Overview of Chapter

● Governmentality in Singapore: the instruments of the state, policies and

principles of society
○ As a form of population control and citizenship
○ Criteria for which entitlements and privileges are distributed to
residents in a nation state

Reproductive Citizenship
Based on:
● Structure and content of:
○ Entitlements and obligations of individuals in the modern state

Involves​: rights and duties attached to reproduction through marriage contract within
a family union
● Assumptions ​reinforced through creation of bureaucracy
○ Marriage registrations, civil rituals and birth certificates for legitimate
offsprig
● Familial and reproductive institutions
○ Fundamental to ​definition of gender identities
■ Through the process of ​modernisation​ of societies

19th Century ‘National Citizenship’

● Creation of ​national myths as carriers of masculine identities
○ State-building coincided with major international wars
■ I.e. mass conscription
○ Created ​military bureaucracy​ and ​modern taxation system
■ Processes that led to the concept of ​citizenship as a bundle of
contributory rights
● Citizenship connected with ​national goal of collective reproduction
○ Through marriages and procreation as ideals of normal adult life
■ Marriage as normative arrangement
● Citizenship​: three forms of obligation
○ Military service, work and reproduction
○ Only reproduction as fundamental to citizenship in late-modern
economies
■ Changes in nature of war and economic production

Lens of Chapter
● Contemporary connections between ​citizenship entitlement, reproduction
and identity within nation state
○ Family ideology persists despite changing attitudes towards low fertility
 ● Foucauldian paradigm of Governmentality​: citizenship as basis of
regulatory framework of modern state
○ Institution through which ​population is governed
○ Foundations of SG society​: conscription, employment and
conventional reproduction
■ Intersected in traditional family
○ Citizenship and Gender​: relationship between parenthood and
citizenship
○ Reproducing the next generation of citizens through parenthood is the
basic means of acquiring entitlements of citizenship and fulfilling its
corresponding obligations

Singapore, Reproduction and Governmentality

● Reasons for ​ultra-low fertility rates​:
○ Increase in singlehood
○ Late marriages
○ Later first child
○ Fewer children
■ Increase in single-child families
○ MOH: more instances of couples requiring medical help for conception
● Types of medical help for conception​:
○ Assisted reproduction technology (ART)
■ E.g. IVF
■ Status of Children (ART) Bill​ ​(SOC Bill, 2012)​: bill to
recognise legality of children born through ARTs
○ New reproductive technologies (NRTs)
■ E.g. egg banks and technologies for infertile couples
● First egg bank in the world as part of eugenics policy to
boost fertility, especially among educated Chinese
■ Avenue for citizens who want to have children without marriage
■ Mature couples who are outside of normal life-cycle period to
have children
○ Governmentality in NRTs​: promote desirability of fertility and
reproduction as foundation of social inclusion
■ Reproduction as means to citizenship
● Set of practices (juridical, political, economic, cultural)
which define a person as a competent member of society
● Shape the allocation of and access to resources for
persons and social groups
● Social citizenship​: one’s place as a citizen founded partly upon ​biologically
and culturally reproducing the nation​ through reproduction
 ○ NRT policy shapes citizen by ​promoting reproduction as legally
upheld moral prerogative
○ Voluntary infertility defined as selfishness
■ Involuntary fertility as personal tragedy
● Human reproduction as basis of society
○ Status of women​: role in caregiving but also in contributing to the
workforce
○ Primary social unit​: family
■ As workshop for social and biological reproduction
○ Marriage and parenthood regulate sexuality and control identity
○ Technological innovations to promote fertility are important to maintain
fertility levels
● Liberal regime in modern citizenship
○ Privileges parenthood in nuclear families
■ Defining characteristic of normal citizen and basis of social
entitlement
○ Introduction of artificial human reproduction highlights the
manner in which reproduction plays a central role in citizenship
■ Reproduction without sexual intercourse
● Deeper issues​: mothering, fatherhood, conception and creation of social self

Reproducing the Nation

Nationalism
● Produced through mythical construction of military adventures throughout
history
● Singapore: attempts to weave ‘creation story’ around independence from UK,
departure from Malaysia and successful emergence as economic Tiger
○ LKY occupying narrative
● Post-War​:
○ T.S. Eliot​: hierarchical gradation of culture essential feature of vital
cultural tradition
■ Transmission of national culture require stability of the
family

Macro-Social Processes of Nationalism

● Nationalism sustains modern masculine identity
○ National​ ​identity​ sustained and built around ​citizenship
■ National institutions of exclusionary entitlement
● Converge in reproduction​: conduit of individual entitlements
● Building blocks of Singapore society​: Confucian values
○ Stability of the family
 ○ Continuing pattern of patriarchy and patriotism as dual legacy of
monarchy and state building
● Challenges​: global transformation of national sovereignty
○ Technological transformations of reproduction, work and warfare
○ Changes to gender relationships
● Basis of individual entitlement remain legally and socially connected with
reproduction

Foucault and the Governance of Reproduction

Governmentality​: administrative structures of the state, the patterns of
self-government of individuals and regulatory principles of modern society
● Paradigm to understand ​micro-processes of administration and control
○ Union of self-regulation and social regulation
● Socio-political practices or technologies by which self is constructed
● Common foundation​ of all modern political rationality
○ Extended to maximise state’s productive ​control over demographic
processes
■ E.g. birth, morbidity, death, psychological health

Foucauldian notion of ‘power’

● Marxist notion: visible
○ Police and army
○ Concentrated in the state
○ Ownership of means of production
● Foucauldian​: invisible and exercised through legitimation of power
relationships
○ Role of ​professional knowledge​ and ​expertise
○ Subtle with emphasis on importance of knowledge and
information
■ I.e. surveillance

Power of the state under Governmentality

● Combination of ​institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections,
calculations and tactics in targeting populations
● Concerned with ​maximising productive power of administration over
population and successful reproduction
○ E.g. state involvement in and regulation of reproductive technology
● Moral value of person​: ability to reproduce
○ Demand for fertility supported by ​pro-familial ideology
○ Normal household as reproductive social unit
Normative view of reproductive health
● Apparent in ​Our Singapore Conversation initiative
○ Discussion about reasons for low fertility:
■ Rising cost of living
○ Government data and initiatives​:
■ Baby bonus, childcare and paternity leave
■ Personal income has increased fourfold (e.g. number of earning
10k per month)
● ‘Rising cost of living’ as reason​: sign of social stigma for those who feel
pressure of opting out of reproductive citizenship
○ Actual reasons:
■ Perceived incompatibility between careers and motherhood
■ Curtailment of personal freedom

Development strategies of governmentality

● T.H. Marshall​: citizenship characterised by political liberalism
○ The power lies in the state (emphasis on knowledge and information)
○ Do not directly regulate citizens
■ Create conditions for economy
■ Create policies that dictate pathways to citizenship (e.g.
participation of the self)
○ The self thinks of behaviour as rational self-interest due to the market
participation (economy)
■ Power actually lies in the state instead of the market or the self
● Evolution of citizenship through ​civil, political and social citizenship
● Citizenship​: access to enhancing productive capacities of citizens
○ Educational, health and welfare practices
○ Welfare state enhance productivity and longevity of labour

Pathways to Citizenship
Citizenship​:
● an inclusionary process for the allocation of collective resources
● an exclusionary process of building identities on the basis of an imagined
solidarity
● Modern citizenship​: mechanisms for allocation of scarce resources
○ Strong identities on assumptions of ethnicity, religion and sexuality
● National citizenship​: (19th Century) racial categories based on ascribed
ethnic or national identity
● Processes organised around number of principles for specific
contributions to society through war service, reproduction, work
○ Bundle of military, sexual and economic rights and obligations
Historically​:
● Involvement of men in formal labour market
○ Entitlements: work care, insurance cover, retirement benefits, health
care
○ Locke’s Political Theory
■ Fundamental to civic society
● Service to state through warfare and range of entitlements for soldier
citizen
● Entitlements through formation of households and families
○ Mechanisms for reproduction of society
■ Birth, maintenance and socialisation of children
○ Private sphere
○ Entitlements to both men and women as parents
■ Reproducers of nation states
■ Sexual activity in wedlock as private activity
● State and church taken profound and systematic interest
in conditions and consequences
○ Reproduction as principal feature of the regulatory activity of
modern state

Challenges for Reproductive Citizenship

● Equal disbursements of entitlements to ​minorities or new immigrants
○ Who boost TFR
● Suspicions of high TFR among minorities
○ Singapore:
■ Malays - 1.64
■ Chinese - 1.08
○ Halimah Yaacob​: Malay community facing same social pressures as
the rest
○ Social position of minority indigenous community and
reproduction as rite of passage to citizenship is unclear
■ Discrimination in various spheres (e.g. workplace and military)
despite higher TFR

NRTs and Social Imperatives of Families

Infertility as a Social Problem
● Various medical interventions
○ NRTs provide ​potential to older women
○ Norms​:
■ Alleged psychological benefits of motherhood
 ■ Availability of medical technology
● Determined by public (medicine and health) policies
● Sources of infertility:
○ ‘Socially induced infertility’​: e.g. lifestyle changes, patterns of marriage
and divorce, contraceptive use and employment
○ ‘Organic disease’​: medically defined infertility
■ Legitimate policy status
○ ‘Social non-biomedical condition’​: unmarried women or widows
■ Infertility due to sexual orientations or death of partners
● Risk of NRTs for those outside of organic infertility
○ Do not fit definition and typical normal reproduction
○ ‘Socio-cultural risk’
■ Culturally accepted form of reproduction:
● Shaped by medicine and public policy
● Bind citizens into standardised access to resources
○ ‘Moral panic’​ due to threat to normal idea of society
■ Concern is ​unfounded​ due to low success rates
■ Due to ​broad movement to reassert norms of family and
reproduction
■ Singapore​: national ideology to maintain family
● Prevent divorces and support NRTs within traditional
family nucleus
● Possible reasons​:
○ Normative role and status of reproduction in society
■ Inability to conceive as individual and social problem
○ Gender and sexual roles​: structured around raising children as rite of
passage into adulthood
■ Helen Marshall (1993)​: ‘childless by choice’
● Ideology of pronatalism through ​deliberate rejection
ideology
■ To remain childless is to perpetually be an adolescent
● Marginal status in society
● Sterilisation produces ‘regression to child status’
● Modern societies use technological solutions to social problems
○ Infertility treatments have ​normalising impact
■ Increase accessibility to reproduction
■ Promoting desirability of having and raising children

Gender norms through public policy

● Pro-natal and pro-maternal stance for economic reasons
○ Women constructed for reproduction and raising children
■ Inherent gendered national population policies
 ● Feminists​: reproduction policies act as normative force for women and
families
○ Domestic sphere has illusionary separation from public sphere
■ Social policies are actually ​implicit family policies
○ Power of the state over women citizens​: lives directed towards
position of relative dependency in family
■ Concentration in ​workforce​ characterised by ​low pay,
insecurity, absence of job autonomy
■ Public policies ​perpetuate perception of women as mothers
and homemakers
○ Net effect of reinforcement of women’s predominant social role
within private, powerless domestic sphere

Ideology of Marriage and Family in Public Policy

● Cultural values of women ​enforced and reinforced by legitimate authority
of the state
● ‘Informal provider of services’
● Differential citizenship of men​ due to women located in private domain
○ Women in SG in double-bind​:
■ Scrutiny due to ultra-low fertility rate
■ Policies and programmes to encourage returning to workforce

Regulating Artificial Reproduction

Cultural power of medicine and ideology of reproduction
● Regulation or absence of regulation of state regulation of NRTs are due to
ideology
● Reasons to reinforce culturally embedded values about ‘normal families’

Cultural tie between reproduction and sexual intercourse

● Strong link between masculinity and fertility
● ‘Femininity’ fo women unable/unwilling to bear children are questioned
○ Fertile = reproductive
■ Fertile now have option to not reproduce
■ Infertile may reproduce without coitus
● Privilege of foetal and masculine rights in NRT laws
○ Dominance of masculine scientific discourse
○ Policy focus on embryos
○ EXCLUSION OF CONCERNS OF WOMEN FROM POLICY
OUTCOMES​: SCIENTIFIC REPRODUCTION REQUIRES
SUBORDINATION OF WOMEN
● Normative assumption of natural state of womanhood as mothering
 ○ Implicitly accept introduction of NRTs with emphasis on welfare on
embryos and children
● Men’s interests in genetic heredity at expense of women
○ Sperm micro-injection reinforces ​women’s subordinate reproductive
rights
■ Responsibility for bearing genetic children
■ Gaze (1992)​: women’s informed consent not genuine choice
● Gender issues dismissed as ‘unimportant, incomprehensible, irrational
or not based on adequate knowledge’
○ Impact on women’s reproductive autonomy
○ Impact on rights as citizens to equal protection under the law
● Issues of surrogacy
○ Renders birth mother invisible or secondary to ‘normal’ social parents
● NRTs not ideologically neutral
○ Reaffirms women’s role as mothers in a time when women bearing
fewer children than ever before

Dilemma over contribution of biological factors to family life

● Ideology: maintaining ‘normal’ families
○ Challenges: ‘abnormal’ reproduction methods
● Policy making influenced by ideology and serve to reinforce traditional
ideals
○ E.g. policies for NRTs
● Charo (1994)​: location of power over fertility and limits of control
○ Public policy on fertility focused on ​eugenic goals and medicalisation
of reproduction
■ Physicians as gatekeepers​ to ensure procedures occur within
suitable familial context
○ Neglect for contraception and sexual morality
■ Focus on power of women to control reproductive capabilities
and lives
● Focus of NRTs on foetuses and primacy of nuclear family
○ No mention on women’s concerns
○ Unquestioning acceptance of ideology of motherhood
○ Neglect of investigation into broader cultural implications

Conclusion: Reproduction and Governmentality

● Close connection between entitlement and three pathways to citizenship
○ Warfare, work and reproduction
○ Decline in warfare and mass full time employment
 ○ Reproduction and family formation remain vibrant routes into
citizenship status as parent
■ Infertility as medical problem
■ Childless women as ‘problematic’ for deviating from norms of
reproductive citizenship
■ Strong support for NRTs
● Classical economy critical of luxuries representing unproductive
consumption
○ Islam, Judaism and Christianity enjoining men and women to multiply
○ Voluntary childlessness seen as engaging in pleasurable but
unproductive sexual intercourse
○ Economic investment in NRTs justified in sustaining natural and
normal desire to reproduce
● Real issue of connection between state, citizenship entitlement and
parenthood
○ T.H. Marshall model of citizenship: political liberalism
■ Based on ​nuclear family as basic social unit

Citizenship exercises a normalising function over society whereby its

regulatory institutions positively produce and manage population issues at
both micro (clinical) and macro (state) levels.