Neoliberal visions, post-capitalist memories: Heritage politics and the counter-mapping of Singapore’s cityscape

Abstract

This paper argues that the move towards a neoliberal vision of the city-state in the postindustrial era in Singapore has not gone unchallenged. With alternative resources of collective memory, the innovations of the social media and openings within the state dominated press, the authors seek to illustrate the process of counter-mapping of Singapore’s cityscape by conservation groups. The relationship between technological affordances and citizen aspirations are discussed informed by the ethnomethodological approach, where the focus of analysis is to understand the methods by which social actors use, interpret and make sense of their own actions. In this context, we draw on a series of case studies where citizens have counter-mapped to reflect their urban aspirations, and in the process, construct meanings around the actions of counter-mapping. In the hygienic futuristic neoliberal vision of a globally connected Singapore, conservationists are pushing for a post-capitalist and localized geo-cultural topographical imagination.