Review of 'Hidden hands and divided landscapes: a penal history of Singapore's plural history' Author: Anoma Pieries

Abstract

There has been a growing body of literature that, by using postcolonial conceptual frameworks, has attempted to deconstruct and reinterpret forces that have shaped urbanism of colonial cities. Extending this interest further, Pieries presents an alternative analysis of Singapore's evolution from a penal settlement in the Straits Settlements through to a global city that continues to thrive on a plural society and a "polyglot environment" (p 220). Unlike singular or binary interpretations common to most postcolonial studies (such as the colonized and colonizing), she conceptualizes the history of urbanism in Singapore as a dialogic encounter – an engagement of different ethnic groups and the racialised convict labor resulting from penal policies and their articulation of the social and the spatial along a temporal scale.