ABSTRACT
In the process of interviewing people for this project, it gradually dawned on me that the very trajectories of conversations reveal how the paradoxes of state rule in Singapore become common sense. People spent a good part of our conversations complaining about the hoops they had to jump through, lamenting the abnormality of Singaporeans’ ties to the state, and talking sociologically about the state's contradictions. Then, having gotten all this off their chests, they informed me that things have to be so. According to my respondents, the state is doing what it can. Singapore has to be this way; there is no alternative.
