Hostname: page-component-669899f699-swprf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-24T23:52:31.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pragmatic Resistance, Law, and Social Movements in Authoritarian States: The Case of Gay Collective Action in Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Lynette J. Chua
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article draws from a qualitative study of Singapore's gay movement to analyze how gay organizing occurs in authoritarian states, and where and how law matters. Singapore's gay activists engage in “strategic adaptation” to deploy a strategy of pragmatic resistance that involves an interplay among legal restrictions and cultural norms. Balancing the movement's survival with its advancement, they shun direct confrontation, and avoid being seen as a threat to the existing political order. As legal restrictions and as a source of legitimacy, law correspondingly oppresses sexual conduct and civil-political liberties, and culturally delegitimizes dissent. However, when activists mount pragmatic resistance at and through law, it also matters as a source of contestation. Further, law matters as a trade-off between reifying the existing order in exchange for survival and immediate gains. Yet, by treating law as purely tactical, these activists arguably end up de-centering law, being pragmatically unconcerned with whether they are ideologically challenging or being co-opted by it.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 713 - 748
Copyright
© 2012 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Funding was provided by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation (SES-0962129), University of California, Berkeley, and National University of Singapore. I wish to thank Kristin Luker, Catherine Albiston, Calvin Morrill, Kim Voss, Mark Massoud, Indulekshimi Rajeswari, the editors and anonymous reviewers, and the audiences at the Law and Society Association, Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Melbourne, Australian National University, and National University of Singapore, where earlier versions of this article were presented. Most of all, I am grateful to the study respondents.

References

References

Adam, Barry D, et al. (1999a) “Gay and Lesbian Movements beyond Borders? National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement,” in Adam, Barry D., Duyvendak, Jan W., & Krouwel, Andre, eds., The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Adam, Barry D., et al., eds. (1999b) The Global Emergence of Gay and Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Altman, Dennis (2001) Global Sex. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, Ellen Ann (2005) Out of the Closets and Into the Courts: Legal Opportunity Structure and Gay Rights Litigation. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Elizabeth A. (2002) Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950–1994. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Barkan, Steven (1977) “Political Trials and the Pro Se Defendant in the Adversary System,” 24 Social Problems 324–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkan, Steven (1980) “Political Trials and Resource Mobilization: Towards an Understanding of Social Movement Litigation,” 58 Social Forces 944–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkan, Steven (1984) “Legal Control of the Southern Civil Rights Movement,” 49 American Sociological Rev. 552–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkan, Steven (1985) Protestors on Trial: Criminal Prosecutions in the Southern Civil Rights and Vietnam Antiwar Movements. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkan, Steven (2006) “Criminal Prosecution and the Legal Control of Protest,” 11 Mobilization 181–95.Google Scholar
Blackwood, Evelyn (2007) “Regulation of Sexuality in Indonesian Discourse: Normative Gender, Criminal Law and Shifting Strategies of Control,” 9 Culture, Health & Sexuality 293–307.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bob, Clifford (2005) The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bob, Clifford, ed. (2009) The International Struggle for New Human Rights. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boudreau, Vince (2005) “Precarious Regimes and Matchup Problems in the Explanation of Repressive Policy,” in Davenport et al.Google Scholar
Boudreau, Vince (2009) Resisting Dictatorship: Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Brockett, Charles D. (1995) “A Protest-Cycle Resolution of the Repression/Popular-Protest Paradox,” in Traugott, M., ed., Repertoires & Cycles of Collective Action. Durham: Duke Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Stephen (1999) “Democracy and Sexual Difference: The Lesbian and Gay Movement in Argentina,” in Adam, Barry D., Duyvendak, Jan W., & Krouwel, Andre, eds., The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Central Intelligence Agency (2010) The World Factbook. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency.Google Scholar
Chua, Lynette J. (2003) “Saying No: Sections 377 and 377A of the Penal Code,” Singapore J. of Legal Studies 209–61.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jean L. (1985) “Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social Movements,” 52 Social Research 663–716.Google Scholar
Currier, Ashley (2009) “Deferral of Legal Tactics: A Global LGBT Social Movement Organization's Perspective,” in Barclay, S., et al., ed., Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law. New York: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar
D'Emilio, John (1998) Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davenport, Christian (2005) “Repression and Mobilization: Insights from Political Science and Sociology,” in Davenport et al., eds., Repression and Mobilization. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Davenport, Christian, et al., eds. (2005) Repression and Mobilization. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Drucker, Peter (2000) “Introduction: Remapping Sexualities,” in Drucker, P., ed., Different Rainbows. London: Gay Men's Press.Google Scholar
Earl, Jennifer (2003) “Tanks, Tear Gas, and Taxes: Toward a Theory of Movement Repression,” 21 Sociological Theory 44–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earl, Jennifer (2005) “You Can Beat the Rap, But You Can't Beat the Ride” : Bringing Arrests Back into Research on Repression,” 26 Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 101–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earl, Jennifer (2006) “Introduction: Repression and the Social Control of Protest,” 11 Mobilization 129–43.Google Scholar
Emerson, Robert M., et al. (1995) Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Essig, Laurie (1999) Queer in Russia. Durham: Duke Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, & Silbey, Susan S. (1998) The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm (1979) The Process is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Fernandez, Luis A. (2009) Policing Dissent: Social Control and the Anti-globalization Movement. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Gamson, Josh (1989) “Silence, Death, and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social Movement ‘Newness’,” 37 Social Problems 351–67.Google Scholar
Gevisser, Mark (1995) “A Different Fight for Freedom: A History of South African Lesbian and Gay Organisation from the 1950s to the 1990s,” in Gevisser, M., & Cameron, E., eds., Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa. New York: Routledge. 14–88.Google Scholar
Gilliom, John (2001) Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Resistance, and the Limits of Privacy. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goddard, Keith (2004) “A Fair Representation: GALZ and the History of the Gay Movement in Zimbabwe,” 16 J. of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 75–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graff, Agnieszka (2006) “We Are (Not All) Homophobes: A Report from Poland,” 32 Feminist Studies 434–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruszczynska, Anna (2009) “Sowing the Seeds of Solidarity in Public Space: Case Study of the Poznan March of Equality,” 12 Sexualities 312–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1984) Theory of Communicative Action. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hildebrandt, Timothy (2012) “Development and Division: The Effect of Transnational Linkages and Local Politics on LGBT Activism in China,” 21 J. of Contemporary China 845–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Michael, & Lian, Kwen Fee (1995) The Politics of Nation Building and Citizenship in Singapore. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hoad, Neville (1999) “Between the White Man's Burden and the White Man's Disease,” 5 GLQ: A J. of Lesbian and Gay Studies 559–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Hank (2005) “Talking the Walk: Speech Acts and Resistance in Authoritarian Regimes,” in Davenport et al.Google Scholar
Johnston, Hank (2006) “ “Let's Get Small” : The Dynamics of (Small) Contention in Repressive States,” 11 Mobilization 195–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keck, Margaret E., & Sikkink, Kathryn (1998) Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Keshishoglou, John, & Aquilia, Pieter (2004) Electronic Broadcast Media in Singapore and the Region. Singapore: Nanyang Technological University.Google Scholar
Kirchheimer, Otto (1961) Political Justice: The Use of Legal Procedure for Political Ends. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Kurzman, Charles (1996) “Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social-Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979,” 61 American Sociological Rev. 153–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Kuan Yew (1998) The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore: Times Editions.Google Scholar
Leifer, Michael (1964) “Communal Violence in Singapore,” 4 Asian Survey 1115–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, Scott (1999) “Gay and Lesbian Movements in Eastern Europe: Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic,” in Adam et al. 1999b.Google Scholar
Loveman, Mara (1998) “High-risk Collective Action: Defending Human Rights in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina,” 104 American J. of Sociology 477–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukács, Georg (1920) “Legality and Illegality,” in Lukács, G., ed., History and Class Consciousness. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/ch06.htm (accessed 1 Mar 2012).Google Scholar
Lyons, Lenore (2004) A State of Ambivalence: The Feminist Movement in Singapore. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massad, Joseph A. (2007) Desiring Arabs. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massoud, Mark Fathi (2011) “Do Victims of War Need International Law? Human Rights Education Programs in Authoritarian Sudan,” 45 Law & Society Rev. 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauzy, Diane K., & Milne, R. S. (2002) Singapore Politics under the People's Action Party. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1983) “Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency,” 48 American Sociological Rev. 735–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1996) “Conceptual Origins, Current Problems, Future Directions,” in McAdam, D., et al., ed., Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1999) Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1950, 2nd ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCammon, Holly J., et al. (2008) “Becoming Full Citizens: The U.S. Women's Jury Rights Campaigns, the Pace of Reform, and Strategic Adaptation,” 113 American J. of Sociology 1104–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, Michael (1994) Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally E. (1995) “Resistance and the Cultural Power of Law,” 29 Law & Society Rev. 11–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, Sally E. (2006) Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nemtsev, Mikhail (2008) “How Did a Sexual Minorities Movement Emerge in Post-Soviet Russian?,” Unpublished paper, Central European University.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin J., & Li, Lianjiang (2006) Rightful Resistance in Rural China. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oberschall, Anthony (1978) “The Decline of the 1960s Social Movements,” 1 Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 257–89.Google Scholar
Palmberg, Mai (1999) “Emerging Visibility of Gays and Lesbians in Southern Africa: Contrasting Contexts,” in Adam, Barry D., Duyvendak, Jan W., & Krouwel, Andre, eds., The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald (2008) The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change?, 2nd ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarat, Austin (1990) “ ‘… The Law Is All Over’: Power, Resistance and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor,” 2 Yale J. of Law and the Humanities 343–79.Google Scholar
Schock, Kurt (1999) “People Power and Political Opportunities: Social Movement Mobilization and Outcomes in the Philippines and Burma,” 46 Social Problems 355–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, James C. (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Gordon (2003) “Globalization and the Rule of Law: ‘A Machine that Runs of Itself?’,” 1 International J. of Constitutional Law 427–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David, & Benford, Robert (1992) “Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,” in Morris, A. D., & Mueller, C. M., eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. 133–55.Google Scholar
Spires, Anthony J. (2011) “Contingent Symbiosis and Civil Society in an Authoritarian State: Understanding the Survival of China's Grassroots NGOs,” 117 American J. of Sociology 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Su, Yang, & He, Xin (2010) “Street as Courtroom: State Accommodation of Labor Protest in South China,” 44 Law & Society Rev. 157–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thayer, Millie (1997) “Identity, Revolution, and Democracy: Lesbian Movements in Central America,” 44 Social Problems 386–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Heritage Foundation (2011) Economic Freedom Index. Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Chng Suan Tze v. Minister of Home Affairs (Singapore Court of Appeal 1989) 1 Malayan Law J. 69.Google Scholar
Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi (Indian Delhi High Court 2009) 160 Delhi Law Times 277.Google Scholar
Tan Eng Hong v. Attorney-General (Singapore High Court 2011) Unreported judgment.Google Scholar
Tan Eng Hong v. Attorney-General (Singapore Court of Appeal 2012) 45.Google Scholar

Singapore Statutes and Regulations Cited

Broadcasting Act, Cap. 28.Google Scholar
Constitution of the Republic of Singapore.Google Scholar
Free-to-air Television Programme Code, Media Development Authority of Singapore.Google Scholar
Newspaper and Printing Presses Act, Cap. 206.Google Scholar
Penal Code, Cap. 224.Google Scholar
Public Order Act, Cap. 257A.Google Scholar
Public Order (Exempt Assemblies & Processions) Order 2009.Google Scholar
Public Order (Unrestricted Area) Order 2012.Google Scholar
Societies Act, Cap. 311.Google Scholar