ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the mutual interplay between Singapore’s politicised welfare system and the discursive practices that sustain regime survival in producing legitimacy based on performance and perpetuating shared understandings about the pragmatically necessary objectives of Singaporean collective interests. The study historically traces the role of the welfare system in attempts to embed official narratives within societal perceptions of culture, identity, and people’s self-understandings situating relations between the state and the society within these practices. It likewise explores societal dimensions of socio-economic performance by examining how it has interacted with the official discourse to shape people’s self-understandings and approaches to articulating critique towards the dominant narratives. The ensuing discursive system of knowledge has validated collectively defined grievances about socio-economic performance as legitimate concerns towards the state. Given the formative role of the welfare system, however, agents’ critical thoughts may stem from contradictions embedded in their challenge to accommodate ‘critique’ with their individual self-understandings and values associated with participation in the public sphere. This illuminates the conditionings of people’s attitudes towards participation that are inherently tied to the conditions of their lived experience.
