Hygienic modernity in Singapore : an analysis of clean and green in the making of a modern nation

• Main Author: Lee, Angeline Shi-Ying
• Other Authors: Park Hyung Wook
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66257
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Singapore’s sanitary revolution is often overshadowed by the nation’s extraordinary achievement in economic transformation. This essay narrates a cultural and political history of public health in Singapore. It takes the starting point from the clean and green discourse which started in the 1960s and beyond. When embedding the Keep Singapore Clean campaigns into its local cultural politics, I will prove that the sanitation revolution that took place in Singapore from the 1960s to 1980s had more than public health motivators. Its adoption of clean and green was more than a public health decision and had more than public health consequences. It is no doubt that our early sanitising years were founded on the principles of public health and economics. However, by situating the clean and green discourse in the larger narrative of Singapore’s path to modernity, this essay aims to prove that notions of nationhood and government’s attempt to strengthen its authority in the country, was also imbued in clean and green.