Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State. By Lynette J. Chua. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014. 215 pp. $69.50 cloth.

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12156
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Published date: 01 September 2015

Book Reviews

Jinee Lokaneeta, Editor

Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian

State. By Lynette J. Chua. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,

2014. 215 pp. $69.50 cloth.

Reviewed by Joshua C. Wilson, Department of Political Science,

University of Denver

What can activists do when an authoritarian state wary of anything

that can be perceived as a challenge to its power, and a socially con-

servative society that values stability and nonconfrontation, combine

to cut off all readily recognizable avenues to collective organizing

and action? One answer, as described in Lynette Chua’s book Mobi-

lizing Gay Singapore, is to employ “pragmatic resistance”—a unique

and creative form of activism that subtly pushes boundaries while

appearing, at the same time, to stay within them.

Looking at gay activism in Singapore from the early-1990s to

2013, Professor Chua examines how activists created, preserved,

and advanced the gay movement by interpreting and subsequently

responding to changes—both concrete and implied—in the city-

state’s social and political conditions. The book blends a concise

explanation of Singapore’s sociopolitical history with activist inter-

views to both recount the course of gay activism in Singapore and

to develop a model of how activism can be undertaken in an author-

itarian state via pragmatic resistance.

As a general term, pragmatic resistance is a way of understand-

ing how activists pull on their “contextually embedded knowledge

and experiences as resources” (p. 16) to read political and cultural

environments, develop movement tactics, and then revise them as

experience is gained and/or as conditions are perceived to change.

Within the specific context of Mobilizing Gay Singapore, pragmatic

resistance takes the form of activists avoiding direct conflict with the

state, ensuring the legality of the movement’s public actions, mak-

ing narrow claims that both appeal to the value of social stability

and are careful to not be perceived as broader rights claims, and,

finally, appealing to the need to preserve a certain international

image of Singapore.

Law & Society Review, Volume 49, Number 3 (2015)

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