Materialising the nation : an exploratory study of post-independence Singapore, reformist China, and post-WWII Japan

• Main Author: Chong, Joel Zhi Quan
• Other Authors: Kei Koga
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/72129
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper argues that new understandings of the nation have leveraged the growing desire for economic and material development, resulting in a new, post-modern understanding of nationalism – material nationalism. Material nationalism occurs when the nation is envisioned and built on its material and economic achievements, an economic community ‘imagined’ through its shared journey to economic and material development. It is produced and reproduced materially through sustained economic performance of the nationstate, and represents a post-modern response to the traditional question of nationhood. A conceptualisation of material nationalism is conducted by examining its place within current established paradigms of nationalism theory, and explored through the qualitative analysis of primary sources and review of secondary literature in three case studies – post-independence Singapore, reformist China, and post-WWII Japan.