2014 9th Graduate Forum - Building the Neo Liberal Asian Family

Title : 2014 9th Graduate Forum - Building the Neo-Liberal Asian Family

Date : 25 Jun 2014

Venue : Bukit Timah Campus, NUS

Organiser : Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Synopsis : Keynote address by Prof Jonathan Rigg

Political leaders and policy-makers in Asia, even some scholars, have suggested that the region's economic transformation would not be accompanied by the same social shocks and perturbations evident in the West. Nowhere, arguably, has the case for Asian exceptionalism had more purchase than with regard to the family and family relations. It is in the resilience of Asian family structures, values and norms in the face of rapid economic transformation where we find the Asian difference being most obviously manifested. Debates about the resilience of the Asian family have not, however, fully come to terms with the way in which the mechanics of economic transformation would re-engineer societal arrangements and structures and, in turn, social and cultural norms. Falling fertility rates, an ageing population, growing levels of migration and mobility, the entry of women - especially young, unmarried women - into the non-farm workforce, rising levels of education, smaller families, declining terms of trade between the farm and non-farm sectors, all this and more have had enormous societal implications. The status quo, even while familial ties, obligations and responsibilities may have remained strong, has sometimes been impossible to sustain. This paper will explore the ways in which the Asian family has adjusted itself in light of these forces.
Jonathan Rigg is a development geographer concerned with highlighting and explaining patterns and processes of social, economic and environmental change in the Asian region and the impacts of such changes on ordinary people and everyday life. In his work, he has tried to give a 'face' to the individuals buffeted by modernisation and ascribe to such people an agency which is sometimes absent in higher level interpretations of change. He has been concerned to treat ordinary people as special and the geographical contexts in which they live - and which they help to shape - as distinctive.