The Role of Food Culture in Everyday Nationalism the Case of Singapore’S Hawker Centres

Home , 2017 in Singapore, Culture of Singapore, Hainanese curry rice, Hawker (trade), Hawker centre, Hokkien mee

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM

The Role of Food Culture in Everyday Nationalism The case of Singapore’s Hawker Centres

Kelly Ong (11706791) 6/14/2018

Master Thesis in Human Geography 2017 – 2018

Supervisor: Virginie Mamadouh

Word Count: 25 000

Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...... 5 2. Theoretical Framework ...... 9 2.1 Everyday Nationalism ...... 9 2.1.1 Meaning of the everyday ...... 10 2.1.2 Concept of Sedimentation ...... 12 2.1.3 Concept of Human Agency ...... 12 2.1.4 Concept of Identification and Categorization ...... 13 2.1.5 Summary: Everyday Nationalism ...... 14 2.2 Food Culture ...... 15 2.2.1 Banal Representation of Nations in Food ...... 16 2.2.2 Constructing, Reproducing and Challenging Nationalism ...... 17 2.2.3 Summary: Food Culture ...... 18 2.3 Everyday Places ...... 19 2.4 Summary ...... 20 3. Singapore’s Hawker Centres: Food-Nationalism Axis ...... 22 3.1 Nationalism: CMIO ...... 22 3.2 Street Hawking to Hawker Centres ...... 27 3.2.1 Humble beginnings ...... 27 3.2.2 Modernizing Singapore, Hawker Centres ...... 28 3.2.3 Hawker Centres Today ...... 29 3.3 Hawker Food Culture: Everyday Life and Belonging ...... 30 3.4 Summary: Food-and-Nationalism Axis ...... 32 4. Research Methodology ...... 34 4.1 Methodology ...... 34 4.2 Research Design: Case Study ...... 35 4.3 Field Data: Hawker Centres ...... 36 4.4 Survey Data ...... 37 4.5 Limitations and external validity ...... 41 4.6 Ethical considerations ...... 42 4.7 Summary ...... 42 5. Hawker Stories ...... 43 5.1 Banal representations of hawker food...... 43 5.2 ‘Multiracial’ Hawker Centres ...... 47 5.3 Racial-Language Mixing ...... 53 5.4 Hawker Food Culture ...... 55 5.5 Hawking Histories ...... 64 3

5.6 Summary ...... 70 6. Hawker Centres: Everyday Food-Nationalism Battlegrounds ...... 71 6.1 Identifications of Singaporeans Today ...... 71 6.2 Frequency of consuming hawker food ...... 72 6.3 What do you associate Hawker Centres with? ...... 73 6.4 Everyday Battlegrounds: Hawker Stalls ...... 74 6.4.1 ‘Sarabat Stall’ ...... 74 6.4.2 ‘Tze Char Stall’...... 76 6.4.3 ‘China Stall’ ...... 77 6.4.4 ‘Eurasian and Nonya stall’ ...... 78 6.5 Meaning of Hawker Centres: Members of the Nation ...... 79 6.6 Favourite Hawker Centres ...... 80 6.7: Hawker Centres: National Icons and Best Representations of Singapore? ...... 81 6.8 External perspectives of Hawker Centres and Food ...... 83 7. Discussion ...... 85 7.1 Vernacular understandings ...... 85 7.2 Everyday geographies of inclusion and exclusion ...... 86 8. Conclusion ...... 88 Section 8.1 Response to the main research question ...... 88 8.1.1 Food Culture and Everyday Nationalism ...... 88 8.1.2 The Case of Singapore’s Hawker Centres ...... 88 8.1.3 Food, Nationalism, and the Everyday as Processes ...... 89 Section 8.2 Evaluation of the study and its limitations ...... 89 8.3 Contribution to existing literature ...... 90 8.3.1 Everyday nationalism ...... 90 8.3.2 Food Culture ...... 91 8.3.3 Singapore and Hawker Centres ...... 91 8.4 Final reflections and thoughts ...... 92 9. Appendix ...... 93 10. Glossary ...... 115 11. Bibliography ...... 117

Deepest thank you to:

Dr Virginie Mamadouh

My parents who believed in me

Dear Friends in Singapore and Abroad

This thesis would not have been made possible

Without all of you

1. Introduction

“Hawker food embodies the essence of being Singaporean.”

(Chandrashekhar, 29 May 2016)

In today’s age of globalization, the meaning and relevance of the nation and food culture have been increasingly brought to a question in a world ‘perceived as uncertain and constantly changing’ (Antonsich, 2015, p. 304). Transnational flows of people and ever-changing territorial boundaries have created increasingly multicultural nations and amalgamated food cultures around the globe, ‘creating diasporas with multiple linguistic allegiances and perceptions of belonging that are no longer identified purely with territory.’ (Valentine et al, 2008, p.376). It is of little surprise then, that there has been some skepticism over what constitutes national identity, belonging and rights to food ‘authenticity’ (Ichijio & Ranta, 2016).

In spite of these, nationalism and food culture have remained as important topics of study and discussion, both in academia and in one’s daily experiences of the nation (Avieli, 2005; Brubaker et al, 2006; Duruz & Khoo, 2014; Ichijio & Ranta, 2016).

Farrer (2015) and dell’Agnese et al (2018) points us to the fact that food products and culinary exchanges have been occurring for centuries, and that ‘culinary globalization must be recognized as an ancient and unending process that neither began nor ended with European colonization’ (Farrer, 2015, p.2). Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008a) call to attention that ‘the nation and its derivatives are not simply discrete objects traded in elite discourse or constructed by the state’: they are also everyday processes that involve ordinary members of the nation (Fox and Miller- Idriss, 2008a, p.554; Skey, 2011).

On the other hand, studies have discovered that a sense of belonging towards one’s nation can still be experienced outside of its geographical territory, an example being immigrants practicing their ‘home’ food culture in a foreign land (Duruz & Khoo, 2014; Schermuly & Forbes-Mewett, 2016; Kong, 1999). These go to show that food culture is still relevant in today’s globalized world, and constitutes an important outlet of expression for who and what we are on a continual basis (Avieli, 2005; Ichijio & Ranta, 2016).

According to Brubaker et al (2016), discussions regarding ethnic and national identity often come ‘predictably packaged with standard sets of qualifiers’ and tend to neglect explanations about how ethnicity and nationhood are constructed in detail (Brubaker et al, 2006, p.7). This is whereby ‘ethnicity’ and ‘nation’ are often studied as categories of analysis rather than categories of practice, and what often results is group generalizations and excessive institutionalism that restricts our understanding of the nation on-the-ground (Goode and Stroup, 2015, p.732; Brubaker et al, 2006, p.9; Skey, 2011). These understandings have led several authors to view the everyday as the quotidian and object of analysis for nationalism, in order to better understand how the masses experience nationhood for themselves (Brubaker et al, 2006; Goode and Stroup, 2015, p.732; Skey, 2011; Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008a).

Altogether, there are been strong lines of reasoning for the relevance of food culture and nationalism today, and in a world that is perceived to be ever-changing.

In the nation of Singapore, eating has been described as a ‘national pastime’, and hawker centres are among one of the best places to enjoy Singaporean food (Duruz & Khoo, 2014; Kong, 2007). Singapore has been described as ‘The Great Taste of A Cultural Melting Pot’ (Independent, 19 Dec 2009), and hawker food has been termed as a ‘national heritage’ (Yong, 7 Mar 2016) as it embodies inter-culinary flavours that are ‘found’ in Singapore’s multicultural society. Kong (2007) piques that the term of ‘hawker centre’ is so familiar in Singapore, that its irony is not apparent or taken for granted in the everyday life. This is because a hawker is defined as ‘a person who travels about selling goods, typically advertising them by shouting’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In contrast, Singapore’s hawkers have permanent stalls with proper facilities such as water and electricity, and non-verbal advertisements such as celebrity recommendations are the norm of food advertisement at hawker centres. Several hawkers have prospered and expanded their businesses into commercial chains, and there are even hawkers who have acquired international fame with the much-acclaimed Michelin star (BBC, 24 Nov 2016; Han, 4 Aug 2016). Altogether, a visit to Singapore’s hawker centre may constitute a pleasant surprise, as one can find a wide variety of ethnic and intercultural cuisine at a low cost and high quality. As operating managers and governmental authorities regularly conduct ‘spring cleaning days’ and hygiene inspections at hawker centres, customers are assured that hawker food is safe for consumption as well as a pleasant dining experience.

However, as we will witness later in this study, Singapore’s hawker centres are not always simple facts of life; neither is hawker food always an easy food to digest:

‘Chicken rice. Bak kut teh. Hokkien mee. A Singaporean would identify these dishes as “Chinese food”, but try to look for these three dishes in China and you would be stumped.’

- An article on the national flagship newspaper (Koh, 8 Aug 2017)

“Chinese food. Like China Chinese food. Usually don’t appeal to me because it is not native Singaporean food. But once in a while I will try, but rarely. I see more and more such stalls coming up in Singapore and I feel sad because it implies/signifies the erosion of the local culture. Inevitably I feel it encroaches on our heritage and it is of putting.”

- Singaporean survey respondent in this study in response to a Chinese hawker stall.

The above remarks suggest certain complexities of ethnic identities in Singapore, in this case the boundaries drawn between ‘us’ Singaporean Chinese versus ‘them’ China Chinese. On the other hand, non-Singaporeans may also experience hawker centres in similar exclusionary manners, as evidenced by Vanderperre’s perspectives on hawker food that is deemed to be non-traditional and non-Singaporean food in hawker centres:

“When I arrived in Singapore 10 years ago, the only thing I personally wanted to eat was hawker food. But now when we go to a hawker centre, we see more shops 7

that are closed or more shops that are offering something different. I've seen French cuisine being offered in hawker stalls which is much more expensive than your usual plate of noodles.”

- Christophe Vanderperre (Straits Times, 8 Jul 2016)

The examples above introduce us to the complex relationship between food culture and the everyday life as well as to the research topics of this study, which are the relationships between food culture and everyday nationalism. The quotes above informs us about the salience that identity and belonging may have in the seemingly mundane features of in daily life, such as eating local food in hawker centres for the case of Singapore.

This thesis is divided into four main sections. Chapter 2 comprises of the theoretical framework, which explains an analytical framework of everyday nationalism, and as well as its relationship with food culture. It also includes a section on how hawker centres are relevant for the food-and- nationalism axis in the case of Singapore. Chapter 3 constitutes the research methodology, which constitutes the methodology undertaken by this study of everyday nationalism in the case of Singapore’s hawker centres. Chapter 4 constitutes an analysis of everyday nationalism in Singapore, which includes the nation-building project of Singapore, and how the population is classified in the national census. This is relevant and important for our understanding, as it affects the way food culture is viewed and experienced. It also explains the historical background behind the trade of hawking, from the streets to hawker centres. Thus, Chapter 4 forms the basis of understanding for the empirical findings of this study, which can be found in Chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 7 constitutes a discussion about the findings of this study, and Chapter 8 constitutes the conclusion of this thesis, whereby a response to the main research question would be given.

2. Theoretical Framework

In this chapter, I first introduce the discourse of everyday nationalism (Section 2.1), and provide an analytical framework which informs how all things work in this thesis. Next, I would discuss the topic of food culture and how it relates to nationalism (Section 2.2). Followed by this, the significance of place and everyday places would be brought out in the analysis of food culture and nationalism (Section 2.3). Finally, I will introduce the case of Singapore’s hawker centres (Section 2.4). This section includes an explaination of how everyday nationalism in Singapore works (Section 2.4.1) and how hawker food culture (Section 2.4.2) is unique and relevant for this study. Lastly, an argument for the case of Singapore’s hawker centres as a food-and-nationalism axis would be given (Section 2.4.3).

2.1 Everyday Nationalism

According to Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008a), ‘Nationalism is the project to make the political unit, the state (or polity) congruent with the cultural unit, the nation…The targets of these endeavours are the people themselves: to make the nation is to make people national.’ (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a, p.536).

Today, most countries around the globe undertake a civic definition of the nation, whereby it is characterized in the form of a citizenship and naturalization (or integration) policy (Goode et al, 2015). Many scholars have described the existing literature on nationalism and national identity as being ‘dominated by a focus on the historical origins of the nation and its political lineaments.’ (Edensor, 2002, p.1; Antonsich, 2015).

According to Hobsbawm, nationalism ‘cannot be understood unless also analyzed from below, that is in terms of the assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people, which are not necessarily national and still less nationalist’ (Hobsbawm, 1991, p. 10).)

In the recent years, there has been a growing body of research on the banal processes in relation to nationalism as a political ideology, and as a form of distinguishing individual and group identity (Billig, 1995; Jones & Merriman, 2009; Koch & Paasi, 2016; Knott, 2015; ibid). Most notable of these is Billig’s work on ‘Banal Nationalism’ (1995) which outlines the everyday representations of the nation which build a shared sense of national belonging (Billig, 1995; Koch & Paasi, 2016). His argument is that the nation is ‘flagged’ in multiple ways, permeating both built and symbolic landscapes as well as people's daily lives. Examples of these banal national symbols include coins and monuments, that serve as constant reminders of the nation that often go unnoticed in daily life. Billig’s focus on the banal and quotidian ways in which nationalism is reproduced in the everyday life has opened up new terrains and avenues of potential research, not just for geographers and social scientists (Koch & Paasi, 2016). However, several commentators (Koch & Paasi, 2016) and authors such as Jones and Merriman (2009) have noted certain limitations about Billig’s work. They explain that Billig’s terminology of banal

nationalism has ‘perhaps unwittingly’1 constructed a distinction between banal and hot processes that reproduce nationalism (Jones & Merriman, 2009, p.165). Hence, there is a certain misleading impression that banal nationalism is a categorically different form of nationalism from ‘hotter’ varieties (Jones & Merriman, 2009; Benwell & Dodds, 2011), as though both banal and hot elements of nationalism do not combine together or be related to each other in context of the everyday. These reasons have led to the idea and concept of everyday nationalism, which focus is on the everyday contexts within which nationalism is reproduced.

Everyday nationalism is a sub-field within the discourse of nationalism, which refocuses attention on the lived experience of ordinary inhabitants as well as the role and relevance of the everyday in constituting nationhood. Everyday nationalism thus offers an ‘empirical lens’ for which nationalism can be analyzed from ‘below’ (Hobsbawm, 1991; Knott, 2015, p.1), whereby ordinary members of the nation are viewed as the consumers, (re)producers and challengers of nationalism. Studies of everyday nationalism have included how daily conversations (Skey, 2016), popular culture (Edensor, 2002), everyday ethnic and national identifications (Antonsich, 2016), food and lifestyle habits (Ichijio & Ranta, 2016) help to imagine and construct the nation for ordinary inhabitants in the everyday.

According to Paasi (1998), the everyday life ‘does not consist only of a local context but also of national socialization (knowledge, values, rituals, memory) and participation in a broader division of labour and a struggle over meanings through locally embedded institutional practices.’ (Paasi, 1998, p. 85). These practices as having been ‘mediated and sedimented’ (ibid) in the consciousness of individuals, and transfused in their social identities and everyday lives. Hence, we are reminded that our study of everyday nationalism does not translate into a dismissal or ignorance about institutional categories nor ‘top-down’ practices, although they may run counter to the day-to-day experiences of members of the nation (Skey, 2011; Paasi, 1998; Goode & Stroup, 2015). This is because they necessarily influence and give structure to the daily lives of members of the nation (further elaborated in the upcoming sections).

This necessarily leads us into a discussion about what is the context and meaning of the everyday in our study of everyday nationalism.

2.1.1 Meaning of the everyday

The meaning and concept of the everyday has been debated within the discourse of everyday nationalism.

For example, Billig (1995) and Edensor (2002) view the everyday as synonymous with the ‘mundane details’ and ‘quotidian realms’ of ‘social interaction, habits, routines and practical knowledge’ which have been neglected by existing analysis (Edensor, 2002, p.17). According to this understanding, the everyday is conceived as a space in which the nation is expressed through banal and mundane practices (Knott, 2015).

1 ‘Perhaps the key problem with Billig’s thesis, ironically, lies in its terminology. While the term “banal nationalism” has entered into popular usage in the social sciences and the humanities, it can, nevertheless give the impression that it is a categorically different form of nationalism from ‘hotter’ varieties.’ (Jones & Merriman, 2009, p.165). 10

In contrast, Jones and Merriman (2009) argue that the everyday is both a ‘place of banal and mundane processes’ but which may also incorporate a variety of hotter ‘differences and conflicts’ that affect people’s lives on a habitual basis (Jones & Merriman, 2009, p. 166). Unlike Billig (1995) and Edensor (2002), they aim to demonstrate that the everyday is not synonymous with the banal and aim to unpack the banal-hot dichotomy through this conception.

In this thesis, I take after the conceptualization of the everyday as an object of analysis (Brubaker et al, 2006; Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a; Skey, 2011). This understanding of the everyday in the discourse of everyday nationalism ‘focuses less on elites and institutions than on the quotidian practices by which ethnic and national identities are elaborated, confirmed, reproduced, or challenged’ (Goode & Stroup, 2015, p. 718). Thus, the context of the everyday is characterized by vernacular2 understandings of nationhood, whereby it is:

‘embodied and expressed not only in political claims and nationalist rhetoric but in everyday encounters, practical categories, commonsense knowledge, cult idioms, cognitive schemas, mental maps, interactional cues, discursive frames, organizational routines, social networks, and institutional forms.’

(Brubaker et al. 2006, p.6-7)

According to Skey (2011), ‘many aspects of our social lives are carried out according to habit, routine or precedent, with little or no reflection.’ (Skey, 2011, p.14). Some authors go even further to say that ‘ordinary people are often indifferent to national(ist) claims made in their names’ (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a, p. 554; Brubaker et al, 2006; Fenton, 2007). Hence, this conceptualization of the everyday does not assume that nationalism is a relevant or pervasive aspect in the everyday life. Perhaps most importantly, the understanding of the everyday as an object of analysis enables us to analyze empirical or theoretical phenomena that is generated and used amongst members of the nation, of which is not restricted to national nor ethnic categories.

In relation to the topic of this thesis, understanding the everyday as an object of analysis is vital for understanding the role of food culture in the everyday life. This is because enables us to study empirical phenomena of food culture in the everyday nation, as both categories of practice and analysis (Avieli, 2005; Duruz & Khoo, 2014; Ichigo & Ratna, 2016). In this manner, we would able to utilize vernacular identifications and categorizations to understand the relationship between food culture and everyday nationalism i.e. ‘food-and-nationalism axis’ (Ichigo & Ratna, 2016, p.1).

Scholars have pointed out that while recent academic work has contributed to our understanding of the ways in which the nation is ‘experienced, embodied and imagined’ through daily activities, these studies often lack a coherent analytical framework in how we can study and make sense of these processes (Skey, 2011; Goode & Stroup, 2015). Skey (2011) laments that most academic and public debates around the subject of nationalism ‘rarely gets to grips with the question’ of why nationality and nationalism might be important for people, in light of other ongoing processes like globalization and immigration (refer to Introduction). Thus, we will review the following concepts (Section 2.1.2-2.1.4), that would form a basic framework of understanding how everyday nationalism works. These concepts would also help us to assess the role and relevance of food

2 Native, indigenous; usage of plain, everyday, ordinary language. 11

culture in everyday nationalism (Section 2.2), and explain certain processes in the case of Singapore’s hawker centres (Section 3).

2.1.2 Concept of Sedimentation

The concept of sedimentation was first introduced by the philosopher Husserl (Smith, 1995) and was subsequently developed for the ‘phenomenological analysis of everyday life’ (Berger & Luckmann, 1991, p.34, 85-89). It is defined as ‘The process whereby a particular discourse comes to be seen as objective or natural rather than one possible way of making sense of the world.’ (Skey, 2011, p. 13; Laclau, 1990).

In relation to how this takes place in the life of an average human being, Berger and Luckmann (1991) explain that only a small portion of the totality of human experiences is retained in consciousness. They explain that human experiences are transmitted across people and generations through common activities and sign systems, and that the experiences that are retained to a certain extent become sedimented (Berger & Luckmann, 1991). The authors describe language as a ‘decisive sign system’ that objectivates human experiences, and becomes both the basis and the instrument in effecting existing knowledge. Each generation articulates his or her experiences relevant to the time of the language, which may be ‘new’ or take on different meanings in other generations. Thus, this process, the actual origin(s) of knowledge could become obscured or ‘unimportant’ in the process of sedimentation, enabling a different tradition or experience to be invented.

The role of institutions in the process of sedimentation has also been brought out by several scholars (Berger & Luckmann, 1991; Essed, 1991; Said, 1994; Lefebvre, 1991). They have a crucial role in setting limits, establishing normative frameworks and generating hierarchies of knowledge and status. They also regulate and manage many aspects of daily life. Skey (2011) explains that in the case of the nation, these institutions are the new institutional forms associated with the modern state that create a world ‘susceptible to and dependent on nation- centric understandings of social reality’ (Malešević, 2011, p.11). Berger and Luckmann (1991) explain that for the institution to be taken as a ‘permanent’ solution to a ‘permanent’ problem of the given collectivity, it necessitates a form of an ‘educational’ process (Berger & Luckmann, 1991, p.87). This is whereby potential actors (e.g. ordinary people) come to be or ‘must be’ systematically acquainted with institutionalized actions and the meanings behind them (Berger & Luckmann, 1991, p.87). Hence, while institutions play a crucial role in sedimentation processes, we also observe individual capacity and choice in the enactment and maintenance of institutions.

This discussion leads us the concept of human agency, as it demonstrates how nationalism is relevant for members of the nation in the context of the everyday life.

2.1.3 Concept of Human Agency

Human agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. Burr describes individuals as ‘discourse users’ (Burr, 1995, p. 90), and as mentioned above, nationalism cannot be understood unless it is also analyzed from the masses (Hobsbawm, 12

1991). These point to role of ordinary people as participants and agents of translation3 in the ongoing processes of nationalism, and processes of sedimentation that occur in the nation.

In ‘Nations, nation identities and human agency: putting people back into nations’, Thomspon (2001) reminds us that national identities are ‘acquired’ and not ‘conferred’, and critiques the viewpoint that all members of a nation share a common national character (Thompson, 2001, p. 21). Studies on national identity have documented existing mindsets such as ‘you get identity from the country you come from’, revealing the popular notion that nations, national identity and nationalism are all objective, fixed and natural entities (Paasi, 1998; Thompson, 2001, p.23; Antonsich, 2016; Skey, 2011;). However, these conceptions limit the importance and capacity of individual choice in their own practice of everyday nationalism (Thompson, 2001).

For instance in a study by Caldwell (2002), ordinary individuals rearticulated and reclaimed their Russianness through choosing to consume what is seen (and therefore constituted) as Russian food, against the onslaught of global capitalism. (Caldwell, 2002, p. 305-13). In this manner, the individual choice of ordinary people constitutes national sensibilities and meanings, and differential reconstructions of nationalism in the context of the everyday life. Moreover, Skey (2011) argues that ‘it is [ordinary] people who work within (and against) institutions and organisations and continuously produce social formations (gender, religion, class, nation) by defining themselves and organizing their activities in particular ways’ (Skey, 2011, p. 13-14). Thus, individual choices and lifestyles reproduce and challenge certain traits of nationalism to a certain extent. This brings us to the topic of identifications and categorizations. How do the terms that people use to call themselves, others, and certain food items matter?

2.1.4 Concept of Identification and Categorization

Existing studies on group identification (Tajfel, 1981) and categorisation (Turner et al., 1987) have shown that the actions and behaviour(s) of individuals are being justified by these group categories. Other authors have also suggested that they are one of the primary determinants of thought and behavior (Skey, 2011).

Searle suggests that certain individuals draw on nationalism rather than other social identities, because ‘in our current world context…national identity provide[s] us with more opportunities for positive self evaluation’ (Searle, 2001, p.62; Skey, 2011). These do not imply, however, that all national, ethnic or group identities are equal. For instance, Skey (2011) mentions that group identities are ‘clearly’ unequal and not at the same ‘ontological level’, and that there are varying outcomes of being categorized at a certain time and place (Skey, 2011, p.22). Antonsich (2015) also reminds us that ‘the way that people look at themselves (self-identification) does not reflect the way others look at them (social categorization)’ (Antonsich, 2015, p. 37). For example, the dominant census categories of ‘Chinese’, ‘Indian’ and ‘Malay’ in Singapore would simply fall under the same census category of ‘Asian’ in the United States, whereby all these dominant ‘racial’ groups would simply be faceless Asian minorities in the latter case. Several studies have also pointed out how institutional structures tend to legitimize or privilege certain groups more than others, displaying relations of dominance and subordination amongst group identities

(Antonsich, 2016; Low, 2013; Skey, 2011; Goh, 2008). They also demonstrate how institutional and group categories affect how ordinary individuals view themselves and others, as belonging within the boundaries of the nation.

In relation to the case study of this thesis i.e. Singapore, a survey conducted by Velayutham (2007) was highly informative in this respect, with regards to how Singaporeans would choose to describe themselves, if it were:

(a) Chinese/Malay/Indian/Eurasian-Singaporean

(b) Singaporean-Chinese/Malay/Indian/Eurasian

(Velayutham, 2007, p. 162-165)

One of the respondents said that “I always thought of myself as Chinese and Singaporean. Guess it’s due to the fact that when we fill out application forms, we are always asked for this field”. This highlights the significant role that institutions in processes of sedimentation and group identification, whereby individuals come to be ‘systematically acquainted’ (Berger & Luckmann, 1991) with institutionally-constructed categories and identifications through daily routines and activities like paperwork.

For two respondents who identified with ‘Singaporean-Chinese’, one said that it is “because I don’t want to be confused as being from China, and because my race is after all Chinese” (Velayutham, 2007, p. 163). However, this motivation is different for the other, who explained that her Singaporean identity is ‘my main identity’ as she was born in Singapore and holds a Singaporean citizenship, whereas being Chinese is a “secondary description of my identity, a characteristic that differentiates me from other Singaporeans of other races”. (Velayutham, 2007, p. 163-164).

Velayutham (2007) notes that only a small number of participants selected the last option of simply being ‘Singaporean’, and that individuals also tended to be of mixed parentage or have inter-racial marriages. He explains that these individuals reject the nation’s theory of multiracialism (further explained in Section 3.1), as they choose not to endorse ‘Singapore’s racialized or hyphenated national identity’ (Velayutham, 2007, p.164).

Not only does the survey introduce us to some of the elements regarding the identifications and categorizations that are involved in everyday nationalism in the case of Singapore, it also reminds us about the individual choices and capacities to define one’s nationhood (human agency).

2.1.5 Summary: Everyday Nationalism

With the above concepts of sedimentation, human agency, as well as identification and categorization, we can observe an analytical framework through which to understand how everyday nationalism works:

The concept of sedimentation enables us to understand how nationalism is an ongoing process of construction and de-construction, and visualize this process in the context of the everyday life and scale at the individual level. The critical role of language and institutions behind the sedimentation process informs our analysis on how these carry significant influences on how members of the nation may choose to identify themselves and translate their own experiences of nationhood.

The concept of human agency helps us see to see the significance of ordinary members of the nation in the study of everyday nationalism, as a bottom-up project. It enables us to recognize the potential that individuals have in (re)producing and challenging nationalism in the context of the everyday, and examine the extent in which individual members of the nation ‘replicate and invest meaning in regime claims through daily practices.’ (Goode & Stroup, 2015, p. 726) Although there may be endless varieties in the ways in which one can express feelings of belonging towards a nation, the concept of human agency reminds us that members of a nation do not necessarily share a common national character nor mindset towards belonging in a nation. In the case of people with transnational identities (e.g. immigrants or people with dual citizenships), this may constitute multiple ways of expressing belonging to two or more nations. Altogether, this concept helps us to view individual capacities and practices as important and relevant within a broader study of everyday nationalism.

The concept of identification and categorization informs us that the extent of internalization of national and ethnic categories has a significant impact on how one views himself and others. It also enables us to draw a relationship between nationhood and the types of identifications or categorizations that an individual is subject to, in a voluntary fashion or not. This is especially significant when there are varying outcomes of being categorized at a certain place and time (Skey, 2011), and in the cases where social categorizations do not necessarily reflect self- identifications and vice versa (Antonsich, 2015). The latter may be seen in the case-related survey of identifications in Singapore (Velayutham, 2007), whereby the ‘Singaporean-Chinese’ category did not reflect the individual interpretations of identity (‘Singaporean-Chinese’ and their own) nor personal motivations that both respondents had. Lastly, broadening the range of identifications and categorizations beyond national and ethnic understanding of nationhood prevents us from analyzing ethnic groups and nations as actors or the objects of our analysis4 (Goode & Stroup, 2015).

In sum, these concepts provide us with a framework of everyday nationalism, and how we may understamd the everyday as an object of analysis (Brubaker et al. 2006, p. 6-7; Fox & Miller- Idriss, 2008a; Goode & Stroup, 2015). Nationalism is an ongoing processes of continuity and change (concept of sedimentation), and individual agencies and identifications constitute everyday expressions of belonging and nationhood. This understanding is important before we proceed to explore the role of food culture in everyday nationalism, as explained in the next section.

2.2 Food Culture

4 This refers to the everyday and vernacular understandings of nationhood provided by members of the nation. This is found in pages 8-9 and in Section 2.1.1. 15

Food is not neutral, and holds significance beyond the mere fulfilment of physiological needs.

Tell an Italian chef that “These [tortellinis] are wontons! It’s a mini Chinese dumpling. It’s not a tortellini.”, and you may land up with a lifetime ban from the restaurant, unless you are a Michelin star chef like David Chang (Goldfield, 10 May 2018).

From tortilla riots in Mexico to the outright rejection of foreign-imported rice by the Japanese, studies and events in history have shown that how people perceive food reflects how they view themselves and their national identity, and vice versa (Avieli, 2005; Ichigo & Ratna, 2016; Tochikubo, 17 Dec 2009; Pons, 5 June 2015). Despite the rhetorics about globalization and the growing irrelevance of place, food-related practices continue to be identified according to national or regional names. This suggests that spatial identities attached to food often linger in the minds of people, and implies that ‘recipes and food habits are still mostly place-based.’ (dell’Agnese & Pettenati, 2018, p.1; Farrer, 2015). Ichigo and Ratna (2016) have remarked that while it is ‘clear’ that nations do not have ‘monopolies’ over food, there is ‘constant tension and conflict between the different forces that try to appropriate food’ (Ichigo & Ratna, 2016, p.1).

Thus, while food culture is largely characterized as ‘the manner and methods, in which food is prepared, commodified, and consumed by a particular society’, it is also deeply political on many levels. (Mendel & Ranta, 2014, p. 414)

2.2.1 Banal Representation of Nations in Food

‘Few aspects of everyday life still appear labelled in geographical terms as what we eat.’

(dell’Agnese & Pettenati, 2018, p. 12)

From food labelling and marketing strategies in the mall supermarket to snacks at the cornershop, the national branding and images of food that we see on a constant basis reminds us that we live in a nation with particular characteristics, and that we live in a world of nations (Ichijio & Ratna, 2016). This process is being advanced by globalization, whereby international exports such as ‘pure Canadian maple syrup’ and ‘Indian curry’ increasingly enter the local supermarket, and local food supplies are ‘liberated’ from natural seasons (dell’Agnese & Pettenati, 2018, p.1). As food is routinely constructed and reproduced as ethnic5 or national, consumers become oblivious to the banal representation of nations in food. These understandings of food and nations also sediment into ‘common sense’ knowledge, when people come talk about or consume cuisines as ethno-national products in their day-to-day lives. Examples of these would be seen in great detail in the case of vernacular understandings of Singapore’s hawker food and centres.

Several authors have pointed out that the real and imaginary differences amongst food items and nations also establish food-related boundaries, at both the individual and group level (Ichijio & Ratna, 2016; Fischler, 1988). These boundaries serve to remind people about who they are (and who they are not), and cause certain food items to be perceived as a consumable entry into a

5 belonging to a certain group of people 16

foreign culture and nation (Ichijio & Ratna, 2016; Casino, 2015). The latter is despite disputes about food identity and national food rights, including contentions about national food icons and cuisines. For instance, Fish and Chips is widely viewed as the national food dish of Britain ie ‘British/English Fish and Chips’, although its historical origins traced to Jewish immigrants in London during the 1860s. Yet, writers, cookbooks and news sources describe Fish and Chips as being a traditional dish that has existed for hundreds of years (Panayi, 2014).

Thus, the banal nationalism in food not only derives from institutions and commercial entities, but also ‘the writings of food authors, historians and critics, everyday talk and advertisements.’ (Ichigo & Ratna, 2016, p.6).

2.2.2 Constructing, Reproducing and Challenging Nationalism

Food culture, through routine and mundane activities, such as the consumption of food with friends and family at certain places, helps to construct and reproduce the nation. While these normalising structures and patterns are subject to changes and modifications over time, they often sediment into social and cultural food ‘rules’ for a prolonged period of time (concept of sedimentation). The existing variety of food rules and ‘dining etiquettes’ in across nations, places and settings attest to this. For instance, the same South Indian-influenced flatbread dish that is called roti prata in Singapore, ‘transforms’ into roti canai across the Singapore-Malaysia border, and vice versa (Tay, 23 June 2010; JackieM, 24 Aug 2011). Hence, how an individual calls the dish can reveal a certain national allegiance and identity, demarcating boundaries between amongst ‘us’ versus ‘them’.

Place settings and food ‘rules’, like knowing how to eat Dim Sum the ‘right way’ in Cantonese restaurants (Adcock & Tsai, n.d.) and understanding South African history and traditions in padkos6 (Schermuly & Helen Forbes-Mewett, 2016, p. 2438), reproduce the nation and nationalism through food. Thus, food culture ‘institutionalises’ our lives and identities by providing common structuring and normalising patterns in certain domains. It also creates a sense of belonging and place in the nation, even when they are outside of national boundaries.

The capacity of food to stimulate memories of different places have been brought out by several authors, and Gunew (2000) ‘suggests that food assumes such a great importance within diasporas because of the way that it connects a previous life with the present one.’ (Schermuly & Helen Forbes-Mewett, 2016, p.2435; Gunew, 2000; Duruz, 2006; Chen, 2010). Thus, traditional food practices as well as feelings of nostalgia form a vital component of migrant ‘home-building’ practices and identity formation, stimulating and recreating a sense of belonging and nationhood (Hage, 1997; Ichigo & Ratna, 2016).

At the same time, food culture constitutes as a medium whereby citizens are able to ‘challenge’ the nation in their everyday lives. Goode and Stroup (2015) mention that that everyday nationalism can be witnessed in quotidian economic behaviours which are motivated by ethnic choices, such as the refusal to hire foreign workers and boycott of brands or food items that are

6 Padkos (Afrikaans) refers to ‘food for the road’. It reflects resilience and an instinct of survival, due to previous circumstances under the Apartheid system. (Schermuly & Helen Forbes-Mewett, 2016) 17

perceived to be culturally ‘inauthentic’ or conflicting with one’s image of the nation (Goode & Stroup, 2015, p. 728). Scholars have also described how members of the nation come up with creative and innovative ways of challenging top-down nationalism, such as the usage of word puns and objects of popular culture in the everyday life (Edensor, 2002; Ichigo & Ratna, 2016).

Nonetheless, food culture does not perform singular functions along the lines of constructing, reproducing and challenging nationalism. This may be most clearly seen in how the consumption of food objects may simultaneously fulfil the purposes of reproducing and challenging nationalism. An example is the Vietnamese banh Tet, which are rice cakes that are prominent culinary icons in the celebration of the Vietnamese New Year. Avieli (2005) explains that the food practice of making a cylindrical version of banh Tet cakes in the Centre and South of Vietnam is intentionally used to distinguish themselves from that of the North, which are ‘square like the earth’ according to the national legend (Avieli, 2005, p. 181). The former is a response towards the North, which is perceived as having an ‘authentic and pure’ culture and political hegemony over the nation. Thus, the cylindrical version of Vietnamese banh Tet both constructs regional nationalism, and challenges top-down nationalism. She then argues that [Vietnamese] nationalism is no longer abstract but substantial, when ‘the nation becomes physically embodied by its subjects’ (ibid).

2.2.3 Summary: Food Culture

Food culture is deeply connected to one’s sense of identity, and as seen above, it is also related to everyday nationalism. Banal representations of nations in food construct different images and imaginations about nations and the food practices of people who live in them, and the food ‘rules’ and practices in the seemingly mundane affairs of daily life can serve to define a nation and its people. At the same time, food culture has the capacity to constitute as individual and group responses towards top-down nationalism, such as in the choice between a cylindrical or square shape of banh Tet to mark one’s allegiance to the nation or region (Section 2.2.2). This reminds us that the establishment of food cultures in certain places and contexts are not isolated affairs, but are highly connected to broader networks and socio-spatial process that occur in society (e.g. globalization, trade policies). Thus, food culture is liable to both continuity and change.

Altogether, these concepts point us to the importance of having vernacular knowledge and understandings towards food culture, in order to understand how nationhood is practiced and experienced amongst individual members of a nation. Figure 2.2.3 below provides a summary of the relationship between food culture and nationalism:

2.3 Everyday Places

Based on the above frameworks and discussions, we have witnessed how nationalism and the everyday not only consists of human activity and action, but also micro-interactional and discursive moments, such as in the browsing of food products with national references in supermarkets. This suggests that everything that we see and experience in this world is emplaced7: ‘it happens somewhere and involves material stuff.’ (Gieryn, 2000). Thus, this section attempts to explain the significance of everyday places, for reasons such as the location of food culture in a nation. For the purpose of this study, everyday places refer public places that are accessible and frequently visited by members of society.

As everyday places are both places of duty and encounter in the average person’s daily routine (or vice versa), they have a stronghold in the lives of ordinary people (Kong, 2007; Gieryn, 2000; Harvey, 1983). Scholars have emphasized that people and place are ‘intimately integrated’ together, and that the ‘social relations of everyday life are often objectified and naturalized, in the specificities of place.’ (Yeoh & Kong, 1996, p. 53-54; Zukin, 2009). Gieryn explains, “Places are endlessly made, not just when the powerful pursue their ambition through brick and mortar, not just when design professional give form to function, but also when ordinary people extract from continuous and abstract space a bounded, identified, meaningful, named, and significant place” (Gieryn, 2000, p. 471; de Certeau, 1984; Etlin, 1997).

Hence, contrary to the notion that places are static and ahistoric forms, place is a ‘process of becoming’ (Yeoh & Kong, 1996, p.53; Pred, 1984).

Gross (1988) has described place as multicoded spaces that are constantly used and interpreted by individuals, who in turn ‘read’ and ‘write’ into the built environment in a variety of ways (Goss, 1988, p. 398; Yeoh & Kong, 1996). Thus, everyday places function as unique locations of collective experiences, that ‘evokes and organises memories, images, feelings, sentiments, meanings and the works of the imagination’ (Walter, 1988, p. 21; Yeoh & Kong, 1996, p. 53). At the same time, the human faces behind the winners and losers of the layered struggles in place- making serve to remind us ‘place is not just a setting or backdrop, but an agentic player in the game - a force with detectable and independent effects on social life’ (Gieryn, 2000, p.466; Thrift, 2003; Werlen, 1993). This quality of place is expressed by Thrift (2003), who posits that ‘we all know’ certain places make us come alive, while others do the opposite (Thrift, 2003, p. 103; Yeoh & Kong, 1994).

Unlike the confines of homes and private areas, everyday places are open and active settings that allow greater room for contestation and processes of social change, some examples being the crossing class and racial boundaries (Low, 2017; Harvey, 1973). Several authors have also pointed out that ‘the informal discursive public sphere allows voices and conflicts to be expressed in ways in which the more inflexible formal institutions or democratic governance do not allow’ (Dahlberg, 2005, p. 130; Low, 2017; Fennell, 2012; Yeh, 2012; Mazzarella, 2003). Thus, while everyday places are locations of collective experiences that can serve facilitate the construction

7 Virtual space is still space, and physically stored in some place eg electric cable 19

and reproduction of nationhood, they also function as locations to challenge or rethink top-down nationalism.

2.4 Summary

To recap, ‘Nationalism is the project to make the political unit, the state (or polity) congruent with the cultural unit, the nation…The targets of these endeavours are the people themselves: to make the nation is to make people national.’ (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a, p.536).

In Section 2.1, we have examined the discourse of everyday nationalism, and reviewed a few key concepts that form the analytical framework and basis of understanding phenomena in this study. For example, the concept of sedimentation helps us to understand how ‘common sense’ understandings and conceptions can be partially fixed in an ever-changing society. The relationship between food culture and nationalism is drawn in Section 2.2, whereby we observe how the banal representation of nations and food culture are both expressions and responses towards nationalism. As seen from some of the case studies in this chapter (Section 2.1.3 & Section 2.2.2), food culture enables individuals and groups to imagine and reproduce feelings of belonging and nationhood. At the same time, the strong relationship between food culture and identity amasses a weight of capacity, that is sufficient enough to move one towards challenging or re-defining nationalism for oneself.

The qualities of place and everyday places are examined in Section 2.2.3. As seen above, everyday places are places of duty and encounter (Kong, 2007; Gieryn, 2000; Harvey, 1983), processes of becoming (Yeoh & Kong, 1996, p.53; Pred, 1984), ongoing projects and outcomes of place-making (Thrift, 2003; Werlen, 1993), multicoded spaces (Goss, 1988, locations of collective experiences (Yeoh & Kong, 1996; Walter, 1988), and open settings that enable change and contestation to occur (Low, 2017; Fennell, 2012; Yeh, 2012; Dahlberg, 2005, p. 130; Mazzarella, 2003). While this suggests a chaotic conception of everyday places – whereby the outcomes of place may alter in different hands of ownership, cultures, be malleable over time, and inevitably contested – it is precisely these qualities that make place invested with human meaning and value, and differentiate place from mere space (Gieryn, 2000)

In relation to the topic of this thesis, everyday places are not only places where food culture can be located in a nation: they facilitate the generation, reproduction and contestation of both nationalism and food culture (Kong, 2007; Duruz & Khoo, 2014).

For example, chicken rice in hawker centres may be known as ‘Singaporean Chicken Rice’ to a tourist, ‘Hainanese Chicken Rice’ to a Singaporean-Chinese and ‘Chinese Chicken Rice’ to an Indian immigrant (Duruz & Khoo, 2016). Although these identifications are dependent on human agency as well as the identifications or categorizations that one carries, the terms given to chicken rice above will not make sense, if geographical location (origin and destination) and qualities of place were removed from the overall equation.

Thus, the spatial dimension is an immutable foundation that cannot be removed in one’s encounters in the world, and experiences with food culture and nationalism. To reiterate Avieli (2005), nationalism is no longer abstract but substantial to the individual, when the nation becomes physically embodied in the form of food. This brings out the significance of everyday food places for the purpose of this thesis, and the complex relationship between food, the nation and place in the everyday life. In this respect, I argue that hawker centres provide a crucial lens for understanding everyday nationalism in the context of Singapore, which we will examine in the next chapter.

3. Singapore’s Hawker Centres: Food-Nationalism Axis

‘They have grown up with Singapore, and are changing in tandem with a new generation. They are everyday icons of Singapore.”

– Simon Tay, Chairman of National Environmental Agency, Singapore

(Kong, 2007, p. 15)

Singapore is a nation-state that was founded in 1965, and that has a total population of 5,610,000 as of 2017 (Singapore Department of Statistics, June 2017; Appendix 9.1). Amongst these, there is a citizen population of 3,440,000 (61.3% Total) is classified as 76.1% Chinese, 15.0% Malay, 7.4% Indian and 1.5% ‘Others’. Prior to the nation’s independence in 1965, Singapore was a British colony (1819-1940) that was temporarily occupied by the Japanese during World War 2 (1942-1945). After the British granted internal self-governance to Singapore in 1959, the nation shared a brief period of merger with its neighbouring country, Malaysia (1963-1965).

The trade of hawking has existed since the 1800s, and has ‘grown up’ with the nation (Kong, 2007, p.15). Today, Singapore’s hawker centres are large open-air complexes that offer a wide variety of tasty and affordable food, and are much-loved eating places amongst Singaporeans and visitors from abroad (Groundwater, 7 Mar 2018; Independent, 19 Dec 2009; Food and Travel, n.d.). As seen in the Introduction, Kong (2007) points out the irony of the term ‘hawker centres’, as hawkers are known to be itinerant street vendors (page 6).

In this chapter, I will explain everyday nationalism in Singapore through the nation’s theory of multiracialism (Section 3.1). This is because it is the main foundation of governance in the nation, and this theory structures the logics of nationhood amongst members of the nation. Followed by this, I will illustrate how the trade of hawking has evolved in the nation (Section 3.2). Followed by this, I will demonstrate how Singapore’s hawker centres constitutes as a food- and-nationalism axis in the everyday life (Section 3.3).

3.1 Nationalism: CMIO

“We, the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality, so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.”

- National Pledge (Wei & Saparudin, 1 Aug 2014)

Several authors have described how the nation of Singapore was ‘imagined’ and created through universal concepts that would unite a diverse population and transcend the boundaries of ethnic grouping (Ortmann, 2009, 29; Rocha, 2011; Chua, 1998). These universal concepts are the ideals of multiracialism, multiculturalism, multilingualism, multireligiousity and meritocracy. Ortmann (2009) explains that as the nation’s past was wrought with ethnic tensions and corruption, the new national leaders elevated the concepts of multiracialism and meritocracy as 22

the ‘two key founding myths of the Singapore state’ (Ortmann, 2009, p.30). Hence, a new theory of multiracialism that would incorporate the other universal ideals (e.g. multilingualism, multireligiousity) was created, marking the foundations of a new multiracial nation (Rocha, 2011).

Singapore’s theory of multiracialism is otherwise known as the CMIO, the racialized framework of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other (CMIO): ‘separate, but equal, races making up a unique and compelling Singaporean identity’ (Rocha, 2011, p. 104; Chan 2009; Hill and Lian, 1995; Siddique, 1989).

As a form of acknowledgement to the presence of four different racial groups in the nation, four different languages were established as official languages of Singapore: English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil. Amongst these, English is official language that is used in institutions and the government, and serves to function as a shared and uniting language amongst the different racial groups. Under the nation’s bilingual education system (1966),

The other languages serve as individual representatives for the various [dominant] racial groups in the nation, and each of them functions as the second or ‘Mother Tongue’ languages to be learned under Singapore’s bilingual education system (1966). This is whereby one would learn a second language that is meant to be inherent or representative of one’s racial identity. Velayutham (2016) explains, ‘At school, racial identity is tied to bilingual education: Chinese- Mandarin; Malay-Bahasa Melayu; and Indian-Tamil (more recently Punjabi/Hindi).’ (Velayutham, 2016, p. 455-456).

The conception of a multiracial nation with four different racial groups is reinforced in both institutional and non-institutional settings, such as in the private spheres of everyday life. In day to day life, common questions of “what are you?” in everyday conversations (PuruShotam, 1998, p. 53-54) and the promotion of racial practices, ethnic and religious festivals such as Chinese New Year for the Chinese and Hari Raya Puasa for the Malays, causes one to continually imagine and experience the nation as one that is multiracial (Rocha, 2011; Ministry of Manpower, n.d.). In the urban landscape, the representation of the four official languages in signages (Figure 3.1) and city planning of heritage districts serves to represent the ‘culture’ of each racial identity in a nation that is multiracial, multilinguistic, multireligious and multicultural: Chinatown for the Chinese, Kampong Glam for the Malays, Little India for the Indians (Kong & Kong, 1994; Henderson, 2010). Apart from this, institutions and management structures (e.g. identification cards, official forms, publication press, ‘self-help groups’) are organized on the basis of race, reinforcing the concept of race as a visible and grounded form of identity (Chua, 2003; Rocha, 2011; Velayutham, 2016).

Figure 3.1 Singapore’s 4 Official Languages in Urban Signage

Source: Michelin Guide, Singapore (Yong, 2 Nov 2016)

Thus, the theory of multiracialism (CMIO) forms the core framework of governance in the nation. The following descriptions of the four different racial groups details the methods in which each racial group was formulated and invented through the nation’s logics of race:

‘Chinese’ identity

Given significant linguistic differences amongst the Chinese ethnic groups in Singapore, the official language of Mandarin was used as a uniting element amongst them, and to build a homogeneous Chinese racial identity. Some examples of Chinese ethno-linguistics groups in Singapore are the Hokkiens, Teochews, Hakkas, and Hainanese, that mainly originate from Southern China (Chua, 2005; Kong, 2007). Even within some ethno-linguistic groups, there were further sub-group divisions and linguistic differences e.g. Hokchews and Hinghua amongst the Hokkiens. Therefore, Mandarin was promoted amongst the Chinese community and institutionalized as a ‘Mother Tongue’, while the other existing Chinese languages were ideologically reduced to ‘dialects’ (i.e. not proper languages) to be spoken in the confines of home and private spaces (Rocha, 2011; ibid). Mandarin also came to be adopted as the only official race- language in institutions and the media, for instance as the spoken language in the ‘Chinese’ television channel in the national broadcast media. Thus, the Mandarin language is often used as a measurement of one’s Chinese racial identity, and hallmark representation of the Chinese racial group (Velayutham, 2016; Chua, 2005). In the recent years, there has been a growing awareness in the breakdown of communication within some Chinese families, especially amongst the younger generations and their grandparents who are unable to speak Mandarin (Rocha, 2011; Johnson, 26 Aug 2017; Ng & Smalley, 26 Sep 2017). For instance, the demand for Chinese dialect lessons has ‘shot up’ amongst young Singaporeans in the past few years, who ‘want to connect with the elderly or their own roots’ (Ng & Smalley; 26 Sep 2017)

‘Malay’ identity

According to the definition of a Malay in Singapore, a Malay is ‘someone who is Malay, Javanese, Boyanese, Bugis, Arab or any other person who is generally accepted as a member of the Malay community by the community’ (Rahim, 1998, p.18). Similar to the case of the Chinese racial group above, the Malay race-language is used as a uniting language amongst the ethno-linguistic groups as well as the ‘Mother Tongue’ language in schools. However, Chua (2005) notes that the Malay identity is further linked to the religion of Islam, whereby it is taken to be the ‘defining 24

element’ of all ethnic Malay groups (Chua, 2005, p.5) Hence, all Malays are assumed to be Muslims, and Malay converts to other religions are viewed as anomalies or are ‘excluded from the national ‘Malay’ community’ if the religion of conversion is Christianity (Chua, 2005; MOSG; 5 Jan 2017; Zuber, 2 Feb 2010).

‘Indian’ identity

Amongst the Indian ethnic groups in Singapore, there were some who were followers of religions apart from Hinduism, such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam (Chua, 2005). It was found that there were even more ethno-linguistic differences amongst the Indian population than that of the Chinese, and thus religion and language could not function as uniting elements for a racial Indian identity (Chua, 2005; Cheng, 8 August 2017). Therefore, Indians in Singapore were defined by the geography of South Asia, which includes the present-day nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (Chua, 2005; Benjamin, 1976). As Tamil was the majority language (59%) amongst the Indians at the time of independence (Bolton & Ng, 2014, p. 307), it was promoted as the official and ‘Mother Tongue’ language of all Singaporean Indians. Although other South Asian languages such as Bengali and Urdu were recently institutionally accepted as ‘Mother Tongue’ languages for ‘Indian’ students, the language of Tamil is still assumed to be the native language of all Indians in Singapore (Chua, 2005; MOE, 12 June 2018; Singh, 28 Nov 2011). In sum, racial Indian group is used to describe all descendants from South Asia, which includes Singaporean Indians and different nationalities from South Asia (Chua, 2005; Benjamin, 1976).

‘Other’ identities

Individuals and groups that did not fit neatly within the above classificatory frameworks of being ‘Chinese’, ‘Malay’ or ‘Indian’ are casted into the category of ‘Others’. This meant that existing ethnic groups or individuals from mixed-race backgrounds, such as Eurasians and Peranakans were casted as an ‘Other’ or subsumed under some broader categories (Rocha, 2011; Lam, 11 Jun 2017). This is despite the fact that some of these ethnicities have existed in Singapore since the 1800s, with family names such as Ferrao (1820), McIntyre (1939), Gomes (1949), De Rozario (1849) (Lam, 11 Jun 2017; Rocha, 2011; The Eurasian Association of Singapore, n.d.). As a response to the rise of inter-ethnic marriages and changing demographics of Singapore, the government now recognizes Eurasians as an official ethnic group (2006) and enables residents to register double-barrelled racial identities (e.g. Indian-Chinese) as of the year of 2011 (AsiaOne, 30 Dec 2010; Rocha, 2011; Chua, 2003; Barr & Skrbis, 2008). However, there was an emphasis that the racial identity in the double-barrelled racial identity would constitute one’s primary race i.e. not the race before the hyphen, whereby one’s education and socio-economic advantages would be characterized by the primary race.

In addition to these, the non-assignment of a ‘Mother Tongue’ language to the ‘Other’ racial category causes them to be viewed with doubt and suspicion other members in the nation, and perceive a lesser sense of belonging in the nation. This can be seen from the experiences of Kristangs such as Mr Andre D’Rozario and Ms Anthonisz.:

“Growing up in Singapore, all of us could really relate to not having a mother tongue, not having something to call our own.”

“You got pink IC or not?

Your English very good ah?

Your grandparents from where?”8

(Lam, 11 Jun 2017)

Graham Ong-Webb, a Eurasian of Dutch, Portuguese, English, Indian and Chinese ancestral roots shares:

“You’ll spend … almost all of your life justifying that you’re Singaporean.”

- Graham Ong-Webb, 42-year-old Singaporean

(Cheng, 8 August 2017)

From the above remarks, we see that one’s identity and belonging to the nation is highly linked to the nation’s theory of multiracialism (CMIO) and institutionalization of race in the everyday life, as well as the crucial role of ‘Mother Tongue’ used to distinguish one’s racial identity. Velayutham (2016) has also described how individuals of ‘mixed’ racial ancestries and who cross racial boundaries are viewed as acts of transgression, as seen above in the case of a Malay convert to Christianity (Chua, 2005; MOSG; 5 Jan 2017; Zuber, 2 Feb 2010).

Everyday Nationalism: Multiracialism

In sum, the theory of multiracialism (CMIO) constitutes as the framework of governance in Singapore. As the concept of race is institutionalized and deeply entrenched in both the public and private lives of Singaporeans, race is continually reinforced as a grounded and visible form of identity. Moreover, the consumption of certain images and representations of racial identities (e.g. Malays as Muslims) informs one’s understanding of other racial groups and members of the nation. Rocha (2011) has also pointed out that the recent census no longer explains and puts disclaimers about the blurring of racial and ethnic boundaries, institutionally reducing and advocating racial identities as a method of governance. Henceforth, everyday nationhood is measured according to one’s ability to identify himself or herself amongst the dominant racial categories (CMIO), and perform his identity according to the national script of race. Thus, Benjamin (1976) observes:

“Singapore’s multiracialism puts pressure on Chinese to become more Chinese, Indians to become more Indian and Malays to become more Malay”

(Benjamin, 1976, p. 124)

8 Examples of questions that Mr Andre D’Rozario receives from other Singaporeans (Lam, 11 Jun 2017) 26

This leads us to the next section, where we will examine the ‘underbelly’ of the nation: the trade of hawking and hawker food.

3.2 Street Hawking to Hawker Centres

Previously, we have read about how hawker centres are favourite eating places amongst members of the nation, and they have ‘grown up’ with the nation (Kong, 2007, p.15). This section attempts to describe what street hawking may have looked like in the early days of Singapore, and illustrates what hawking (and hawker food) means to members of the nation (Section 3.2.3).

3.2.1 Humble beginnings

Unlike the furnished hawker centres that we see today, the hawkers of Singapore before the 1980s were makeshift vendors without proper amenities or facilities, as seen from Cameron’s account in the previous chapter. They made a humble living of selling hawker food without ‘potable water supply, electrical supply, sewerage and drainage systems, toilets, lighting and bin centres.’ (Kong, 2007, p.31). As the business of street hawking required little start-up cost and capital, it was an attractive business for those who were unemployed or little formal education.

The business of street hawking continued to flourish in post-war Singapore, whereby a spirit of survival ensued amongst the local population, and the efforts of the government were directed towards economic stabilization (Ortmann, 2009; Rocha, 2011). However, street hawking was soon found to be incompatible with the government’s vision of the Singaporean nation.

As the hawkers did not have access to proper amenities such as waste facilities, food and liquid waste disposals in public areas were commonsight, and their street-side locations were obstructed vehicle and pedestrian flows. Moreover, most of the hawkers on the streets of Singapore were unlicensed and ‘illegal’: it was estimated that only a quarter to a third of them were licensed in the early 1950s. Not only does this make them vulnerable targets of the police force, as their hawking equipment would be confiscated during police inspections or raids, the health and hygiene standards of hawker food were also brought to question (Kong, 2007; Duruz & Khoo, 2014). The former Head of the ‘Hawkers Department’9 explains,

‘At that time [1960s], the government had the objective of turning Singapore into the cleanest country in Asia, and street hawking were among the challenges to be surmounted in pursuit of that goal.’

(Kong, 2007, p. 30)

Thus, the informal trade of street hawking defied the national script of law and order, hygiene and cleanliness, as well as certain images of urbanization. It has been piqued that ‘the ‘survival any individual hawker’s trade depended on his ability to escape the unfavourable attentions of

9 The ‘Hawkers Department’ was a part of the Ministry of Health in Singapore, until it was integrated under the Ministry of Environment in 1972. 27

the police.’ (Kong, 2007). Some street hawkers even paid ‘protection fees’ to gangs and secret societies, in attempt to safeguard their livelihoods.

While street hawkers were viewed unfavourably by the government, most of the Singaporean public were sympathetic to their plight, as they were seen as respectable people who tried to make a honest living (Kong, 2007). The latter may be best described as ka-ki-kang10 entrepreneurialism or the “village boy” myth (Duruz & Khoo, 2014, p.59), whereby one becomes ‘one’s own boss’ based on personal merits of hard work and resourcefulness. These factors gave a common ground of understanding amongst the Singaporean population, ka-ki-nang: ‘we are all of the same kind’. This refers to the acumen that we are all ordinary people, who strive to make a proper living in the same land. Apart from this shared sense of identification and belonging, the street hawkers (and their food) were a significant part of the everyday life. Many Singaporeans today can still remember the days of street hawking, where their ‘calls would be heard well before they came within sight, tiltillating salivary glands building up expectations’ (Kong, 2007 p. 134; Duruz & Khoo, 2014). Food writer Sylvia Tan recalls:

“[R]oving hawkers worked out a system of food delivery whereby shop-house dwellers would lower baskets whenever they heard the food calls, and in this way, exchange cash for food…The food calls were distinctive – you could not mistake the nasal cry of the loh kai yik man for the guttural calls of the ap bak (braised duck) man; nor the clacking of bamboo clappers of the noodle man for the mee goring man’s insistent clanging of frying implement against wok.”

(Tan, 2004; Duruz & Khoo, 2014, p.100)

As seen from the quote above, street hawkers made everyday life more vibrant and colourful, and hawker food serves to embody memories of growing up and living in Singapore.

3.2.2 Modernizing Singapore, Hawker Centres

Kong (2007) mentions that it is perhaps thanks to the Hawker Inquiry Commission, that hawkers have remained as a part of the Singaporean landscape (Kong, 2007, p. 27). The Commission was established in the 1950s, while there were great tensions amongst the police, hawkers and members of the public. It consolidated the interests and opinions of stakeholders involved in the business of street hawking, which ranged from the Municipal Health Officer to representatives from group/civilian organisations like the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Teochew Guilds and the Indo-Ceylon Club. They also sought the opinions of hawkers who operated on the streets and public lands, even those who operated within coffee shops11.

In the meantime, several hawkers rallied together for permissions to build markets and shelters of their own, and some Singaporeans also chipped in for the survival and operation of hawkers.

10 Ka-Ki (oneself, one’s own, to do it yourself), Kang (head, own): Ka-Ki-Kang (Be your own boss) or ‘you work your way into being your own boss’. Mixture of Teochew and Hainanese dialects. 11 Hawkers and coffee shop owners would sometimes collaborate together in a harmonious food and drink trade, in an overall effort to increase their income and attract customers into the shop. 28

Examples include a hundred and ten hawkers from Somerset Road forming ‘a syndicate, bought a piece of land at the junction of Killiney and Exeter Roads and submitted plans to the City Council for a market’ (Kong, 2007, p.27) and a private entrepreneur who built a market in Serangoon Road in 1954 and rented the space to hawkers.

These joint efforts led to significant breakthroughs in the organization of hawkers and planning process of hawker centres, which took significant momentum from the 1960s.

In 1968 and 1969, the government conducted the first island wide registrations of street hawkers, whereby they were issued temporary licenses and were relocated from the streets to back lanes, car parks and vacant land areas. However, illegal hawking persisted, as hawkers took opportunities to go to the main streets or crowded events to increase their businesses, such as midnight movie screenings in the city centre. As most of the street hawkers (approximately 18, 000) were concentrated in the central city area, the police and law enforcement agencies were often outnumbered when clashes occured. After another round of extensive effort and consultation, the Hawker Committee devised a plan to relocate street hawkers into permanent places with adequate ‘population catchment areas’: hawker centres.

The latter refers to the modern planning and construction of hawker centres (HC) and market- cum-hawker centres (MHC) from 1971 to 198612, whereby each of their locations would ensure a steady flow of customers and demand for food from the surrounding region. A solution to the problem of overcrowding in the city centre was also introduced, whereby hawker centres would be built within the infrastructure of new residential and industrial estates. This would enable hawkers to receive business demand from the surrounding population, such as families with children and members of the workforce, while being displaced from the city centre and their original locations where they may have loyal customers.

The stability of these places also meant that amenities and facilities could be built as long-term investments for both hawkers and members of the public. These include shared tables and seating, public toilets, lighting and bin centres for the usage of all members of society, as well as water, electrical supplies and basic ventilation systems for each hawker stall.

Therefore, hawker centres were originally designed to be institutions to organize and manage street hawkers, in a young and aspiring nation. As a result of this careful planning, hawkers have generally thrived, and a few of them have even prospered and expanded their businesses (Duruz & Khoo, 2014; Kong, 2007; Chua, 19 Sep 2016).

3.2.3 Hawker Centres Today

Today, there are approximately 110 government market-cum-hawker centres or stand-alone hawker centres, housing more than 6,000 cooked food stalls13. These were solely managed by the National Environment Agency of Singapore until recently, whereby social and private enterprises

12 The most active construction of hawker centres took place between 1974 and 1979, whereby 54 hawker centres were built within 5 years. (Kong, 2007) 13 Exact figures: 107 MHCs and HCs, and 6121 hawker stalls in 2017. Source: Data of the Singapore Government (Data.gov.sg) 29

were eligible to run as the managing organizations of hawker centres from 2014 onwards (Tay, 21 Dec 2016).

The application of hawker stalls is only eligible to Singaporean citizens and permanent residents, and these stalls undergo regular health and hygiene inspections (NEA, n.d.). Other aspects of hawker stalls, such as the regulation of hawker food prices and the sharing of cutlery, are more variant and subject to a variety of factors. For instance, utensils and cutlery used in Halal food stalls are differentiated and separated from that from non-Halal food stalls in most hawker centres, and it is ‘common sense knowledge’ that customers correctly return their ‘trays’ according to the appropriate tray return cart. Hence, ordering food at hawker centres may constitute some local knowledge (Schwartz, 3 Dec 2014; Chew, 4 Dec 2014).

Singaporeans are increasingly affluent and well-travelled today. Many of them have been exposed to cuisines from all over world, and are well-able to afford more expensive dining fare in cafes and restaurants (Simkins, 21 Nov 2011; TODAY, 6 May 2014; Kong, 2007). Nonetheless, hawkers have adapted their trade to keep up with the changing times and taste buds of Singaporeans. While some of them have stuck to traditional recipes at a low cost, while others have innovative methods international varieties of food. A writer has aptly described hawker centres as the ‘natural meeting place for the [hawker food] traditionalists and the innovators’, and goes as far as to say that it is ‘the future of Singapore’s food scene’ (Groundwater, 7 Mar 2018). This leads us into a discussion about how hawker centres may constitute as food-and- nationalism axis in the case of Singapore.

3.3 Hawker Food Culture: Everyday Life and Belonging

A 2006 survey revealed that nine in every ten respondents ate out at least once a week in hawker centres, food courts, restaurants and other eating places. It was also discovered that virtually all (93.8%) respondents consumed food from hawker centres, in the form of takeaways or eating at hawker centres, with a sizeable proportion (44%) doing so at least once or twice per week. A recent report in 2014 found that four in five Singaporean adults14 eat at hawker centres when they are not dining at home. These local trends of eating food from hawker centres show no signs of stopping, with the growing popularity of hawkerfare in the recent years. However, these statistics just numbers, without the rich meanings and significance that hawker centres have in the lives and identities of Singaporeans (Kong, 2007; Duruz & Khoo, 2014).

For many Singaporeans, hawker food and hawker centres are associated with a sense of home, nostalgia and belonging to a nation (Duruz & Khoo; Kong, 2007). Hawker food constitutes such an emotional stronghold and complex blend of flavours, Trillin remarks that a ‘yearning for Singapore hawker food is surprisingly difficult to satisfy’, especially for Singaporeans abroad (Trillin, 3 Sep 2007).

While hawker food in Singapore is largely be identified along national and ethno-racial lines, such as ‘mee rebus associated with Malays, mee goreng with Indians and wonton mee with

14 More than 750 Singaporeans were surveyed. 30

Chinese’ (Kong, 2007, p.108; Lee, 1992), there are other dishes that are so mixed or hybridized in culinary influences, it is perhaps best described as ‘strictly Singaporean’ (ibid).

One example is Indian rojak, which is a salad-like mix of tofu, potato, hardboiled egg, cuttlefish, vegetables and other ingredients, some dipped in batter and fried – is served with a crucial final ingredient, a sweet potato-based chilli sauce. Kong remarks, ‘This must be a surprise for visitors from India.’ (Kong, 2007, p. 108). Other examples of Singaporean innovations include the black pepper crab and chilli crab available in many Chinese seafood stalls, and bah kut teh, an aromatic pork rib soup that can be traced back to Chinese immigrants. “It’s so Chinese and yet, it’s not in China. This is what I mean: we came up with a third taste,” said Mr Seetoh, a famous food critic in Singapore (Jagdish, 3 Jun 2018; Makansutra, n.d.; ibid).

Not only does the mix of inter-culinary flavours constitute the identity of hawker cuisine, the time-established names and identifications given to hawker food also bears testament to a Singaporean identity: everyday life as a ‘melting pot’ of languages and cultures. As suggested above, the names of hawker foods are often word combinations or anglicized versions of languages that are spoken in Singapore. While most Singaporeans are well-versed in these terms and vernacular understandings, foreign-born visitors and residents often have much difficulty in understanding or pronouncing them (Schwartz, 3 Dec 2014; Chew, 4 Dec 2014). For instance, if one would like to order a cup of black coffee without sugar in Singapore, one would say ‘kopi (Malay) o (Hainanese) kosong (Malay)’. While these expressions may appear strange at first sight, hawker food ‘lingos’ are but another banal or normal aspect of everyday life for most Singaporeans. Several foreign enterprises have also adapted their marketing to cater to Singapore’s food culture, such as Guinness’ ‘Beer Găo’ recipe. According to Guinness, ‘Găo is local slang, embedded in the vernacular at traditional on-premise outlets to order anything full- flavoured. From coffee to soup, Singaporeans always request for more flavour in the things they eat or drink.’ (Guinness, n.d.).

Figure 3.3 Guinness Beer Găo’

Source: (Ong, 10 Jan 2018)

The uniqueness of Singaporean food culture has led to the emergence of Singaporean food guides and dining etiquette tips at hawker centres for the knowledge or ‘education’ of non-Singaporeans or new residents in the nation. These sources range from travel guides, Singaporean and visiting 31

food bloggers, official news sources, and even local food enterprises such as ‘Nanyang15 Old Coffee’ where a guide on Singaporean ‘coffee lingo’ is carefully detailed in their website (Zienchuk, 13 June 2013; Ong, 10 Jan 2018; Nanyang Old Coffee, n.d.).

However, its distinctiveness of hawker food culture is not entirely welcomed by all. For instance, the ‘chope’ culture of table reservations via tissue papers and simple objects at hawker centres has been described by some Singaporeans, visitors and officials as unfair and ungracious (Lin, 2 April 2017).

Nonetheless, it might be of little surprise then, that Singaporeans are proud of a hawker food/centre culture that is still ultimately ‘theirs’: an everyday food culture and language that only ‘we’ can speak, understand and have the rights to challenge. This leads us into a discussion about how hawker centres constitute as a food-and-nationalism axis in the everyday life.

3.4 Summary: Food-and-Nationalism Axis

In this chapter, we have witnessed how the theory of multiracialism (CMIO) constitutes as a top- down approach of governance (Section 3.1). This is whereby the population of Singapore is classified according to racial group categories, and the theory of multiracialism is both institutionalized and recreated in both the public and private domains of life. Hence, the logics of race are deeply sedimented in the minds and agencies of members of the nation, as banal facts of everyday life.

Followed by this, we observe how the trade of hawking has transformed over the course of Singapore’s history (Section 3.2), and that is has always constituted as a series of negotiations between street hawkers, the government and other members of the nation. The common identifications, memories and lived experiences of growing up with hawker food bring meaning and value to hawker food and hawker centres as the embodiment of identity, belonging, everyday nationhood amongst members of the nation.

Next, we have reviewed Singapore’s hawker food culture (Section 3.3) as an everyday lifestyle and practice amongst Singaporeans. We have also seen how hawker food and centres comprises of a unique set of characteristics that encapsulate meaning, belonging and a shared sense of nationhood amongst members of the nation. The adaptation of foreign businesses to the food culture of Singapore also bears testament to the distinctiveness of the hawker food culture. Thus, while hawker food [culture] in Singapore may be identified along national and racial lines (Section 3.1 & 3.3), they carry the potential to unite members of the nation, and bring convergence towards a shared sense of nationhood: ka-ki-nang.

Therefore, I argue that the nation of Singapore is physically embodied in the form of hawker food culture, and everyday nationalism is most distinctively demonstrated in hawker centres, as spatial expressions of a bottom-up food culture:

15 A sinocentric term for South-East Asia, which includes Singapore. 32

Firstly, hawker centres are everyday food places, with distinctive place and hawker food cultures in the nation (Section 2.3). The hawker centre in ‘Little India’ is different from the hawker centre found across the country in ‘Changi Village’, with different histories, varieties of hawker cuisine and lived experiences (refer to Appendix 9.2). Secondly, there are significant amounts of national and ethnic identifications in hawker food (Kong, 2007) and types of hawker centres in Singapore. Thirdly, there is a significant amount of human agency in the selection of hawker centres as a place of preference for hawker food (Section 2.1.3).Fourthly, hawker centres reflect the changing nation and attitudes of the Singaporean population (Section 3.2 & Section 3.3). Not only have they been growing up with the nation and people of Singapore, members of the nation also reflect their changing worldviews and expressions of nationhood on them, as we will see in the findings of this study (Section 5 & 6). Hence, hawker centres will continue to evolve and be unique place- processes. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, hawker centres are everyday places where bottom-up nationalism can be found in a voluntaristic fashion (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a). This is whereby the trade of hawking (and hawker centres) has always been a series of negotiation between the government and members of the nation, previously in its national script of urbanization (Section 3.2) and currently in ongoing debates about the hawker food heritage (Jagdish, 3 Jun 2018). Moreover, as we have seen in the previous sections, hawker centres are everyday places where members of the nation express their identifications and sense of belonging to the nation, through the medium of hawker food food culture (Section 3.1-3.3; Chapter 2). Thus, hawker centres are personally meaningful and relevant, for the average member of the nation (Chapter 2 & 3).

Therefore, hawker centres are a food-and-nationalism axis, where food culture and nationalism is blended in the everyday life. They are imperfect but excellent mirrors of the nation, and are everyday food places where the members of the nation imagine, reproduce and challenge nationalism from the bottom-up.

This brings us to the next chapter, where we will examine how to study hawker centres as the intersections between food culture and everyday nationalism.

4. Research Methodology

This thesis aims to examine the role of food culture in everyday nationalism, with the following research question:

‘What is the role of food culture in everyday nationalism?’

This research undertakes an explorative approach towards the relevance and significance of food culture in the ongoing creation of the nation, identity and belonging in the everyday life. It also undertakes an inductive research approach, whereby it attempts to gain theory about everyday nationalism, food culture, and everyday places as a spatial manifestations of nationalism and food culture. This pertains to hawker centres in the case of Singapore.

4.1 Methodology

Authors of everyday nationalism have largely undertaken ethnographic methods of participant observation, in natural (Brubaker et al, 2006; Goode & Stroup, 2015, p. 724; Surak, 2012) and reconstructed settings such as focus group interviews (Antonsich, 2016; Skey 2011). More recent methodologies of studying everyday nationalism includes social media analysis, such as how individuals perform ‘everyday talk’ on Twitter (Yadlin-Segal, 2017).

Goode et al (2015) mentions that the study of nationalism ‘remains haunted’ by ‘methodological nationalism’, whereby national and ethnic identities are often assumed and taken to be unitary actors (Goode et al, 2015, p. 722; Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002; Millard, 2014). Several authors have also critiqued that studies related to ethnicity and nationalism are often dominated by constructivist approaches, whereby familiar constructivist formulae such as ethnic group categories come ‘predictably packaged with standard sets of qualifiers’ (Brubaker et al, 2006, p.7) and do not necessarily explain how ethnicity nor nationalism is constructed (Goode et al, 2015). This does not suggest that constructivist approaches are irrelevant, but rather that ethnic and national categories ought not to be the fundamental units of our analysis of everyday nationalism (or ethnicity). Moreover, the content of national and ethnic categories are often defined by institutions (Skey, 2011; Goode et al, 2015), and are not always relevant in the day-to-day lives of people.

Therefore, I will undertake a vernacular or ‘wait-and-see’ approach in this study, whereby ‘the research agenda is designed to leave people to their own devices’ (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a, p.556; Brubaker et al, 2006; Goode & Stroup, 2015). Although a vernacular understanding of everyday nationalism appears to be naïve, the ‘wait-and-see’ methodology takes into account the crucial assumption(s) that the nation does not necessarily pervade the minds and consciousness of individuals at all times within the everyday life.

While some studies have drawn out insights from ‘everyday talk’ and ‘everyday behaviours’ through planned settings such as focus group interviews (Skey, 2011), there is an underlying assumption that these vernacular understandings extend to the spheres of life of individuals on a day-to-day basis. Fox and Miller-Idriss (2008a) have pointed out that ‘[But] just because people 34

can talk nationally in these research settings doesn’t mean that they do talk nationally in other contexts of their everyday lives.’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008a, p. 555)

Thus, this approach shifts our attention to the everyday life as a ‘domain in its own right’ (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a, p.554) and object of analysis (Brubaker et al, 2006), instead of the usage of pre-set16 analytical categories to explain the vernacular understandings of members in their everyday lives. More importantly, the ‘wait-and-see’ approach enables the collection and analysis of empirical content to include non-national and non-ethnic terms which are ‘in favour of other categories that are more suitable for their [ordinary people] quotidian needs and wants’ (ibid). It takes Hobsbawm’s call to study nationalism ‘from below’ seriously by ‘elaborating some of these ways in which people enact, constitute, legitimate and sometimes undermine the idiom of the nation in the diverse contexts of their everyday lives’. (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a, p. 554; Hobsbawm, 1991, p. 10).

As such, the contextual salience and variable meanings relating to food culture and everyday nationalism are valid for our consideration. In this manner, the ‘wait-and-see’ approach would be more closely aligned with individual experiences of food culture and everyday nationalism, for the case of Singapore. It also enables us to specify the actual practices and processes through which nationhood is reproduced and challenged in the everyday life by ordinary individuals.

4.2 Research Design: Case Study

As seen in the previous chapters, Singapore’s hawker centres exhibit a strong food culture, and are relevant amongst members of the nation. They also exhibit strong individual, group and national identifications, as well as other meanings that are relevant for our understanding on everyday nationalism in Singapore. Thus, Singapore’s hawker centres are a relevant case study for this thesis (refer to Section 3.4).

This study comprises of a mixed methods approach, whereby qualitative and quantitative data with a spatial perspective will be undertaken. This is because hawker centres constitute a complex combination of people, food and places, and need to be analyzed in all its derivatives. Therefore, while this thesis puts a higher emphasis on hawker centres as everyday places, it does not ignore its twin functions. For instance, hawker centres can be interpreted as ‘childhood places’ (place), ‘cheap and good food’ (food), or ‘eating places with friends and family’ (people, food, place). Thus, this three-pronged approach is also vital in order to us to involve the vernacular understandings and interpretations of Singapore’s hawker centres according to members of the nation.

The main softwares and programmes that used for this study are ArcMap, Atlas.ti, Microsoft Excel and Adobe Illustrator.

16 For example, the usage of pre-set racial or ethnic terms as choices of option for Multiple Choice Questions in surveys. 35

4.3 Field Data: Hawker Centres

To arrive at a comprehensive understanding and conclusion, a substantial amount of empirical data would be needed.

In hawker centres, each of the food17 stalls at have signboards that contain unique descriptions of food, symbols and languages amongst many other types of identifications by the hawker or franchise in charge. For practical and feasible reasons, pictures of the signboard headers would be utilized for the analysis of everyday nationalism in hawker centres. In this study, signboard headers are defined as the main stall signage which is publicly visible at all times, and that includes ornaments or objects attached to them.

In total, 501 stall unit signboards from 5 different hawker centres in Singapore would be analyzed, which constitute all of the signboard headers which were available at the time of the site visits (94.9% total; refer to Table 9.2 in Appendix). This number does not include the hawker stalls that were vacant or not possible to attain (photographs of) at the time of the site visits, which were 27 across the hawker centres. Altogether, these pictures were taken from 6th to 15th March in 2017, and between 9 to 10am on each occasion. This timing was chosen for practical reasons of lighting and photographing the signboards before the lunch-hour crowds. While the vacant stalls may contribute to a slightly different picture or image of hawker centres, I argue that the number of stall unit signboards (501) constitutes as a sufficient account and representative of each of the hawker centres (88.0% to 100%; refer to Table 9.2 in the Appendix).

The choice of selection of hawker centres is motivated by a local knowledge18 of how members of the nation perceive various types of hawker food and hawker centres, and because experiences of nationhood are expected to be different in each of them (refer to Table 9.1). As they carry with them various histories and cultural connotations, and are located within different planning areas in the country e.g. Central Business District (CBD) v.s. housing residential, they may appeal to different types of consumer groups. Each of the header signboards are taken to be representations of the food-and-nationalism axis according to individual hawkers, some of which constitute the units of analysis and interpretation for the survey (Section 4.4)

For each of the hawker centres, the spatial layout and signboard constituents would be mapped and coded according to various forms of nationalism (refer to Figure 9.1 in Appendix). An example of this would be how the hawker centres would look like if they were perceived through the lens of multiracialism (Section 3.1).

17 Cooked food stalls. This is distinct from the non-cooked food stalls, that are separated from them at hawker centres with a wet market attached to them (MHC) 18 The author is a Singaporean who has lived in both the Eastern and Western parts of the country, and has travelled frequently to different areas in-between for 25 years. 36

Figure 4.3 Locations of Selected Hawker Centres

4.4 Survey Data

To gain a fuller perspective of how the members of the nation perceive food culture and nationalism in Singapore, a semi-structured online survey was conducted. The survey questions were designed to gain a ‘wait-and-see’ or vernacular understanding of hawker centres, and how individuals perceive these places as well as their sense of belonging. As the aim of this study is to validate the analysis from the primary data and understand everyday nationhood through the perspectives of individuals, the survey responses will mainly be analyzed according to vernacular understandings of food culture and everyday nationalism.

Given the ‘wait-and-see’ approach, the survey questions were designed to be informal and free for interpretation, such as ‘What do you associate hawker centres with?’. This survey also takes reference from Velayutham’s (2016) email survey about Singaporean identifications (see Chapter 2). This is in effort to understand how the Singaporeans respondents perceive their national identity, and if it has come to be prioritized or preferred over a racial identity. The main difference from Velayutham’s (2016) is that respondents are free to provide an open answer e.g. Singaporean British or Peranakan. 37

As the purpose of this research is to gain theory about food culture and everyday nationalism in the case of Singapore, rather than to testing existing theories, this inductive research method is applicable (Bryman, 2012, p. 35).

In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of hawker centres, I will utilize the emic (insider) and etic (outsider) approaches as developed by Geertz (1974), known respectively as ‘experience-near’ and ‘experience-distance’ concepts (Geertz, 1974, p.26) that were originally coined by Heinz Kohut. In this survey, I define the ‘emic’ category of people as one who is living within the boundaries of the nation, and the ‘etic’ category as one who is living outside the boundaries of the nation. Hence, Singaporeans who are living abroad at the time of the survey or who have revoked their citizenship are excluded as amongst the ‘members of the nation’ for analysis.

Table 4.4.1 Classification of Survey Respondents

Singaporeans [122] Non-Singaporeans [43]

Insider (Emic): Living Singaporeans (Citizens and Non-Singaporeans who are within Singapore, at Permanent Residents): currently in the nation e.g. the time of the survey studying and working

Members of the nation [24 respondents]

[85 respondents]

Outsider (Etic): Living Singaporeans who revoked Non-Singaporeans who have outside of Singapore, at their citizenship and who are previously lived in the nation the time of the survey temporarily living abroad or who were visitors e.g. tourists [37 respondents] [19 respondents]

Table 4.4.2 Age of Survey Respondents

Survey Age Avg Min Max Mode Respondents

Singaporeans in SG 27.0 19 60 25

not in 35.6 22 67 22 SG

non- in SG 32.8 21 52 23 Singaporeans not in 26.7 20 37 25 SG

Table 4.4.3 Locations of Residence (Singaporeans in Singapore)

Location Count Percentage (to 2sf) (Approximate)

Central 12 14%

North 12 14%

East 22 26%

West 22 26%

North-East 10 12%

North-West 1 1%

East, Central 3 4%

North, Central 1 1%

East, West 1 1%

‘I keep changing 1 1% house’

Total 85 100%

Table 4.4.4 Nationalities of non-Singaporean survey respondents

Nationality Count

Australia 1

British* 1

Canada 1

China 1

Colombia 1

Czech 1

EU* 1

Filipino- 1 Canadian*

Germany 2

Hong Kong 1

India 2

Indonesia 2

Italy 1

Malaysia 5

Mexico 3

Nepal 1

Netherlands 6

Philippines 1

Scotland* 1

Sri Lanka 1

Swedish 1

Taiwan 1

Turkey 1

United States 4

Vietnam 2

Total 43

* - These nationalities were either represented according to these definitions (e.g. Scottish as not ‘UK’) or not mapped (EU)

Figure 4.4 Nationalities of non-Singaporean survey respondents

4.5 Limitations and external validity

Choice of Hawker Centres

As these are approximately 110 hawker centres in Singapore, the 5 hawker centres selected for this study may not be generalizable and representative of the all various types in Singapore. Firstly, the hawker centres in this study are mostly located in the Central and Eastern region of Singapore, excluding those located in the Western parts of Singapore. Secondly, all of the 5 hawker centres chosen for this study have established hawkers from various ethnic and historical backgrounds. Thus the findings of this study may not be applicable to hawker centres that were only recently built, obscure in location or that are more monocultural in nature. An example of this may be Pek Kio Market and Hawker Centre, which is mainly frequented by nearby residents and that mainly consists of ‘Chinese’ hawker food stalls. Thirdly, there are some hawker centres that have cooked food stalls spread out over two storeys (e.g. Amoy Street Food Centre), hence two dimensional and single-storeyed map visualizations of hawker centres would be not be applicable to them.

Online Survey

As this is an online survey that was mainly distributed on social media (Facebook) without any reward incentives and non-unique IP address entry, there is no control over the pool of survey respondents and the individuals who participate in the survey may already have interests in hawker centres. Hence, this excludes potentially excludes the views of individuals who do not find hawker food and centres interesting or meaningful, and there may be ill intended individuals who abuse the non-restricted nature of the survey e.g. lie about their details. The survey may be

skewed towards younger, more educated and social-savvy individuals, as it was posted on Facebook groups that consists of individuals that may have a higher education (e.g. tertiary, university, post-graduate) and/or upper-middle class backgrounds. Apart from survey distribution on the author’s own Facebook page, other platforms are the author’s previous university, overseas Singaporeans in USA, Canada, Mexico and The Netherlands, and Vegans in Singapore Facebook groups.

It is also important to note that the target audience of the survey are not all consumers or frequent visitors at the 5 hawker centres of this study, as the focus of this survey is to understand the individual experiences, perspectives and imaginations that they may have about hawker food, stalls and centres. As the only stated qualifier of the survey is whether one has been to Singapore, the intended reach of this survey may have been too open-ended and ambiguous.

Hawker signboard headers as a representation of hawker stalls

As many hawker stall owners place their awards and identifications outside of the signboard header e.g. stall frame below the header hence the data collected does not comprehensively represent or detail all the other elements

As the pictures of the signboard headers were taken in 2017, they are considered to be up-to-date and relevant information, although there may have been a mnor changes to the hawker stall compositions e.g. a new Thai stall in Old Airport Road. The survey data collected acts as an external validity to the empirical data collected on hawker stall signages, and towards the author’s own local understandings of Singapore.

4.6 Ethical considerations

This study does not involve any physical, mental or emotional harm to survey participants or hawker centres, through the analysis of hawker centres, identities and experiences of various survey respondents. However, it constitutes an identity research which findings may unwillingly contribute to stereotypes about certain identities or serve to reproduce them. Thus, the findings of this study may harm or damage the reputation of hawker stalls identified in this study, affecting their economic value and the people working in them. Moreover, while this study has no intention to harm or stigmatize any person or identity in Singapore, one may misconstrue the findings of this study and reproduce them in a harmful manner.

4.7 Summary

In summary, the research methodology of this survey consists of a ‘wait-and-see’ and vernacular approach towards the field data (Section 3.3) and survey responses (Section 3.4). The findings of this study will be analyzed and presented in the form of maps, diagrams and survey quotes revealing vernacular understandings of nationhood. In the next two chapters, we will be reviewing the findings of this study. This is whereby we will further analyze hawker centres as places of imagination and reproduction of nationalism (Chapter 5), as well as everyday battlegrounds of identity and nationhood amongst members of the nation (Chapter 6).

5. Hawker Stories

This section largely comprises of maps and spatial visualizations of hawker centres, which serve to help understand they may imagined and experienced by both members of the nation and the hawkers themselves. Thus, the contents of this section are organized and ordered on the basis of scale and method in which one can approach nationalism, from the top-down (multiracialism) to the bottom-up details of everyday life.

5.1 Banal representations of hawker food

As mentioned in Chapter 2, the banal representations of nations and geographical areas in food items has become so banal and ‘natural’ in the affairs of the everyday life. While there is a certain degree of truth to the place origins of several hawker foods described in Singapore and in the maps below, these banal representations serve as reminders to the average person that he or she lives in a nation with particular characteristics and food offerings, and in a world of nations with other cuisines. This study revealed both real (refer Table 9.3 in the Appendix) and imagined (refer to Table 9.4 in the Appendix) geographical territories were banal food representations found in hawker food. The maps below were generated using the ‘real’ banal representations of nations and geographical territories in hawker food:

Figure 5.1.1 Banal food representations from 5 HCs: Global extent

Figure 5.1.2 Banal food representations from 5 HCs: Geographical extent

Figure 5.1.3 Banal food representations from 5 HCs: Geographical Focus on Asia

Figure 5.1.4 Banal food representations from 5 HCs: Geographical Focus on South-East Asia

As seen from Figures 5.1.1 to 5.1.4 above, the banal representation of hawker food culture is most predominant in the continent of Asia, and some nations are more explicitly represented than others. For example, while the country of ‘Malaysia’ is not explicitly mentioned, several of its states, districts and cities such as ‘Ipoh’ and ‘Penang’ were banal food descriptions that were frequently mentioned in the 5 hawker centres of this study (Figure 5.1.4; refer to Table 9.3 in Appendix). This is likely due to ensuing ‘food wars’ or national claims to local food between the two neighbouring countries, and the establishing of Singapore’s identity as distinct and separate from that of Malaysia’s (AsiaOne, 18 Mar 2016; Lee, 31 Aug 2017).

In addition to this, the banal representations of nations and territories differ from hawker centre to hawker centre, as seen from the comparison between Old Airport Road’s and Tekka’s in Figures 5.1.5 and 5.1.6 below:

Figure 5.1.5 Banal food representations in Old Airport Road HC

Figure 5.1.6 Banal representations in Tekka Centre

As seen, while the banal world of food imagination stretches to Western Europe in Old Airport Road HC (Figure 5.1.5), Tekka’s contains a greater focus on South Asia (Figure 5.1.6). Amongst the five HCs, Tekka centre contains the only mentions of ‘Afghanistan’, ‘Sri Lanka’ and specific states and regions in India (Kerala, Chettinad). This may be due to the historical background of Tekka centre, and its location in the ‘Little India’ heritage district of Singapore (refer to Table 9.2 in the Appendix).

Altogether, the hawker food culture serves as a platform of imagination, construction and reproduction of nationhood in the context of the everyday.

5.2 ‘Multiracial’ Hawker Centres

From the previous chapters, we have seen how nationalism in Singapore is largely characterized by the theory of multiracialism (Section 3.1), whereby it penetrates virtually all aspects of life for members of the nation. Thus, this section provides an imagination of how hawker centres would look like through the lens of multiracialism. Below are some examples of ‘hawker stall identites’ according to the logic of multiracialism (CMIO):

Figure 5.2.1 Chinese stall (CMIO)

Stall indicators for ‘Chinese’: the Chinese language

Figure 5.2.2 Malay stall (CMIO)

Stall indicators for ‘Malay’: Islamic symbols (Crescent and Moon) and Arabic blessings, the Malay language and hawker food identified as Malay (e.g. Nasi Ayam Penyet) 47

Figure 5.2.3 Indian stall (CMIO)

Stall indicators for ‘Indian’: Hawker food identified as Indian (e.g. Chapati, Naan)

Figure 5.2.4 ‘Other’ stall (CMIO)

Stall factors for ‘Other’: Food identity (pasta and risotto is associated as Italian food), banal representation of the Italian national flag on the header signboard

The above examples of hawker stall identities (CMIO) also informs us about the unique and voluntary nature of hawker stall signage designs, making them relevant for the ‘wait-and-see’ 48

approach of everyday nationalism (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a). While all of the spatial layouts below are estimations made by the author and are not drawn to scale, the above examples of hawker stalls (Figure 5.2.1-4) provides us with ideas about the actual size and dimensions of the hawker stalls and centres according to the human scale. To recap, this study only takes into account the signboard headers (top of the stall frame).

Figure 5.2.5 ‘Multiracial’ Bedok Interchange HC

Figure 5.2.6 ‘Multiracial’ Changi Village HC

Figure 5.2.7 ‘Multiracial’ Maxwell HC

Figure 5.2.8 ‘Multiracial’ Old Airport Road HC

Figure 5.2.9 ‘Multiracial’ Tekka Centre

As seen from the ‘multiracial’ maps above, the levels of racial diversity and hawker stall ‘mixing’ differs amongst the hawker centres. Tekka Centre (Figure 5.2.9) provides the best example of this amongst the five hawker centres, whereby it has a more equal distribution of the four racial groups, compared to the dominance of ‘Chinese’ stalls in all of the other hawker centres. Moreover, racial ‘mixing’ (same row) amongst the four CMIO stall identities can only be found in the case of Tekka Centre (intra-row mixing).

However, without any prior knowledge or firsthand experiencing of dining at hawker centres, one may perceive that Malays and Indians are largely separated or ‘excluded’ from the dominant- Chinese stalls, as seen in Figures 5.2.5, 5.2.7 and 5.2.8. While this is true to a certain extent, one of the main reasons for this is the greater ease of sorting cutlery and utensils from Halal (mostly Malay and Indian) and non-Halal (mostly Chinese) food stalls, as food tray return racks are often placed in the same row or column of the hawker stalls.

5.3 Racial-Language Mixing

According to the framework of multiracialism, a ‘Mother Tongue’ language is assigned to each dominant racial identity (Section 3.1). Hence, the mixing or intersections of ‘Mother Tongue’ and religious languages (Arabic) attached to racial identities are viewed as racial transgressions or boundary crossings19. An example of this can be seen in Figure 5.3.1 below, where this stall signboard has Chinese and Arabic languages:

Figure 5.3.1 Example of Racial-Language Mixing

Source: Calvin Teo (26 Nov 2015)

Thus, the crossing or intersection of racial languages may serve to blur racial boundaries. As the placement of multiple racial languages may be viewed as a form of marketing to more consumer groups, these racial transgressions can go unnoticed or ignored in the banality of the everyday life. As a conservative approach, common food names such as ‘satay’, ‘rojak’, ‘otah’ and ‘laksa’ were not classified as Malay nor Indian languages, due to their mixed influences and nature in Singapore. However, due to the restriction of racial terms (above) and limited scope of this study, only three maps of racial-language mixing were generated (Figures 5.3.2, 5.3.3, 5.3.4). These can be seen in the maps below:

Figure 5.3.2 Racial-Language Mixing: Changi Village HC

19 This is to a lesser extent for Indian Muslims in Singapore, thus this category was not mapped. 53

Figure 5.3.3 Racial-Language Mixing: Old Airport Road HC

Figure 5.3.4 Racial-Language Mixing: Tekka Centre

As seen from the racial-language maps above, the low numbers and percentages of language mixing (5.7%; 0.625%; 4.8% respectively) based on the available signboard headers suggests that the representation of ‘Mother Tongue’ and religious languages are outward indicators of one’s identity. They also suggest that the mixing of racial languages on a signboard header is a relatively bold act of boundary transgressions.

5.4 Hawker Food Culture

The main research question of this study is to explore the role of food culture in everyday nationalism.

One of the key distinguishing features of hawker centres is the availability of food and brand specializations offered by individual hawkers, resulting in different versions or recipes for the same food item. This is uncommon or non-existent in other local food places, such as coffeeshops and food courts i.e. a single chicken rice stall constitutes as the norm. Hence, in hawker centres, there can be four different hawkers offering their own take on Singaporean-Hainanese chicken rice, and another hawker selling a halal version or rendition of chicken rice prepared in this culinary style. As Hainanese chicken rice is often dubbed as the national dish of Singapore 55

(Farley, 6 Nov 2015; Songkaeo, 6 Aug 2014), ‘Chicken Rice Nation’ is a way to describe how it may serve to bind a people together, regardless of racial boundaries in the logics of multiracialism. As hawker food is also known as food for sharing (Kong, 2007), ‘satay’ and ‘rojak’ are also selected as representations of local food culture.

Thus, we will witness how chicken rice, satay, and rojak may serve as bottom-up recipes for a shared taste and nationhood amongst members of the nation, blurring racial boundaries and the logics of multiracialism. For the purposes of this study, what constitutes as [Singaporean] chicken rice is mainly limited to the Hainanese version. This approach excludes other types of chicken rice sold at other hawker stalls, such as ‘Hainanese curry rice’, ‘ayam penyet’ and ‘nasi ayam’.

Chicken Rice Nation

Figure 5.4.1 Chicken Rice Nation: Bedok Interchange HC

Figure 5.4.2 Chicken Rice Nation: Changi Village HC

Figure 5.4.3 Chicken Rice Nation: Maxwell HC

Figure 5.4.4 Chicken Rice Nation: Old Airport Road HC

Figure 5.4.5 Chicken Rice Nation: Tekka HC

As seen from the ‘Chicken Rice Nation’ maps above, there were are cases of chicken rice stalls found in Chinese and Malay hawker stalls (Figure 5.4.1 & 5.4.3), while in other cases chicken rice is only sold by Chinese hawker stalls. This finding suggests that the ‘national dish’ of chicken rice is not necessarily representative of other races and ethnicities in the nation, as there appears to be a strong racial Chinese dominance in its production and sale.

Satay and Rojak for Sharing

Figure 5.4.6 Satay and Rojak for Sharing: Bedok Interchange HC

Figure 5.4.7 Satay and Rojak for Sharing: Changi Village HC

Figure 5.4.8 Satay and Rojak for Sharing: Maxwell HC

Figure 5.4.9 Satay and Rojak for Sharing: Old Airport Road HC

Figure 5.4.10 Satay and Rojak for Sharing: Tekka Centre

Based on the ‘Satay and Rojak’ maps above, Bedok Interchange HC and Maxwell HC has satay- rojak stalls found in Chinese and Malay hawker stalls (Figure 5.4.6 & 5.4.8), and Changi Village HC and Old Airport Road HC has satay-rojak stalls found in Chinese, Malay and Indian hawker stalls (Figure 5.4.7 & 5.4.9). This suggests that satay and rojak crosses racial boundaries, when it comes to eating and sharing hawker food in the same place. Although the satay-rojak hawker stalls in this scenario sell either Satay or Rojak (or both), this finding also suggests that hawker food that is designed for group sharing may hold greater potential for crossing racial boundaries.

5.5 Hawking Histories

This section attempts to visualize the processes involved in the trade of hawking and place- making in each hawker centre. As we have previously seen in Chapter 3, the trade of hawking has existed before the 21st century. Thus, street hawkers who are still in operation today carry with them rich histories and traditions, that were once rooted in place. Their stall signages serve as both memories and reminders of the buildings and streets that no longer exist or function in the same way in modern Singapore. An example of this is ‘Hock Lam Street’ in the civic district, which had rows of shophouses and street hawkers selling their food and trade ware, and was purposed for redevelopment in the late 1970s.

Figure 5.5.1 Hock Lam Street in 1972

Source: RemSG (13 Dec 2015)

In this study, hawker food stall awards are characterized by both official awards (from food competitions or institutions) and a local recognition of hawker stall accolades. Hence, this award classification acknowledges newspaper mentions (Figure 5.5b), local celebrity and television show recommendations (refer to Figure 5.2a), pictures of renowned people like the President of Singapore patronizing the hawker stall. As many hawkers do not place their awards, location or year of origin on the header signboard, the maps below (Figure 5.5.1 to 5.5.6) are not comprehensive of hawking and place histories that may be found at these hawker centres.

Figure 5.5.2 Example of Hawker Food Stall Awards

Figure 5.5.3 Hawking Histories: Bedok Interchange HC

Figure 5.5.4 Hawking Histories: Changi Village HC

Figure 5.5.5 Hawking Histories: Maxwell HC

Figure 5.5.6 Hawking Histories: Old Airport Road HC

Figure 5.5.7 Hawking Histories: Tekka Centre

As seen from the maps above, the hawkers express their hawking histories and identity differentially, and in a variety of ways. For instance, while the placement of awards (only) on the signboard header is most prominent in Tekka Centre (Figure 5.5.7), the placement of place names (only) is most prominent in Maxwell HC (Figure 5.5.5). The placement of year of origin is also highly prominent in Bedok Interchange HC (Figure 5.5.3) and Old Airport Road HC (Figure 5.5.6). The specifies of place mentions also differ from hawker to hawker, whereby it ranges from a specific building such as ‘People’s Park’ (Figure 5.5.3) and ‘Blanco Court 3rd Floor’ (Figure 5.5.6), to specific street names such as ‘Kallang, Geylang 5th Street’ (Figure 5.5.6) and ‘Albert Street’ (Figure 5.5.7), and mentioning of neighbourhoods like ‘Hougang’ (Figure 5.5.4) and ‘Orchard’ (Figure 5.5.5).

Figure 5.5.8 below is a flow map of hawker origins, whereby the sources of origin are the geographical approximations of places mentioned in the hawker stall header signboards, and the destination(s) are the individual hawker centres where the hawker stall is located (refer to Table 9.5 in Appendix). This map helps us to visualize the various extents of movements and the places of travel that certain hawkers have made before settling down in one of the 5 hawker centres in this study, and imagine their sense of identity and belonging in a nation that is ever-changing, 68

while they continue the trade of hawking. This flow map also enables us to see places and people as connected (Section 2.1.5), and certain hawker centres as geographically ‘networked’ within a broader system of operations.

Figure 5.5.8 Flow Map of Hawker Origins

Altogether, the figures and maps above (Figures 5.5.1-8) help us to visualize the historical and place-making process involved in the trade of hawking, as well as the sense of belonging they may have had in their previous place of operation, while they establish their stall identity in the current hawker centre of location.

5.6 Summary

In summary, we have witnessed how each hawker centre has unique banal worlds of food imaginations (Section 5.1), and different compositions of racial identities according to the theory of multiracialism i.e. top-down nationalism (Section 5.2). On the other hand, language mixing (Section 5.3) and food boundary crossing (Section 5.4) occurs in the everyday life, and the mapping of certain ground-up identities help us to rethink racial boundaries and institutional categorizations. Lastly, the history of hawking and place-making of hawker centres (Section 5.5) reminds us that both hawker centres and the trade of hawking are ongoing processes of sedimentation and de-sedimentation. They also serve to remind us that hawkers are members of the nation: each of them has a unique identity and sense of belonging, in their current and/or previous spaces of operation. In the next section, we will witness how hawker centres are everyday battlegrounds of nationalism, where we will look into the unique experiences of both members and visitors of the nation.

6. Hawker Centres: Everyday Food-Nationalism Battlegrounds

One of the main goals of this study is to specify the actual practices and processes by which nationhood is imagined, reproduced and challenged by ordinary individuals, in the context of the everyday life. Thus, this section attempts to demonstrate how hawker centres and the hawker food culture is uniquely experienced by members of the nation. To attain an external perspective on this, the views of visitors and non-Singaporeans residents are taken into account in this study. In this section, members of the nation refer to Singaporeans who were located in Singapore at the time of the survey, unless stated otherwise.

6.1 Identifications of Singaporeans Today

As we have previously witnessed in Chapter 2, Velayutham (2007) observes that most Singaporeans chose to identify themselves according to racial identifications. This survey provides a refreshing finding and update to the existing study, whereby most of the Singaporeans chose to refer to themselves as Singaporeans, preceding any form(s) of racial identification. These can be seen in Table 6.1 below, whereby majority of the survey participants opted for a common national identification, the statistics being 56.5% for those residing in Singapore and 51.4% for those abroad at the time of the survey.

Examples of the identifications in the ‘Other’ category include Peranakan, ex-Indonesian, Singaporean-British, and Singapore-born Mexican. These ‘Other’ identities of a mixed racial ancestry (Peranakan), transnational identifications (Singaporean-British, and Singapore-born Mexican) and experiences of nationhood outside of Singapore (ex-Indonesian) serve to challenge the logics of multiracialism in the everyday life, as they do not fit neatly within the dominant racial categories (CMIO).

Table 6.1 Identifications of Singaporeans Today

Identifications Singaporean Singaporean- Chinese/Malay/I Other Total Chinese/Malay/Indian ndian/Eurasian /Eurasian

Sing in SG 48 32 1 4 85 apor eans Percent 56.5% 37.6% 1.2% 4.7% 100% age

not in 19 15 2 1 37 SG

Percent 51.4% 40.5% 5.4% 2.7% 100% age

6.2 Frequency of consuming hawker food

For the purposes of this study, a conservative approach to what constitutes as an ‘everyday’ frequency is taken to be ‘4 to 5 times a week’ to ‘whenever I can’. As seen from Table 6.1 and Figure 6.1 below, hawker food is consumed on a regular and frequent basis by both Singaporeans (26%) 88%) and non-Singaporeans (24%) living in Singapore. These numbers are even more striking for those who are now living abroad, the statistics being 88% and 37% respectively. Altogether, the regularity and routine-ness of consuming hawker food points toward an understanding of how hawker food and a local food culture is a part of the everyday life amongst members of the nation. It also demonstrates how the habit of consuming hawker food is adopted by non-members during their residence in Singapore, no matter how temporary this duration is.

Table 6.2 Frequency of consuming hawker food

Survey Respondents monthly fortnightly weekly 2 to 3 4 to 5 everyday whenever times times or I can a a almost week week every day

Singaporeans in SG 8% 8% 26% 32% 9% 6% 11%

not in SG 3% 0 3% 6% 26% 11% 51%

non- in SG 32% 8% 20% 16% 12% 8% 4% Singaporeans not in SG 0% 16% 16% 32% 0% 16% 21%

Figure 6.2 Hawker food: Everyday fare for members of the nation

6.3 What do you associate Hawker Centres with?

Amongst the members of the nation, those who associated hawker centres in national (6%) and ethnic (2%) categories comprised the minority of respondents. Examples of these responses are ‘iconic to Singapore’s food culture’ (national) and ‘multi racial society’ (ethnic). This was a surprising finding, given that hawker centres are often promoted as multicultural places by the government. Amongst the majority (92%), vernacular terms and identifications such as ‘cheap food’ (66%), quality (49%) and no air conditioning (18%) were the hallmarks of hawker centres. A significant proportion (13%) identified hawker centres as being places of belonging, using words such as ‘home’, ‘comfort food’ and ‘childhood’.

The latter was also significant amongst Singaporeans living abroad (16%), and 5 (13.5%) of them responded with a one-worded answer of ‘Singapore’.

Nonetheless, hawker centres were still imagined differently amongst Singaporeans living aborad. As seen in Table 6.3.1 below, Singaporeans living abroad associated hawker centres as places and people, where their friends and family could be found. Table 6.3.2 demonstrates a few examples of how these responses were coded according to the association of hawker centres as place-food- people (refer to Chapter 3).

Table 6.3.1 Association of Hawker Centres

Members of the Nation Place Food People

in SG 36% 91% 8%

not in SG 49% 81% 14%

Table 6.3.2 Examples of Hawker Centres as Place-Food-People

ID Responses Place Food People

1 Best foods in Singapore together 1 1 1 with Coffeeshop Kakis

2 cheap and good food 0 1 0

3 Affordable, delicious food that can 1 1 0 be found everywhere. No frills and I don't need frills. I'm not paying for the ambience.

These answers demonstrate how the banality and everyday nature of consuming hawker food at hawker centres are deeply significant amongst Singaporeans, in their individual experiences of belonging and nationhood when they are within the nation or abroad.

6.4 Everyday Battlegrounds: Hawker Stalls

In the survey, respondents were asked to provide their first impressions, in response to a list of pictures that mainly comprised of the header stall signboard. These stall signboards were selected on the basis of how the hawker stalls had cross-racial intersections of language (Figure 6.4.1) and religion (Figure 6.4.2), as well as how internal (Figure 6.4.4) and external (Figure 6.4.3) ‘Others’ in the nation may be perceived. This section provides an analysis of the responses provided by members of the nation, mainly according to the usage of national, ethno-racial or vernacular (non-national and non-ethnic) terms and understandings. The remarks and quotations used below are not intended to shame any of the respondents nor hawker stalls that were included for the purposes of this study.

6.4.1 ‘Sarabat Stall’

Figure 6.4.1 ‘Sarabat Stall’

Amongst the respondents, none of them identified the hawker stall in national terms, such as it being a Singaporean drink stall. 35% identified the hawker stall in ethno-racial terms, using words like ‘Malay’ (19%), ‘Muslim’ (15%) and ‘Halal’ (4%).

11 respondents (13%) commented that it is a ‘Muslim drinks stall’ and 2 remarked that it is a ‘Halal drinks stall’. This finding reveals that there is a certain inability to distinguish between certain racial and religious identifications via interchangeable usage of ‘Malay/Muslim/Halal drinks stall’ amongst the respondents. Hence, the characteristics of a Malay identity (CMIO) is reproduced in this case.

Majority of the respondents (65%) used vernacular understandings in their descriptions, and 12 (14%) respondents used food terms such as ‘teh tarik’, ‘teh halia’, ‘bandung’ and ‘milo dinosaur’. Other vernacular terms used to characterize the stall were ‘mamak’ and ‘sarabat stall’, which are distinct terms used to describe certain types of drink and snack stores in Singapore.

Approximately a fifth of all the respondents (18%) expressed certain feelings of happiness and belonging, such as:

‘Teh Tarik. Is this the one at West Coast or Adam Road?’

– Respondent 53, 52 years old

‘reminds me of the foodcourt at amoy st[reet] before it got renovated’

– Respondent 96, 22 years old

‘Drink stall, cannot enjoy my food without a cup of something from here, and probably better than Starbucks’.

– Respondent 48, 25 years old.

‘swee la, teh tarik lai lai20’

– Respondent 50, 25 years old.

As seen from the above descriptions, respondents recall places that they had previously visited or experienced in Singapore (Respondent 53 & 96) and express certain behaviours of how everyday living in the nation is like for them (Respondent 48 & 50).

In relation to the racial-language boundary crossing (Figure 6.4.1), there was only one respondent who seemed to notice the subtitling of Chinese characters on the signboard, and remarked that it was ‘quite unusual’ for a ‘typical sarabat style drinks stall’. This shows that most respondents do not find it unusual to find the ‘addition’ of Chinese characters to a type of stall that is traditionally non-Chinese, and this may be due to the mundane nature of a drinks stall or certain expectations of subservience from minority racial groups to the majority racial group in Singapore (Velayutham, 2016).

20 Translated into, ‘Nice one! Come to me, my teh tarik!’ 75

6.4.2 ‘Tze Char Stall’

Figure 6.4.2 ‘Tze Char Stall’

Two respondents imagined the stall in national terms (2%), one of whom commented that it is ‘owned by a Malaysian’ and the other commenting about how ‘PRC workers’ are usually hired by Tze Char stalls. Approximately 27% used ethno-racial terms, using the terms ‘Chinese’ (12%), ‘Malay’ (1%), ‘Muslim’ (5%) and ‘Halal’ (16%) to describe the stall. The identification of the stall as ‘Chinese’ is most likely due to the presence of Chinese characters and red lantern decorations.

A significant proportion of the respondents called the stall ‘tze char’ (29%), and went on to comment ‘seafood’ as well as various dishes they would enjoy and order such as stingray. The more popular identification of ‘tze char’ (29%) over ‘Chinese’ (12%) demonstrates how vernacular understandings of food culture may come to dominate racial understandings of identity over time, illustrating how food culture may ‘challenge’ top-down nationalism (CMIO).

In relation to the racial-religious boundary crossing, 7 respondents (8%) expressed doubt or disgust at the mixed racial identities of a ‘Chinese’ stall selling halal-certified food, commenting:

‘Doubt on Halal lol’

– Respondent 4, 30 years old.

‘Halal stall means food not as nice’

– Respondent 41, 25 years old.

‘Confused by the halal signage’

– Respondent 76, 39 years old.

The motivations for the responses above are likely attributed to the pure association of ‘Halal’ food with a Malay identity (see above in Section 6.4.1; Section 3.1) or a rejection of mixed Chinese-Malay identities. 76

However, there were at least two respondents who both recognized the crossing of racial boundaries and responded positively, commenting ‘woo its halal Chinese zi char [tze char]’ and the other expressing gladness of eating together with her Muslim friends at the hawker stall. These findings reveal to us that the crossing of racial-religious boundaries in food culture allow an entry into another’s culture (Del Casino, 2015), whereby the restrictions of religion no longer applies for Muslims who wish to try ‘Chinese’ food after it is halal-certified. This may also initiate new understandings of food and breed new forms of acceptance amongst members of the nation: is making traditional Chinese food halal, still make it traditional? Perhaps only time will tell.

6.4.3 ‘China Stall’

Figure 6.4.3 ‘China Stall’

1 in 4 respondents commented about the stall having origins or owners from China (25%), and some of them (10%) used the terms ‘PRC’, ‘mainland’, ‘China-manned stall’ and ‘first generation Chinese immigrants’.

While other vernacular descriptions include ‘Chinese noodle stall’ (22%), ‘not halal’ and food like ‘wontons’, the word puns used by respondents to remark about the ‘China’ nature of the hawker stall were strong nationalist ‘flags’ (Billig, 1995) in the everyday context. 1 in 3 respondents demarcated food and national boundaries, and 8 respondents (15%) expressed clear anger and disgust at the existence of the ‘China stall’ in a hawker centre:

“China food... not very appetizing.”

- Respondent 35, 24 years old.

“Chinese food. Like China Chinese food. Usually don't appeal to me because it is not native Singapore food…I feel sad because it implies/signifies the erosion of the local culture. Inevitably I feel that it encroaches on our heritage and it is off putting.”

- Respondent 37, 29 years old.

“Not Singaporean...doesn't quite fit in a hawker centre.”

- Respondent 47, 25 years old.

As seen from the above remarks (Respondent 37 & 47), a Singaporean identity is perceived to be distinct and separate from a Chinese identity [from China], and the common trait of both identities being dominantly ethnic Chinese does not serve to relate both nationalities. There also appears to be a hegemonic or ‘colonial’ judgement amongst Singaporeans towards the ‘China stall’, as seen from the sensory disagreements (Respondent 35 & 37; Low, 2013) and perceptions of invasion or boundary crossing with the stall’s mere presence in a hawker centre (Respondent 37 & 47; Low, 2013). Interestingly, non-Singaporean residents living in the country also described this hawker stall as ‘not local Chinese’ and even used expressions like ‘PRC-owned’.

Therefore, even though 55% respondents used the ethno-racial term ‘Chinese’ (36%) to describe this hawker stall, there are clear boundary drawing practices carried out by members of the nation, based on nationalistic identifications.

6.4.4 ‘Eurasian and Nonya stall’

Figure 6.4.4 ‘Eurasian and Nonya stall’

In this case, respondents either identified the stall in ethno-racial (26%) or vernacular terms (74%). In the former, some associated Nonya food with Peranakans, and a few recognized Eurasians as an ethnic group in Singapore. In the latter, vernacular terms such as ‘Atas’ (12%), ‘Hipster’ (7%), ‘Modern’ (7%), ‘Fusion’ (5%) and ‘Western’ (4%) were used to describe the stall. While a few respondents commented that such a stall in a hawker centre was refreshing and ‘exotic’, 1 in 5 Singaporeans expressed doubt and non-recognition of Eurasian and Nyonya cuisines and the stall’s belonging in a hawker centre. Some of the remarks include:

‘New fusion with twist of Indian?’

- Respondent 14, 50 years old

‘Filipino food?’

- Respondent 54, 41 years old

‘Weird combination, buy if you feel like eating some weird shit thing’

- Respondent 101, 25 years old

‘Non-traditional/modern. If it's not Chinese/Malay/Indian food, it's not really *authentic* hawker-fare’

- Respondent 131, 23 years old.

‘Not sure. Might be Malay style.’

- Respondent 140, 37 years old.

Based on the above responses, there appears to a mixed acceptance of hawker food offered by the Peranakan and Eurasian ethnic groups (Respondent 101 & 131) as well as impressions that these ethnicities are non-Singaporean (Respondent 54 & 131). There was also a judgement of the hawker stall according to the dominant racial identities (Respondent 101 & Respondent 140), and an overwhelming perception of the hawker stall as one that is ‘new’. The responses also suggest that hawker food cuisine offered by ethnic minorities that do not belong in hawker centres (refer to the meaning of ‘atas’ in the Glossary). However, these findings also suggest that their [ethnic minorities] increase in visibility in hawker centres may lead to greater understandings and acceptances of ethnic minorities in Singapore such as the Peranakans and Eurasians in this case, through the consumable entry of food into another’s culture (Fischler, 1998; Casino, 2015).

6.5 Meaning of Hawker Centres: Members of the Nation

Although the question of ‘Would you like to share anything about what hawker food/centres mean to you?’ was not a compulsory survey question, 69 respondents answered in elaborate detail. Amongst them, 9 (13%) used national terms, such as ‘taste/pride of Singapore’ and ‘part of Singapore culture’. Only 1 person used ethnic terms, in that hawker centres are places to try food from different cultures.

Most of the respondents (83%) used vernacular terms to describe what hawker centres meant to them, such as them being the source of good and cheap local food (15.9%) and where the trade of hawking is considered to be ‘legitimate’ compared to other food places that offer similar food items.

Nearly half of the total respondents (42%) expressed belonging, home and memories of living in Singapore. Some descriptions include:

‘Memories of waking up early to eat breakfast with my grandma. Having friendly aunt and uncles that cook delicious food that is also affordable for me.’

– Respondent 40, 20 years old

‘I will die if there is no hawker food. I also like to laugh at the tourists who go to maxwell and q[ueue] up for tian tian ji fan21 when the hainan curry rice is a lot better and has a shorter queue. Only locals and white collar workers queue up for the curry rice.’

– Respondent 18, 25 years old. (who has no favourite hawker centre)

‘The seeming unimpressiveness and affordability of local food at hawker centres represent freedom and authenticity to me - access to the basic need of food indicates some degree of freedom within otherwise stifling social and economic structures, and reminds me of our very aberrant position in the world (in the tropics, surrounded by a big portion of the developing world).’

– Respondent 35, 26 years old.

‘Good and cheap food. It’s my playground. Would chill at hawker centres anytime over cafes.’

– Respondent 63, 25 years old.

As seen from the above responses, the meaning of hawker centres to these individuals were described in the first person (e.g. ‘my playground’) and carry direct implications for how they experience living in the nation of Singapore. Hawker centres also serve to remind certain individuals of their local and emic (insider) identity (Respondent 18), lived experiences (Respondent 40), and sense of place and belonging in the nation. Respondent 63’s usage of the terms ‘aberrant position’ and ‘developing world’ signifies a sense of territorial or spatial disconnection between Singapore and her geographical neighbours (Section 5.1). It also suggests the non-air conditioned nature of hawker centres remind the individual of the geographical location of Singapore in a tropical region i.e. warmth and humidity, re-creating a sense of knowledge that he or she is ‘now’ in Singapore.

Altogether, these descriptions reinforce the relevance of hawker centres as meaningful places and sources of hawker food to members of the nation, in the imagination, construction and reproduction of nationhood in the everyday life.

6.6 Favourite Hawker Centres

Figure 6.6 is a map is based on the compilation of favourite ‘hawker centres’22 by members of the nation as well as the recommended hawker centres by the Singaporean Tourism Board (government institution). It is a visual contrast between how a map of recommended hawker centres might look like from the bottom-up (members of the nation) as opposed to the top-down (government institution), whereby local endorsement and the proportional overlaps of hawker favourites serve as stamps of approval over the hawker centres. The names of the members’ favourite hawker centres are excluded on the map, as these are not always reflected on an institutional map.

21 Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice. Farley (2015) describes this stall’s recipe as a dish ‘worth a 15-hour flight’ (Farley, 6 Nov 2015). 22 Based on what the respondents perceive to be hawker centres. However, most of the places mentioned by the respondents are official hawker centres (HC) or market-hawker centres (MHC). 80

Figure 6.6 Favourite Hawker Centres: Singaporeans vs Tourism Board

6.7: Hawker Centres: National Icons and Best Representations of Singapore?

In response to the survey question:

‘Hawker centres have been called national icons Singapore's Hawker Centres have been described as 'national icons', and as the best representations of the Singaporean society. Do you agree with these statements?’

Amongst the members of the nation, 70 responded with a ‘Yes’ (82.3%), 5 with a ‘No’ (5.9%) and the remaining 10 participants gave other opinions.

Most of the respondents who selected with ‘Yes’ responded with strong feelings of nationhood and everyday belonging, such as the following two responses:

‘You can’t experience Singapore without the hawker centres, it'll be like visiting Disneyland without taking any rides!’

– Respondent 52, 25 years old.

‘Coffeeshops are everywhere in Singapore. Commonly under void decks at the likes. They are our primary go to places when growing up. Hawker centres are good and have a wide variety of food, but to me, they are the 'restaurants' of our era..It’s a point that is sorely taken for granted until you are overseas and realise the food abroad is really horrible. The lack of variety is a thing, but most food feel like distinct raw ingredients just placed together for the heck of it. In Singapore, food is nicely blended. You can add so much things and have complicated steps, and yet the end result is a dish which doesn’t taste like how it was before cooking. Now THAT is cooking.’

– Respondent 60, 27 years old.

As seen from the above responses, hawker centres are viewed as the main attractions by some (Respondent 52) and as special places that are taken for granted in the day to day life (Respondent 60). By describing ‘food is nicely blended in Singapore’ and the result taste nothing like its original ingredients, he emphasizes the art of food culture and how this makes the lived experience of his nation unique from all other nations in the world, recreating a sense of nationhood and identity of being Singaporean.

Amongst the respondents who replied with a ‘No’ and other responses, their replies indicate a top-down understanding of nationalism (Respondent 50) or preference for popular culture in the definition of nationhood (Respondent 101):

‘Our national identity is primarily garden city thing and lawful corruptness right? Secondarily then food haven.’

- Respondent 50, 25 years old, ‘No.’

‘PM Lee23 is stronger. Cause his memes are all over da place bro.’

- Respondent 101, 25 years old, ‘Other’.

The ‘garden city thing’ (Respondent 50) refers to the government’s vision of transforming Singapore into a ‘Garden City’ (Kolczak, 28 Feb 2017; NParks, 24 Nov 2016), and the latter refers to Singapore’s track record of having one of the lowest crime and corruption rates in the world (Cheong, 6 June 2017; BBC, 24 Oct 2013). However, Respondent 50’s response suggests that he or she perceives that only the government has the right to define icons, national identity and other aspects of belonging in the nation. It also suggests that hawker food may be too paltry as a weight of worth to be deemed as a ‘national identity’ for a modern city-state.

23 Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong 82

Apart from the range of responses above, there were a few individuals who expressed that they could not imagine hawker centres to be anything more important than hawker food as a physical sustenance or trivial enjoyment in the day to day life. Examples of these include:

‘Personally I really enjoy sitting in a hawker center to lim kopi and such for some reason…They are an important part of our society, yes, but I would think that studying about hawker centers wouldn’t really tell you that much about Singaporean society aside from maybe what kind of food we like to eat.’

– Respondent 34, 23 years old, ‘No’.

‘Really ah? Never really thought of it that way. I think it's just that it seems so normal to my everyday life.’

- Respondent 125, 22 years old, ‘Other’.

In sum, the range of responses provided by the survey respondents enabled us to understand how each individual experiences or approaches the topic of the ‘nation’ and national identity for themselves. The vernacular understandings of everyday life in the nation, such as ‘lim kopi’ provides us with much insider information on how individual members of the nation experience belonging and nationhood in their everyday lives. Next, we will see a brief overview of an external perspective of hawker centres.

6.8 External perspectives of Hawker Centres and Food

This section contains of a brief summary of how non-Singaporeans perceive hawker centres and food, from an ‘outsider’ perspective (refer to Table 3.4.1). Most of these quotations were taken from the responses to question 7b, and the others being questions 324, 625 or the comment section. or. As seen from Figure 6.8.1 below, several non-Singaporeans have come to identify hawker centres/food as being something unique to Singapore. A few of them have also come to have their own local favourites (e.g. ‘Tiong Bahru buns’ and others are familiarized with local or vernacular expressions of ordering hawker food, such as ‘kopi siew dai’ (coffee, less sugar). However, there are also non-Singaporeans who have mixed or negative impresions about hawker centres and hawker food culture. Comparing Figure 6.8.1 and 6.8.2, individuals with the same nationalities (Germans and Malaysians) may have drastically different views and experiences of hawker centres and hawkerfood. This reminds us that each member of a certain nationality is a unique individual, and that we ought to avoid the trap of an ecological fallacy, whereby one or a few member belonging to a nation would be representative of the entire nation. For fuller details and explanations, please refer to the Appendix (Table 9.6 & 9.7):

24 ‘What do you associate hawker centres with?’ 25 ‘Would you like to share anything about what hawker food means to you?’ 83

Figure 6.8.1 External Perspectives: Positive

Figures 6.8.2 External Perspectives: Negative or Mixed

7. Discussion

As seen from the findings of this study (Chapter 5 & 6), hawker centres constitute a complex combination of people, food and place. They are everyday places of visit and consumption by both members and visitors of the nation, and facilitate a sense of belonging and nationhood. We have also observed how the trade of hawking and hawkers themselves may lapse between these three categories (Sections 5.5), and that each hawker centre is a unique place-process (Section 5.5 & Table 9.2 in the Appendix). In this section, I will discuss the findings of this study, starting with vernacular understandings in everyday nationalism of Singapore (Section 7.1), followed by how hawker centres also function as everyday geographies of inclusion and exclusion (Section 7.2).

7.1 Vernacular understandings

In this study, vernacular understandings proved to be particularly useful in understanding nationhood as experienced on-the-ground, and in translating the role and function of food culture in the everyday nation. This includes how food culture and banal aspects of daily life are imagined, reproduced and challenged on a daily basis.

Common sense understandings such as the terms ‘atas’, ‘hipster’, ‘western’ and ‘China Chinese’ provides us with clues into food-and-nationalism axis, as each these terms reveal both food and non-food identifications that provide insight into perceived rights of belonging in hawker centres. The rarity and incredulity26 of these vernacular terms outside of Singapore also bears witness to their autochthonous and ground-up nature. Although many of these vernacular terms are loaded expressions that carry various weights of meanings to different individuals, they enable us to perform the task of understanding ‘the actual processes of meaning making and the exercise of vernacular power that are constitutive of social identities’ (Goode & Stroup, 2015, p. 718).

Based on the findings of this study (Chapters 5 & 6), the vernacular understandings of [hawker] food culture and nationalism are arguably influenced by the banal representations of nations and territories in food (Section 2.2.1), individual agencies and backgrounds in experiencing and negotiating nationhood (Section 2.1.3), and the sedimentation of multiracialism in the everyday nation (Section 2.1.2, Chapter 3 & 6).

As seen from Section 5.1, the banal representations of nations, states and cities in hawker centres were largely centered on Asia. Not included in these maps are geographical imaginations of ‘Western’ and ‘European’ that are banal food descriptions in hawker centres (refer to Table 9.4 in the Appendix), and which were also terms used by survey respondents to describe certain hawker stalls (Section 6.4). Thus, the banal reproduction of an Asian regional knowledge and rare features non-Chinese-Malay-Indian dominant territories in hawker food culture serves as a contribution to the ‘everyday talk’ and vernacular expressions used by Singaporeans (Section

26 An outsider is likely to find it incredulous or amusing how it is possible for a Chinese (defined as a person originating from China) have a double national identification as a China Chinese. 85

6.4). The banal food representations also provide certain ideas about the ethnicities that are found within the nation, necessarily influencing food, national and individual rights of ‘belonging’ in hawker centres. This can be seen from how hawker food identities that are not identified as Singaporean Chinese-Malay-Indian cuisines are not regarded as ‘local’ and as properly fitting within a hawker centre (Section 6.4.3, 6.4.4).

7.2 Everyday geographies of inclusion and exclusion

In the previous chapters, we have seen how group, ethnic and national identities are unequal (Chapter 2), and the consequences of being racially categorized at certain places and timings affect one’s understanding of nationhood and belonging (Chapters 2 & 4). Thus, while the choices of ‘Singaporean’27 was a dominant choice of identification amongst Singaporeans in this study, whereby the Singaporean identity was largely prized over other ethnic and racial identities, the projection of a racial lens onto hawker food/stalls was still prevalent amongst members of the nation (Section 6.4). This finding also reflects how the theory of multiracialism still deeply penetrates the conceptions of nationhood, identity and belonging amongst Singaporeans today. For instance, one’s right of belonging in the nation was negotiated according to how well they fit into the dominant categories of race (Section 6.4.1 & 6.4.44) or how the ability to perform one’s racial identity (Section 6.4.2).

However, based on the ‘multiracial’ maps of hawker centres (Section 5.2), we have also witnessed how the number of ‘Indian’ stalls in hawker centres are extremely few or non-existent as compared to the racial Chinese and Malay hawker stalls, the exception being Tekka Centre (Section 5.2).

This may be explained by the politics of identity of belonging in Singapore, whereby identities that are deemed to be of a lower class and racial-national background are excluded from the spaces that Singaporeans inhabit (Low, 2013; Chua, 2005). Previous studies and news articles have demonstrated how these identities are deemed to be culturally inferior by virtue of their national and socio-economic status (Cheung, 1 May 2014; Low, 2013; Pieris, 2009; Tan, 2 May 2004). Examples of these are South Asian (e.g. Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan) and Chinese migrant workers who take on low-paid jobs in the construction and maritime industry in Singapore, and domestic workers from South-East Asia such as the Phillipines (Low, 2013). Low (2013) has described how the mere presence of these identities in the residences and social spaces of Singaporeans are perceived as encroachments and sensory transgressions. This necessarily extends to hawker centres. This can be seen from the perceptions of encroachment and boundary drawing made by Singaporeans in Section 6.4.3, whereby ‘Singaporean Chinese’ and ‘China Chinese’ are ‘essentially different’ based on their cultural inferiority (Chua, 2005). Based on these understanding, a Bangladeshi construction worker would also be perceived as transgressing socio-spatial and sensory boundaries, if he were to walk up to a table where other Singaporeans are seated at and share a dining experience with them. While these cases reflect a certain dissonance between the function and accomplishment of public places as inclusive in nature

27 Without any association with a specific racial or ethnic group 86

(Section 2.3), they also reflect how these exclusionary sentiments and practices are so prevalent and commonplace, they have become banal facts of everyday life. Thus, it was not entirely surprising that none of the survey respondents remarked about the exclusion or non-visibility of low-paid migrant workers in hawker centres28, although it is relatively common to see for their supervisors ordering large quantities of takeaways for their physical sustenance.

Thus, hawker centres encompass certain geographies of exclusion towards identities from ‘underdeveloped’ countries surrounding Singapore, in terms of food and societal representation (refer to Table 9.3 & 9.4 in the Appendix), as they are perceived to be economically backwards and culturally inferior to Singaporeans. Exceptions to this may be Thai and Vietnamese food, that are accepted and increasingly well-liked amongst Singaporeans, due to popular culture and travels made to these neighbouring countries (Chua, 2003; Kong & Sinha, 2016).

On the other hand, hawker centres encompass geographies of inclusion towards identities that are deemed to be more prestigious, and this is visible from banal food identities such as ‘Western’ or ‘Pasta Risotto’ (Italian) on hawker food signages.

Nonetheless, the identity politics of belonging as well as geographies of inclusion and exclusion may blur over time and in processes of sedimentation within the everyday life. As suggested in the earlier chapter, the banality of food representations and accessibility of hawker food culture in the everyday places of hawker centres provides opportunities to increases the visibility and acceptance of minority ethnic groups (e.g. Peranakans and Eurasians) and marginalized identities in Singapore.

Therefore, while hawker centres are everyday geographies of inclusion and exclusion, they are also everyday place-processes of sedimentation and de-sedimentation, that are able to challenge the identity politics of belonging and nationhood.

28 Based on Questions 7a & b. While the term ‘Singapore society’ is vague, it invites survey respondents to think about the representation of identities in Singapore, including that of transient migrant workers. 87

8. Conclusion

In this final thesis chapter, I will provide a response to the main research question (Section 8.1) and conduct an evaluation of this study, which includes a review of its limitations and potential room for improvement (Section 8.3). Next, I will assess how this thesis makes a contribution to the existing body of literature related to this subject, before concluding with some final reflections and thoughts for consideration.

Section 8.1 Response to the main research question

8.1.1 Food Culture and Everyday Nationalism

In response to the main research question,

‘What is the role of food culture in everyday nationalism?’

This thesis concludes that food culture serves to construct, reproduce, and challenge top-down nationalism in the context in the everyday. This thesis attains this a theoretical framework of everyday nationalism and food culture, using the concepts of the everyday, sedimentation, identification and categorization, amongst many others. It also concludes that everyday food places are particularly useful for our understanding of food culture and nationalism, as the nation’s extension of power and control is revealed in these spaces, and members of the nation are able to respond to top-down nationalism through the banality of food. This has been seen in the case study of Singapore’s hawker centres, whereby the food-and-nationalism axis was brought out clearly.

This study also concludes that nationalism is relevant for members of the nation in the everyday life (Thompson, 2001; Skey, 2011) as seen in the case of Singapore. In the cases where nationalism was not regarded as such amongst Singaporeans, it constitutes as a model of governance and ongoing process that still affected their experience of nationhood and belonging in the nation.

8.1.2 The Case of Singapore’s Hawker Centres

Singapore’s hawker centres are places of real and banal imaginations (Section 5.1), providing certain understandings of what food cultures amongst different racial groups and national cultures look like. They inform common sense understandings of what may constitute as authentic, local and Singaporean as well as certain imageries of food that have a right to ‘belong’ in hawker centres and the nation (Chapter 5 & 6).

At the same time, hawker centres are places that reinforce the logics of multiracialism (top-down nationalism). According to the findings of this study and local knowledge in Singapore, most 88

hawker stalls insinuate singular racial identities. In contrast, hawker stalls that have cross- racial intersections of ‘Mother Tongue’ languages (Section 6.4.1), religion (Section 6.4.2), ethno- nationalities (Section 6.4.3) are rare and viewed with doubt or as racial transgressions. A racialized view or attachment certain hawker food and stall identities can also be seen from this study, as seen from the usage of vernacular terms like ‘Malay’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘Halal’ to describe the same unit (Section 6.4.1). In this manner, the repetition and sedimentation of race concepts in hawker food culture perpetuates the logic of multiracialism in the everyday nation.

Most significantly, hawker centres constitute an everyday food-nationalism axis. They are organizational structures where the trade of hawking is institutionalized, and are everyday places where local histories and autochthonous food cultures can be located (Chapter 3). They help to cultivate experiences of belonging, familiarity and rootedness amongst members (and non-members) in the nation, and are meaningful places even in the banality of the everyday life. Concurrently, hawker centres provide room capacities for bottom-up food cultures and identities in a changing society and globalized world, breeding new hawker food identities and challenging the logics of top-down multiracialism.

In this regard, ‘food becomes an entry point, both theoretically and methodologically, for thinking through broader body-environment-place relationships.’ (Del Casino, 2015, p. 805). This can be seen from the mixing of racial languages and identifications for hawker food-and-stall descriptions (Section 6.4), and shared food varieties by different ‘races’, for instance the same food concept of rojak in both ‘Indian’ and ‘Chinese’ rojak (Section 5.4). Based on the findings of this study, the accessibility29 and everyday nature of hawker food blurs racial-identity boundaries, through the banality of eating and its visibility in public spaces. Hence, Singapore’s hawker food culture is pivotal in enabling us to understand of various banal and ardent processes involved in identity construction.

8.1.3 Food, Nationalism, and the Everyday as Processes

This thesis has demonstrated how nations, food culture and identities are processes. The establishment of hawker centres and spatio-temporial nature of hawking help us to visualize nationhood and belonging as processes that undergo sedimentation and de-sedimentation in the everyday nation. They also remind us that people, place and food are networked (Figure 5.5.8), and that everyday nationalism may manifest itself in manifold ways which may turn out to be contradictory, even when they are levelled at the same scale.

Section 8.2 Evaluation of the study and its limitations

In this study, the method of using food (Section 5.4) over language (Section 5.3) intersections proved to be more productive in its ability to blur racial/identity boundaries according to the logics of multiracialism. However, the choice and mapping of hawker food items were not

29 Accessibility in terms of time (taken to prepare hawker food and to reach hawker centres), cost (relatively cheap and affordable) and proximity (approx. 120 hawker centres scattered around Singapore. 89

consistent across the hawker centres chosen for this study, and there were limited or non-results in both methodologies of using food and language to blur racial boundaries. Thus, further improvements to this study would constitute a larger selection of hawker centres and mapping of similar hawker food items across them, for a more accurate and holistic cross-comparison.

In assessment of how members of the nation respond to racial ‘transgressions’, racial-religious intersections (Section 6.4.2) were more significant than that of racial-linguistic intersections (Section 6.4.1) in hawker centres, whereby a significantly greater number of survey respondents took notice of certain religious boundary crossings and reacted more strongly. This limited finding suggests that the overstepping racial-religious boundaries may constitute a more serious racial transgression in the vernacular and common-sense understandings amongst member of the nation. Hence, a more extensive survey and data collection of hawker stalls that transgress both religious and language boundaries may constitute as improvements and validations of this finding, as it may prove useful in challenging top-down nationalism (multiracialism) in order to foster a shared nationhood amongst members of the nation.

One of the limitations of using vernacular understandings and the everyday life as object of analysis in this study, is the multiplicity of meanings (discussed earlier) and complexity in distinguishing between vernacular, ethnic and national categories in a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. For example, survey responses such as ‘quality’ and ‘cheap food’ were classified in the category of vernacular understandings but as not consisting feelings or perspectives on belonging to the nation. However, ‘cheap food’ especially meaningful in the eyes of a person saying it, deemed as unpretentious and hence representing ‘freedom’ and ‘authenticity’ in his or her everyday experiences of the nation. Thus, further improvements to a vernacular and ‘wait-and-see’ method may constitute a combination of other research methods, such as codifying and correlating participant responses across different survey questions in a more extensive manner.

Lastly, this study would be more greatly informed with the linking of relationships between Singapore’s colonial management of race and the modern expression of multiracialism in this study (Goh, 2008; Low, 2013). This study will also benefit from the interviewing or consulting of the hawker stall owners behind their header signboard designs, and if all of the stall signages in hawker centres were taken as empirical data. These factors were not possible due to the limitations of time, resource and feasibility of action(s). A future reproduction of this study would also reflect the stability of hawker stalls, and the transformation of hawker centres as place- processes.

8.3 Contribution to existing literature

8.3.1 Everyday nationalism

This thesis contributes to the existing body of literature on everyday nationalism (Antonsich, 2016; Skey, 2011; Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a; Brubaker et al, 2006), by analyzing the case of Singapore. It also contributes the everyday nationalism discourse by applying the ‘wait-and-see’ approach (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008a; Brubaker et al, 2006) as well as the analysis of vernacular 90

understandings and the everyday as the quotidian and categories of practice (Goode & Stroup, 2015; ibid). As seen from the findings of this thesis, these methodologies enable an empirical analysis of food culture and on-the-ground nationalism in the case of Singapore’s hawker centres, making nationalism both relevant and meaningful for both ordinary members of the nation and vice versa.

8.3.2 Food Culture

It also contributes to the discourse of food culture by affirming its relationship with nationalism (Ichijio & Ratna, 2016; Avieli, 2005), its importance in the everyday life (Kong, 2007; ibid), and identity-making processes (Schermuly & Helen Forbes-Mewett, 2016; Panayi, 2014). This study has reinforced the understanding that national food cultures are both social constructs and processes that undergo stages of sedimentation and desedimentation (Panayi, 2014; Ichijio & Ratna, 2016; Avieli, 2005), and contributing factors that include identity politics and institutional practices. The findings of this study has also demonstrated how food serves as an entry into understanding an ‘other’ (Fischler, 1998; Casino, 2015), and recommends the analysis of everyday food places as food-and-nationalism ‘battlegrounds’ as well as spatial locations where local or autochtonous food cultures may be found.

8.3.3 Singapore and Hawker Centres

This study contributes to the existing body of literature on identities, nationalism, and practices of the everyday life in Singapore (Velayutham, 2007 & 2016; Rocha, 2011; Chua, 2005; Low, 2013; Ortmann, 2009; Kong, 2007), in the form of updating information based on previous studies (Velayutham, 2007; Kong, 2007) and validating existing findings. The findings of this study also contributes to the existing body of work by demonstrating how hawker centres and food culture constitutes as methods for blurring racial boundaries (CMIO) as constituted by top-down nationalism, and as spatial practices to foster a shared nationhood and belonging amongst members of the nation.

In relation to the existing studies on hawker centres, scholars such as Kong (2007) and Duruz and Khoo (2014) have documented how hawker centres and food culture are instrumental in the construction of identity, belonging and nationhood in the everyday life. However, their studies have not included how banal representations of nations and territories nor spatial layouts and signages of hawker centres may constitute as ways to understand bottom-up identities and everyday nationalism. This study also contributes as quantitative and qualitative sources of information of which visitors and non-Singaporeans experience hawker food and centres, and this includes a geographical approximation of how extensively hawker centres have been visited by members of other nationalities in the world. Therefore, this study fills this existing gap and constitutes as an update of previous studies on hawker centres, and by seeking to understand hawker centres as ‘people-place-food’ and ‘public-private-people’ dynamics via exploring the role of hawker food culture in nationalism.

On the other hand, hawker signages have been studied by students and academics largely in the field of linguistics and communication. They were analyzed in a student paper by Neo and Soon 91

(2012) and typographical study by Yeoh K.C. (2014), however these empirical findings have yet to be geographically mapped and visualized, and connections drawn to the discourse of nationalism and understanding of hawker centres as place-processes (e.g. flows, networks) were rare or limited. Thus, this thesis fills in these existing research gaps.

On top of the above academic contributions, existing surveys regarding how members of the nation identify with hawker food and centres are largely limited to questions of frequency of dining. Hence, the survey used in this thesis constitutes as a preliminary and novel method to take into account the identifications and experiences that members in the nation have towards hawker food and centres. It also provides opportunities for future studies with regards to how hawker centres are lived and experienced by both Singaporeans and non-Singaporeans residing in the nation.

8.4 Final reflections and thoughts

A final reflection of this study may be a search for new ways and avenues, to measure and scale processes of globalization that are ongoing in the everyday dimension. This would lead us towards a better understanding on how global processes affect members of the nation and various places differently. While one may expect greater influences in city centres or shopping districts, how they play out in the outskirts and residential areas are not often detailed.

The transnational identities of people and food culture in this study revealed how everyday belonging and nationhood may be affected by intricate affairs of the ‘glocal’ economy, such as that of national trade agreements and organizational networks. This causes us to reflect upon identities that can no longer be solely defined according to language or places of origin (Valentine et al, 2008). This also beg further questions of what it means to be transnational in the world today, and experience nationhood in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world.

9. Appendix

Table 9.1 Population Demographics of Singapore

Overall Population (‘000) 2017 (June)

Citizen Population 3,439.2

Permanent Resident (PR) Population 526.6

Resident Population 3,965.8

Non-Resident Population 1,646.5

Total Population 5,612.3

Source: Strategy Group, Prime Minister’s Office (September 2017) Population in Brief 2017.

Table 9.2 Descriptions of Hawker Centres in this study

Num ber Name of Location and of Hawker Description Accessibility30 Sign Centre boar ds

Bedok The name ‘Bedok’ has been existent since the It is mainly 70 Intercha time of Singapore’s British colonial history, surrounded by (out nge and is known as a (former) Malay kampong residential buildings of Hawker village. Its name is likely derived from the and shopping centres, 70) Centre Malay word ‘Bedoh’, as there used to be a and is located within mosque that would sound its drums 5 times close proximity of local daily to signal the prayer times. schools.

It is Singapore’s largest estate, and the area Its location is directly has undergone significant redevelopment in next to Bedok MRT the recent years. station, which was constructed in 1989. Although the origins of the hawker centre is uncertain, it likely began as a branch of the bus interchange in the town centre of Bedok. This was whereby illegal street hawkers would set up makeshift stalls to sell their fruit and products in the 1980s. A writer

30 Best: physical proximity to a train (MRT) station. All locations are accessible by buses. 93

recounts that ‘HDB officers had to be deployed daily to curb the problem’. Other name variations of Bedok Interchange Hawker Centre are Bedok Central Food Centre or Block 207 hawker centre.

Located in the residential area of Bedok, neighbourhood hawker centre, and is surrounded by many modern eateries, coffeeshops and food centres.

Changi Today, Changi Village is known as a Located at the far east 70 Village destination for beach and leisure activities, coast of Singapore, (out Hawker or as a Changi Village of Centre Hawker Centre is 70) In 1927, a local settlement sprang up near mainly surrounded by the British military camps at Changi Point, residential buildings, and formed an enterprise to cater to the Changi beach and needs of the military and their families. It resort activities. It is was a place of recreation and provision located near to Changi outside the military camps, and became Point Ferry Terminal, known as Changi Village. which is an entry After the end of World War II, Changi point of access for Village continued its pre-war function. It locals and tourists to became known as a multicultural smaller islands owned establishment and popular place for ‘bargain by Singapore such as hunters’ by the 1960s, and there was even an Pulau Ubin and Pulau 32 open space in a ‘street market’ where the Tekong Ministry of Culture would screen movies for The location is the villagers. Apart from these dynamics, accessible by several 31 there was also a makeshift “Amah ’s buses and not within Market” at Changi Village every Wednesday close proximity to a night, whereby shopkeepers would bring MRT station. The down their prices to match that of market latter is because it stallholders. takes an estimated However, after the British announced that time of 1h 20 (6.4km) Singapore would be granted independence in to walk from Pasir Ris 1972. Thousands of British military and MRT station. communities had withdrawn by 1971, causing the ‘the once blooming suburbia had

31 Amah is a Malay term for maid or woman of the household, and can also take on the meaning of ‘granny’ (ah ma; mix of Chinese dialects) in the case of Singapore. 32 An island purposed for military training, which is compulsory for all Singaporean men aged 18 and above. Restricted access. 94

[once again] become a struggling kampong’.

This phenomenon caused the Singapore Government to introduce plans with regards to the reinvention of Changi Village in 1975, and the construction of the hawker centre out of this initiative.

Maxwell A popular tourist destination, and where the Located in the Central 98 Road famed33 ‘Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice’ Business District (out Hawker is located. (CBD) of Singapore, of Centre and nearby several 103) institutions and office Formerly known as Maxwell Market, this buildings. place was established in 1928 and served as It is approximately a a government co-operative store during the 6-10 minute walk from Japanese Occupation in Singapore (1942- nearby MRT stations, 1945). In 1987, the wet market was one of which is converted into a food centre, and housed Tanjong Pagar MRT hawkers who were relocated from China that was built in 1987. Square.

It has since undergone upgrading, one of which costed SGD 3.2 million (USD 2.4 million34) revamp (Sep 2000-May 2001).

Old As suggested by the name of this place, this This building complex 160 Airport hawker centre was established after the is almost completely (out Road closure of Kallang Airport in 1955, in effort surrounded by of Hawker to resettle street hawkers who were residential buildings. 168) Centre operating around Kallang Estate. The most famous of which was Dakota This place has undergone two name changes, Crescent36, that was such, it was later renamed Kallang Estate iconic as one of Fresh Market & Food Centre. Singapore’s oldest When it was established in 1958, it was public housing estates. known as Jalan Empat Market, and provided the area with 172 stalls for fresh and cooked foods. By the 1960s, the available Within walking stalls were inadequate to accommodate all of distance from Dakota the street hawkers who had gathered at the and Mountbatten

33 Voted as the best chicken rice hawker stall by several local food bloggers, and lauded by American celebrity chefs such as Anthony Bourdain and Gordan Ramsay (Farley, 6 Nov 2015) 34 Estimations with the exchange rate of 1 SGD = 0.75 USD.

estate. In response, the government erected MRT stations, which sheltered pitches as a temporary or were built in 2010. makeshift extension in 1963, to provide additional spaces for 315 hawkers. The continual growth and excarbation of the ‘hawker problem’ eventually led to the solution of constructing a new complex building, Old Airport Road Food Centre.

It has since undergone a major facelift and upgrading between 2006 and 2007, which costed the governmental authorities35 SGD 5.8 million (USD 4.3 million). This comprised as the largest upgrading initiative under the Hawker Centre Upgrading Programme during the period.

Located within close proximity to the city centre, it has become an increasingly popular place of visit for toursits and locals alike. It is also a popular place for supper, especially for midnight revelers after a ‘night out’ in town.

Tekka Today, Tekka Centre is largely known as a Located within the 103 Centre place to find various South Asian or ‘Indian’ CBD, and is in close (out cuisines in the Little India heritage district. proximity to heritage of centres and 117) Founded in 1915, it was first called the landmarks. Kandang Kerbau Market, as the surrounding district was associated with the It is directly next to cattle and meat trade37. Little India MRT station, which was By the 1930s, it was famous for being the constructed in 2003. “people’s market”, as it was popular with all the ‘different ethnic groups’ and offered a wide variety of fresh and cooked food products, and retail goods.

It has since been re-developed into a residential-cum-shopping complex, where the hawker food stalls are located on the

35 National Environmental Agency (NEA), Singapore. 37 South Indians called the market “Mattu Kampong Pasar” in Tamil, a literal translation from its Malay name. 96

third floor. Its name was “hanyu-pinyinized” into Zhujiao Centre38 in 1981, and as this was met with some conflict and contention, it has since been renamed into Tekka Centre in 2000.

Several of the stall owners are second or third generation hawkers whose forefathers set up shop in the old market 30 to 50 years ago.

Table 9.3 Banal Food Representations in Hawker Centres (Mapped)

Banal Food Rep. Hawker Centre Old Airport Total Category References Bedok Changi Maxwell Road Tekka Count

Afghanistan 0 0 0 0 1 1 China 2 1 0 0 3 India 1 0 0 0 3 4

Indonesia 0 1 0 0 0 1

Italy 0 0 1 2 0 3

Nations Japan 0 1 0 3 1 5 Korea 0 0 0 0 1 1

Singapore 2 6 2 0 0 10 Sri Lanka 0 0 0 0 1 1

Thailand 2 1 0 4 1 8

Chettinad (Tamil Naidu, India) 0 0 0 0 1 1 Fujian 1 3 3 4 0 11

Guangdong 0 0 1 0 1 States & States Districts

Hainan 3 3 9 3 2 20

38 In November 1981, as part of the national Speak Mandarin Campaign and movement to “hanyu- pinyinize” place names in Singapore, it was renamed Zhujiao Centre. There was some disquiet among some residents of the district as could not identify the heritage of the district with the Mandarin name. 97

Hong Kong 1 1 0 6 2 10 Johor Bahru 0 0 1 0 1

Kerala 0 0 0 0 1 1 Muar 0 0 1 0 1 2 Pontian 1 0 0 0 0 1

Taiwan 0 1 0 1 0 2

Chaozhou 2 1 2 2 4 11

Chong Qing 0 0 1 0 0 1

Fuzhou 0 0 1 1 0 2

Cities Ipoh 1 2 1 0 0 4 London 0 0 0 1 0 1 Penang 2 1 0 0 0 3 Shanghai 0 0 1 0 0 1 Tokyo 0 0 1 0 0 1

Table 9.4 Banal Food Representations in Hawker Centres (Not Mapped)

Hawker Centre Banal Food Rep. Total Bedok Changi Maxwell Old Airport Road Tekka Count Asian 0 0 0 0 1 1 Eurasian 0 0 1 0 0 1 Europe 0 0 1 0 0 1 Jiu Zhou (9 Provinces) 0 0 0 0 1 1 Nyonya 0 0 2 1 0 3 Temasek 0 0 0 0 1 1 Western 0 0 0 2 1 3

Table 9.5 Hawker Flows: Places of Origin and Destinations

Y_Sourc X_Sourc Y_Destinati X_Destinati Coun ID Source Destination e e on on t 1.30490 103.903 1 Katong Bedok Hawker Centre 6 3 1.324802 103.93061 2 Holland 1.31115 2 Village Bedok Hawker Centre 2 103.796 1.324802 103.93061 1 New 1.28730 103.805 3 World Bedok Hawker Centre 2 3 1.324802 103.93061 1

Tiong 1.28607 103.826 4 Bahru Bedok Hawker Centre 2 9 1.324802 103.93061 1 People's 1.28526 103.843 5 Park Bedok Hawker Centre 4 5 1.324802 103.93061 1 Hong 1.28547 103.845 6 Lim Bedok Hawker Centre 5 9 1.324802 103.93061 1 Chong Changi Village Hawker 1.43028 103.828 7 Pang Centre 8 5 1.389392 103.988247 1 Changi Village Hawker 1.32319 103.927 8 Bedok Centre 2 4 1.389392 103.988247 1 Changi Village Hawker 1.37128 103.892 9 Hougang Centre 7 5 1.389392 103.988247 1 China 1.28383 103.847 10 Street Maxwell Hawker Centre 6 9 1.280355 103.844797 10

Marina 1.27845 103.865 11 South Maxwell Hawker Centre 6 9 1.280355 103.844797 1 1.30400 103.833 12 Orchard Maxwell Hawker Centre 1 7 1.280355 103.844797 Nanking 1.28423 103.847 13 Street Maxwell Hawker Centre 1 2 1.280355 103.844797 1 Margaret 1.29689 103.808 14 Drive Maxwell Hawker Centre 4 2 1.280355 103.844797 1 Singapor 1.28975 103.839 15 e River Maxwell Hawker Centre 6 8 1.280355 103.844797 1 1.31997 103.902 16 Eunos Tekka Hawker Centre 4 7 1.306307 103.85025 1 Farrer 1.31256 103.854 17 Park Tekka Hawker Centre 9 7 1.306307 103.85025 1 Albert 1.30286 103.852 18 Street Tekka Hawker Centre 3 8 1.306307 103.85025 1 Whampo 1.32279 19 a Tekka Hawker Centre 4 103.854 1.306307 103.85025 1 Old Airport Road Hawker 1.37128 103.892 20 Hougang Centre 7 5 1.30824 103.885792 5 Lau Pa Old Airport Road Hawker 1.28045 103.850 21 Sat Centre 3 5 1.30824 103.885792 1 Albert Old Airport Road Hawker 1.30286 103.852 22 Street Centre 3 8 1.30824 103.885792 1 Hock Lam Old Airport Road Hawker 1.29182 103.850 23 Street Centre 3 1 1.30824 103.885792 1 99

Taman Old Airport Road Hawker 103.819 24 Serasi Centre 1.30819 1 1.30824 103.885792 1

Holland Old Airport Road Hawker 1.30986 103.792 25 Drive Centre 4 9 1.30824 103.885792 1

Serangoo n Garden Old Airport Road Hawker 1.36323 103.866 26 Market Centre 5 6 1.30824 103.885792 1 Old Airport Road Hawker 103.864 27 Kallang Centre 1.30928 9 1.30824 103.885792 1 Geylang Lorong Old Airport Road Hawker 1.31135 103.881 28 20 Centre 2 3 1.30824 103.885792 1 Old Airport Road Hawker 103.983 29 Changi Centre 1.38835 9 1.30824 103.885792 1

Mattar Old Airport Road Hawker 1.32510 103.882 30 Road Centre 8 8 1.30824 103.885792 1 Toa Old Airport Road Hawker 1.33273 103.846 31 Payoh Centre 9 6 1.30824 103.885792 1 Geylang 5th Old Airport Road Hawker 1.30954 103.870 32 Street Centre 7 8 1.30824 103.885792 Chong Old Airport Road Hawker 1.43028 103.828 33 Pang Centre 8 5 1.30824 103.885792 1

Whitley Old Airport Road Hawker 1.32712 103.838 34 Road Centre 7 1 1.30824 103.885792 1 Blanco Old Airport Road Hawker 1.30135 103.857 35 Court Centre 5 4 1.30824 103.885792 3

Tiong Old Airport Road Hawker 1.28607 103.826 36 Bahru Centre 2 9 1.30824 103.885792 1 Albert Old Airport Road Hawker 1.30286 103.852 37 Street Centre 3 8 1.30824 103.885792 1 Toa Old Airport Road Hawker 1.33273 103.846 38 Payoh Centre 9 6 1.30824 103.885792 1 Old Airport Road Hawker 1.36269 103.876 39 Rosyth Centre 4 5 1.30824 103.885792 1

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Table 9.6 Background and Full Quotations: non-Singaporeans with Positive Experiences

Duration Frequency No. Nationality Age Profile of Stay HFood Quote (Full) It’s not quite street food, and 1 week to Once in 2 it’s not restaurants. So it’s 1 Canadian 35 Resident 6 months weeks somewhat unique Singaporean society is around food; they love all about food. I think that is the reason you can find any kind of food in this places. Eat there, walk inside one of the hawker centres is exciting experiences 2 Colombian 32 Resident 3-5 years Montlhy for foreigners. Less than 1 week It feels like Singapore is mix e.g. Whenever of cultures and that's what is 3 Czech 23 Visitor Holiday I can in these. I loved it. Holidays of at least 2 weeks, I associate my time in usually 3 Singapore with food. And weeks, fishball soup. Prata. Wonton almost noodles. Tiong bahru buns. All every hawker food. You can see the year from 3 times a mixtures of cultures from the 4 Dutch 29 Visitor birth. week kitchens. Literal mixing pot. 2 to 3 times a Affordable, convenient, and 5 German 36 Resident 3-5 years week authentic Singaporean dining It defines the local cuisine and 6 months Once a how other cuisines blend in 6 Indian 23 Visitor to 1 year week with it. after travelling to a lot of countries in Asia (Taiwan, Hongkong, etc), I would say no other country could offer the kind of variety that Whenever Singapore hawker center 7 Indonesian 23 Resident 8 years I can offers 2 to 3 times a 8 Italian 33 Resident >5 years week kopi siew dai and bao zi Singapore hawker centres are suppose to be national icon however it's not treated so. I feel Singaporeans generally enjoy Cafes and hipster areas more of a "thing" to go for while hawker centres are for the older generation and when there's no home cooked food. 4 to 5 Though it really depends on times a the group of people. Maybe 9 Malaysian 22 Resident 6 years week elitists are more on the cafes 101

side while the humble is more on the hawker centres side. I lived close to Old Airport Road and my experience of life in Singapore was much better for it. Yes it attracts some tourists but it was genuinely very popular with locals and from the very beginning I felt I had an authentic experience. As time passed we became accepted as locals. I use many hawkers across the city - incredible value for money, although not healthy I think. Without hawkers I might 2 to 3 have just lived my life in any times a city, but this was crucial to 10 Scottish 37 Resident 3-5 years week being a part of Singapore 2 to 3 6 years times a 11 Swedish 52 Resident and a bit week Its a part of the lifestyle here When I first got the news that I got accepted for Singapore, I told to my professor about it and she said, ooh I stayed in singapore for some time and the food was very expensive and there wasnt much variety, there was only sushi to eat. I was very worried to this statement, but I realized after sometime she never been to any hawker center, otherwise she wouldnt say this. My foreigner friends leaving singapore, always say they miss singapore because of the hawker centers and how it is easy to gather with 4 to 5 friends and have food times a together. That makes 12 Turkish 37 Resident 3-5 years week singapore different. Delicious food representing many of the different people who live in Singapore. Coming from the U.S., it is also amazing to be able to access such inexpensive and tasty food, and try so many different things at one time. Plus, hawker centers can be much more sustainable than Less than other options; in the US, most 1 week inexpensive restaurants just United e.g. Whenever do a lot of food takeout and 13 States 26 Visitor Holiday I can delivery, which uses a lot of 102

resources and is very wasteful. The hawker centers can share plates and tableware and reduce waste. The hawker centers also have a great and friendly atmosphere!

Table 9.7 Background and Full Quotations: non-Singaporeans with Mixed/Negative Experiences

Duration Frequency No. Nationality Age Profile of Stay HFood Quote (Full)

2 to 3 Fast and easy access to 3-5 times a food but food sold is just 1 China 28 Resident years week too boring.

Difficult. They are both a blessing and a curse. Great to have so much concentration of affordable, local food. However, they have sucked the life out of 2 to 3 the street as a 3-5 times a consequence. No more 2 Dutch 33 Resident years week actual hawkers :(

I go there if I am on the way and need something to eat quickly. Otherwise I 3-5 avoid them as they are 3 German 30 Resident years Fortnightly often quite dirty.

They have nothing special, 3-5 Once a the foods can be found 4 Indonesian 20 Resident years week outside singapore

Everyday (or almost 5 Malaysian 21 Resident 9 years daily) I dont find it that special

Rarely, being a vegetarian i get very Not really been a part of 3-5 less the hawker centre food 6 Nepalese 24 Resident years options culture

103

cheapest eat-out outlet yet you get to try real local cuisines, but i dont really get attached to any food/stores in particular when eating at a hawker center. Probably will if the Once a rest of the store sucks/not 7 Vietnamese 24 Resident 8 years week to my liking.

I'm an expat, so they offer an interesting look at local dishes and showcase the cultural diversity of Singapore. But, as a vegan, I can't eat a most of them, so it's more like going to a cultural exhibition of food, 1 to 2 Once a not a real dining 8 USA 46 Resident years month experience.

Figures

Figure 9.1 Coding Structure of Hawker Signboard Headers

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Survey Singapore's Hawker Centres

Hi there! Thank you for agreeing to take part in this survey. The goal of this survey is to understand how individuals experience hawker centres in Singapore, as a part of understanding food culture in the everyday life. This survey should only take 5-10 minutes to complete. Please be assured that all the answers and responses provided would be kept confidential and anonymous, and Google Forms has no access to any content of this material.

* Required

This section contains 6 hawker signboards: What are some of your first impressions, and why?

There is no right or wrong answer, and your responses can be as long or as short as you wish. Examples of responses may be: 'Chinese stall. I see Chinese characters.' or 'Good food! I came here recently.' Also, please feel free to comment about what you think about the hawkers behind their signboard designs!

Hawker Stall #1 *

______

105

Hawker Stall #2 *

______

Hawker Stall #3 (Centre) *

______

106

Hawker Stall #4 (both units belong to the same hawker or owner) *

______

Hawker Stall #5 *

______

107

Hawker Stall #6 *

______

It's time for ... Hawker Food & You!

1. Do you have a favourite hawker centre? If so, please type its name!

2. How often do you eat hawker food? * Mark only one oval.

Once a month

Once in two weeks

Once a week

2 to 3 times a week

108

4 to 5 times a week Everyday (or almost daily) Whenever I can

Other:

3. What do you associate hawker centres with? *

______

109

6. Would you like to share anything about what hawker food/centres mean to you?

______

You're almost there! But first, tell me more about yourself :)

1. Are you currently staying in Singapore? * Mark only one oval.

Yes

2. What is your nationality? * Mark only one oval.

Singaporean

Other:

3. If your response is 'Singaporean' in the above question, how would you choose to identify yourself? * Mark only one oval.

Singaporean

Singaporean-Chinese/Malay/Indian/Eurasian (example: Singaporean-Chinese)

Chinese/Malay/Indian/Eurasian-Singaporean (example: Indian-Singaporean)

Chinese/Malay/Indian/Eurasian (e.g. Malay)

Not Applicable, I am not from Singapore. Other:

4. When were you born? (enter 4-digit birth year e.g.1979) *

______

5. How long have you been staying/stayed in Singapore? * Mark only one oval.

Less than 1 week e.g. Holiday

1 week to 6 months

6 months to 1 year

1 to 2 years 3-5 years 110

'All my life'

Other:

6. Where do you live in Singapore? * Check all that apply.

North East

West

Central

Not Applicable e.g. I was a tourist

Other:

7a. Singapore's Hawker Centres have been described as 'national icons', and as the best representations of the Singaporean society. Do you agree with these statements?

Mark only one oval.

Yes

No Other:

7b. Could you explain 'why' to your above answer? (if you would be so kind)

______

You've made it to the end!

Do you have any other comments or things to share? ______

111

10. Glossary

Atas: High class, derived from the Malay term ‘Upstairs’. It carries a connotation that the object of description may be beyond one’s reach or ability to afford.

Bandung: Rose syrup drink, derived from the Malay language.

Bao zi: A Chinese steamed bun that is usually filled with different types of ingredients. Pronounced in Mandarin.

Eurasian: An ethnic group that has individuals of ‘mixed’ European and Asian descents.

Hipster: A modern but counter-cultural lifestyle or set of experimentations, whereby the idea behind the product may hold more value than the quality of the product itself.

Kakis: Buddies, partners or close companions. Derived from the Malay term of ‘leg’ and Hokkien term for ‘my own’. Examples of usage: ‘lunch kakis’ and ‘shopping kakis’.

Kopi Siew Dai: Coffee with less sugar. Derived from the Malay language (Kopi) and Chinese dialects such Hockchew and Fuzhou.

Kristangs: An ethnic group that has individuals of Portugese-Eurasian or mixed Portugese, European and Malaccan descents.

Lai: Come here, derived from the Mandarin pronunciation of ‘Come’.

Lim Kopi: To have coffee or chill out, derived from the Hokkien term to ‘drink’ (lim) and the Malay term for ‘coffee’ (kopi). Lim Kopi can also refer to asking one out over coffee, watch the day pass by with a cup of coffee, or simply a desire to drink a cup of coffee.

Milo Dinosaur: A thick and creamy cup of iced Milo beverage with undissolved Milo powder added or ‘piled’ on top of it, resembling an avalanche of Milo i.e. ‘Dinosaur’.

Teh Halia: Ginger tea or ginger milk tea, derived from the Malay language. It is often available in Muslim-Indian (e.g. Sarabat) or traditional Malay drink stalls in Singapore.

Teh Tarik: ‘Pulled’ milk tea, derived from the Malay language.

Tiong Bahru: A neighbourhood in Singapore. ‘Tiong bahru buns’ refer to a stall brand recipe for Chinese steamed buns.

Mamak: A type of convenience or street store which sells many varieties of items including food and drinks, that is usually visited if it is within close proximity to one’s residence. Dereived from the Malay language.

Sarabat stall: A stall that is traditionally owned by Malays, Indians and Pakistanis, and that sells a wide variety of drinks such as teh tarik and teh halia. ‘Sarabat’ may refer to ‘Brother’ in Urdu, a Pakistani language.

112

Swee: Sweet, smooth or awesome. It is a Hokkien term.

Peranakan – An ethnic group that has individuals of mainly Chinese, Malay, Indonesian descent. The term is an Indonesian/Malay word that means ‘local born’.

PRC – People’s Republic of China (PRC). It refers to Chinese individuals who are from China.

Tze Char – ‘Stir Fry’ restaurant which usually sells seafood and a variety of dishes for sharing. It derives from the literal pronounciations of ‘Stir’ and ‘Fry’ in Mandarin.

Western – A vague term used to describe non-Asian characteristics and lifestyles.

113

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