WHOSE NANTAH?: AN ANALYSIS OF HOW NANTAH �S BUILT ENVIRONMENT HAS BEEN CONTESTED AND SHAPED BY THE STATE AND THE COMMUNITY

Abstract

States and communities around the world have often used elements in the built environment as selective aids in shaping memory and identity, in particular when contesting important sites of collective memory, such as Nanyang University (Nantah). Once termed the pinnacle of Chinese education and the pride of the Chinese community, Nantah’s controversial past and radical changes in the built environment are deeply intertwined with the history of Chinese education and culture in Singapore. This dissertation is interested in analysing not just the socio-political factors behind the contestations for Nantah, but also the continual struggle between the state and community over the shaping and altering of Nantah’s built environment. Specifically, this dissertation explores the changing attitudes towards Chinese education and culture in relation to the changing social, cultural and political conditions of post-independence Singapore, so as to understand the state and community’s rationales for trying to shape the built environment in the ways that they did. Through this dissertation, the relationship between the state, community, socio-political contexts, attitudes towards ‘Chineseness’ and the built environment will be explored, where this paper seeks to show that it was ultimately the state, rather than the community, that was able to successfully shape Nantah’s built environment.