Derek Da Cunha
Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2009
ISBN: 9789814266505
Singapore Places Its Bets sketches out some of the transformative bold changes that have occurred in Singapore society since the late 1990s. It focuses on Singapore's ambitious efforts to re-orient its economy to take on the challenges thrown up by the competitive pressures of globalisation, and how in the process it has had to "remake" itself. The advent of casinos is a part of that remaking process. Once repeatedly rejected by a socially conservative government that has ruled the city-state since its independence in 1965, casinos, as part of two "integrated resorts", will now be a fixture of the Singapore landscape.
The likely economic benefits and social consequences of casino gambling in a densely populated city-state are examined at length. Singapore's relatively liberal policy of allowing foreign nationals to live, study, work and take up permanent residency and citizenship will also be scrutinized largely in terms of its impact on social cohesion and national identity. Have the transformative economic and social changes that have occurred in a small country over such a short space of time, and at such breakneck speed, unwittingly morphed it from being a nation-state to being purely an economic entity? This book will provide a few answers to that and other questions.
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