SE2211: Demonstrates the Usefulness and Importance of Looking at Processes in Southeast Asia: Social History of Southeast Asia Essay, NUS, Singapore

What is it about?

A topic of interest to you, preferably an essay that demonstrates the usefulness and importance of looking at processes in Southeast Asia from “below” i.e. from the powerless, marginalised, and even the vilified.

The time frame of the essay

Pre-Colonial, colonial, or post-colonial periods. You can even write about present-day issues, but you must link it somehow to past processes and how it has influenced it.

What it must contain:

A research question (note that most of these are Singapore based topics. You can think of other topics around the region)

Example(s):

1. Rice is cheaper in the black market: An examination of the impact of the black markets of Singapore on Singapore society in 1946
2. “I spit on the floor because I like”: Assessing state attempts to change perceptions to hygiene in Singapore in the 1970s and its failures
3. Resisting the myth of the Citizen Soldier: Analysing the social resistance of Singapore to conscription in the 1960s-70s.
4. What the Malays really thought of Frank Swettenham: Insights into social resistance during the colonial period of Malaya.