Governing through the 'Green' and 'Smart': A Governmentality approach to the Singapore Developmental State

Abstract

Urban governance has become the de facto arena for achieving sustainable development objectives, particularly with the city’s recent reimagination as the centre of human activity and engine of development. This paper investigates urban governance in the developmental state of Singapore using a governmentality approach. The aims of this thesis are two-folds: (1) to elucidate the nature of governmentality in the (Singaporean) developmental state, and (2) to reveal the underlying hegemony of governmentality by making apparent the techniques, strategies, powers, and institutions involved. To achieve these aims, this thesis presents analyses of two Singaporean case studies—the dengue epidemics since the 1960s, and the actually-existing and emerging ‘smart’ city—using Foucauldian discourse analysis and the governmentality framework. Throughout the analysis, special attention is paid to global discourses, especially that of urban sustainability, to show how global-local discourses interact and influence practices of government. This study also contributes to the sparse literature of governmentality studies conducted in non-liberal and non-Western societies. At the end of the thesis I suggest that there needs to be more empirically-grounded research on governmentality in developmental statist cities, especially ‘smart’ cities, in order to open spaces for more creative and emancipatory politics.