Pages : 288
Written by Associate Professor and Provost’s Chair of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, This is What Inequality Looks Like is a searing ethnography of poverty in Singapore. Often swept under the carpet because they challenges our national narrative of progress, poverty and inequality remain a difficult truth that many Singaporeans choose to overlook. Having developed from a third-world country to a first-world one in merely 50 years or so, much of Singapore’s “pioneer generation” (those that lived or were born in Singapore before Singapore was a thing) grew up in conditions of poverty rivalling those of the poor now, but refuse to acknowledge that being poor in a third-world country is not equal to being poor in a first-world one. This, among other problems, is why poverty is so inexplicably tied to social inequality in Singapore. Teo Yeo Yenn brings poverty to the spotlight with this collection of eloquently written essays that incorporate a surprisingly personal touch, making it clear that Singapore’s poor are denied dignity and made invisible by willful and sometimes intentional blindness on the part of the general public. It is a very thought-provoking read, and I definitely recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning more about Singapore.