Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

142 CHUA BENG HUAT AND TAN JOO EAN
Table 5.2 Distribution of monthly household income (from all sources), 1990
Source: Dept of Statistics (1992: table 13).
or tertiary-educated professionals, may be able to enjoy the lifestyle of the middle
class comfortably.
Finally, the 3 per cent of total households with monthly incomes of more than
$10,000 are clearly the ‘rich’. They include the families of capital owners, top civil
servants, multinational corporate executives and successful professionals. Here the
privilege of wealth, which includes escaping the clutches of the nation-state, are
enjoyed.
A substantive point must be noted here. Given that the wealth of Singapore as a
whole is of very recent origin, the middle class and a significant portion of the 3 per
cent rich are also of recent origin. They constitute the nation’s ‘new rich’ and
represent the majority of Singaporeans. The former minority middle class, made
up of English-educated, Straits-born colonial civil servants, has either declined or
been absorbed into, and become indistinguishable from, the larger new middle
class.
This fourfold classification (poor, working class, middle class and rich) provides
a framework for examining the differences in cultural expression of the emerging
social classes in Singapore. Obviously, the cultural expressions of different classes
are blurred at the boundaries. However, those who can be placed squarely within
each category will have fairly distinct patterns, which may be abstracted and
generalised. For the purpose of bringing these differences into sharp relief, it is the
generalisable portrait of each category that will be subject to our analysis.
HOMOGENISED POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND
BEHAVIOUR
One of the terrains in which we might expect class differences to be expressed is
that of political culture. This, however, appears not to be the case in Singapore.