Spiaking Singlish: The politics of ludic English in Singapore

This article is a case study on how Singaporean intellectuals articulate resistant language ideologies by enregistering the local vernacular, Singlish. The case in point is Gwee Li Sui's 2018 companion Spiaking Singlish, lauded as the first book to be written in Singlish about Singlish. It is argued that in tactically leveraging Singlish in a folk-lexicographical project, Gwee takes the vernacular to the third indexical order; and in so doing, he performs a ludic and extreme form of Singlish through which an everyday tongue turns into a fetish object. Contextualising Gwee's polemics within his tension with the language establishment in Singapore, the article highlights the ethical dilemma implicit in the celebration of languages speaking to an egalitarian ethos, suggesting that in enunciating a vernacular on the order of reflexive performance, intellectuals may inadvertently fashion it into a more elitist language than that which is spoken on the streets. (Singlish, Singapore, enregisterment, performativity, indexicality)

Reimagining the Brown Body

William Forsythe’s screendance Alignigung (2016) depicts two male dancers, one fair- and the other brown-skinned, in hyperflexible and intimate configurations that vacillate between object and human. Alignigung engages with an egalitarian ethos along the same lines as contact improvisation but further demonstrates an alternative masculinity through movement qualities by reimagining the stereotypical brown body.

Tensions in Piketty’s Participatory Socialism: Reconciling Justice and Democracy

In the final parts of Piketty’s Capital and Ideology, he presents his vision for a just and more equal society. This vision marks an alternative to contemporary societies, and differs radically both from the planned Soviet economies and from social democratic welfare states. In his sketch of this vision, Piketty provides a principled account of how such a society would look and how it would modify the current status of private property through co-managed enterprises and the creation of temporary ownership models. He also sets out two principles for when inequalities are just. The first principle permits inequalities that are beneficial to the worst-off, while the second permits inequalities that reflect differences in people’s choices and ambitions. This article identifies a tension between Piketty’s two inequality-permitting principles. It also argues that the procedural limits on how decisions are made within the enterprises of participatory socialism might create inequalities not permitted by the guiding distributive principles of participatory socialism. This tension points to the need for either further changes in firm structure and ownership, an even more progressive taxation scheme, or an egalitarian ethos reflected in citizens’ choices in their everyday lives under participatory socialism.

Banking on Digital Money: Swedish Cashlessness and the Fraying Currency Tether

As cash has suddenly gone missing from Swedish life, a growing range of citizens and institutions have sounded the alarm that cash enabled a space of egalitarian access now under threat. But because commercial bank currency is gradually displacing public central bank currency, cashlessness in Sweden is not only threatening its egalitarian ethos but also the Swedish Central Bank’s capacity to provide a guaranteed state payment mechanism. The consequences of Sweden’s battles over cash-issuance may presage the future of our global banking system in a digital age, while also illuminating what is here called currency’s “tethering mechanism.” Because bank-issued currencies represent chains of credit/debt, exchanging and storing different currencies can tether and de-tether their users to different institutions, thereby offering anthropologists the possibility of mapping the waxing and waning of various dominant social institutions. Sammanfattning Det svenska samhället har bara på några år kommit att bli ett kontantlöst samhälle. Nu larmar institutioner och medborgare om att bristen på kontanter hotar möjligheten för invånare att delta i samhället på ett likvärdigt sätt. Det kontantlösa samhället hotar inte bara dess jämlikhetsetos utan också den svenska centralbankens förmåga att tillhandahålla en garanterad statlig betalningsmekanism då affärsbanksvaluta gradvis förskjuter den offentliga centralbanksvalutan. Det svenska banksystemet fungerar därför som ett bra exempel utifrån vilket vi kan förutse konsekvenserna av ett kontantlöst globalt banksystem, samtidigt som det också kan belysa det som här kallas valutans “tethering mechanism”. Utbyte och lagerhållning av olika valutor kopplar eller skiljer användare till eller från olika institutioner, eftersom bankemitterade valutor representerar kedjor av kredit/skuld. Det ger antropologer möjlighet att studera och kartlägga dominerande sociala institutioners uppgång och fall.

Better in theory than in practise? Challenges when applying the luck egalitarian ethos in health care policy

Luck egalitarianism, a theory of distributive justice, holds that inequalities which arise due to individuals’ imprudent choices must not, as a matter of justice, be neutralized. This article deals with the possible application of luck egalitarianism to the area of health care. It seeks to investigate whether the ethos of luck egalitarianism can be operationalized to the point of informing health care policy without straying from its own ideals. In the transition from theory to practise, luck egalitarianism encounters several difficulties. We argue that the charge of moral arbitrariness can, at least in part, be countered by our provided definition of “imprudent actions” in the health area. We discuss the choice for luck egalitarianism in health care between ex ante and ex post policy approaches, and show how both approaches are flawed by luck egalitarianism’s own standards. We also examine the problem of threshold setting when luck egalitarianism is set to practise in health care. We argue that wherever policy thresholds are set, luck egalitarianism in health care risks pampering the imprudent, abandoning the prudent or, at worst, both. Furthermore, we claim that moves to mitigate these risks in turn diminish the normative importance of the ethos of luck egalitarianism to policy. All in all, our conclusion is that luck egalitarianism cannot be consistently applied as a convincing and relevant normative principle in health care policy.

Journalism and Intellect

Journalism’s resentment toward intellect is tangled up with the profession’s democratic commitments: its egalitarian ethos, identification with “the public,” ambivalence toward experts, and pleasure in holding up the haughty and highbrow to ridicule. Chapter 1 illustrates the vexed orientation of news media to intellect in templates such as the ridicule of aging Marxists and the willingness of reporters to humiliate themselves in sciencey-sounding stories. Some of these tropes could be viewed as harmless eccentricities of newswork, but the introduction reveals journalism’s complicity in reification and rationalization of a punitive public. A tactical relationship to intellect is in some respects innate to journalism. Communication is constitutive of community, which is bound by core beliefs, which are inevitably dissected by intellect. A reticence to engage with intellect can veer into bouts of overt hostility, a dynamic shaped by the obligation of mainstream media to defend moral foundations of sanctity, loyalty, and authority.

Next year, if grain is dear, I shall be a Sayyid: Sayyid Ahmad Khan, colonial constructions, and Muslim self-definitions

British social surveys and census statistics defined ‘Sayyid’ as a caste identity, while often casting a sceptical eye on the authenticity of genealogical claims associated with the concept. The article examines how Muslims, especially Sayyid Ahmad Khan, participated in the formulation of the concept of Sayyid identity and status. Islamic ideology and practice have long wrestled with conflicting claims of religious equality and hierarchical status, often based on concepts of sacred lineage. From his earliest writings Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98) emphasised his descent from the Prophet Muhammad on his father's side alongside his somewhat less exalted relationship with his Kashmiri grandfather. In later years he tried to balance universalistic ideals with claims to status based on supposedly ‘foreign’ ancestry, which he cited as parallel to the supposed Aryan ancestry of high-status Hindus. His British allies used his Sayyid ancestry as reinforcement of his leadership of an India-wide Muslim ‘community’ and evidence that India was not prepared to develop into a national polity based on representative government. But the Aligarh movement's claim to represent the wider Muslim population and in particular its educational project at Aligarh struggled with a more egalitarian ethos, defining students and the members of voluntary associations as ‘brothers’, and quite prepared to cross ascriptive boundaries both in public life and personal relationships.

Luck Egalitarianism and Relational Egalitarianism: An Internal Tension in Cohen’s Theory of Justice

Relational Egalitarianism focuses on the construction of equal social relationships between persons. It strongly opposes luck egalitarianism, which understands equality as a distributive ideal. In Cohen’s theory of justice, luck egalitarianism and relational egalitarianism simultaneously exist, and Cohen provides arguments corresponding to each. In this paper, we explore the manifestation of tension between these two forms of egalitarianism in his theory. In addition, we also reconstruct some possible solutions provided by Cohen to soften this tension, including the three approaches of market mechanism, egalitarian ethos and value pluralism, and find them to be unsuccessful. This tension is a serious challenge that needs to be addressed in Cohen’s theory of justice.

Third Parties

Since the 1830s the American two-party system has included other minor parties. This essay describes eleven of them, beginning with the Anti-Masonic Party and ending with Ross Perot’s Reform Party. The most noteworthy of the group include the American (Know-Nothing), Free Soil, People’s (Populist), Progressive, American Independent, and Reform parties. Third parties in America have always suffered from structural arrangements that included single-member legislative districts and “winner take all” election rules, and yet they have persisted. Between the 1830s and 1890s most parties grew out of populistic movements that espoused an egalitarian ethos and railed against entrenched elites. Around 1900, movement-based parties began to give way to “interest group” organizations, but in the twentieth century three third parties led by strong individuals (Theodore Roosevelt [1912], George C. Wallace [1968], and H. Ross Perot [1992]) received 27, 13, and 19 percent of the popular vote for president, respectively.