, the influence of these NGOs are not sustainable. The rural women cope on their own. The status quo ante is achieved, a continuation of impoverished existence which makes them vulnerable to the next flooding or other such disasters. Successful counterdisaster strategies need to take gender dimension into account and link crisis response and rehabilitation strategies to development initiatives. This would entail participation of women in counterdisaster plans and assuring the economic well-being of rural women.