What\'s it like to be a Singaporean intellectual? An interview with Chua Beng Huat

Abstract

Professor Chua Beng Huat is an internationally well-known and respected sociologist and cultural studies scholar from Singapore. In early 2015, his long-time collaborator and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies co-founder, Kuan-Hsing Chen, and his former student turned present colleague, Daniel Goh, interviewed Chua on the eve of his retirement as the Head of the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. This wide-ranging interview tracks a colourful biographical trajectory that expresses both the contradictions of the illiberal capitalism underpinning Singapore\'s rapid development and the strategic dilemmas and tactical travails of an intellectual clinging on to the representations of truth.