ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some dimensions of its impact on urban social patterns and especially the fate of the “informal sector”, which in most Asian economies plays a major part in the generation of incomes, employment and services. Peripheral capitalism in this context refers to secondary economic centres in which capitalism is the primary mode of production, but which are themselves in a relationship of considerable dependency on fluctuations in the world capitalist markets for their viability. With the burgeoning of external trade and with the expansion and strengthening of the domestic economy, Singapore from the 1970s on was drawn into a new web of international economic relationships. Singapore provides an especially interesting case study of this because of the high degree of urbanisation and equally high degree of state intervention in all areas of social life.
