Negotiating feminine identities and condom use scripts amongst heterosexual women in Singapore

Since the contraceptive revolution in the 1960s, condoms have emerged as one of the most commonly used methods of contraception. This paper utilises gender schema theory and sexual scripts associated with gender identity to assess the relationship between women’s feminine identities and their condom use habits. By analysing the interview responses of heterosexual women in Singapore, the study also highlights the influence of social stigma on women’s condom use habits. Previous literature on gender identity and condom use indicates that women who accept traditional feminine identities also adhere to traditional condom use scripts. While the findings of the current study confirm this, they also highlight that women sometimes choose to redefine femininity and deviate from traditional condom use scripts. The paper also explores how some women, despite rejecting traditional femininity, continue to adhere to traditional condom use scripts to avoid being stigmatised.Bachelor of Art

Imaginary travellers : identity conceptualisations of the audience among travel journalists

Travel journalists cannot know each traveller for whom they write, so they must imagine what a reader wants. The subsequent journalism influences how tourists travel and engage with a foreign country and its inhabitants. This article uses an independent/connected framework of tourist behaviour to identify how travel journalists imagine their readers’ interests. Through content analysis of texts in newspapers from Asia and the West, we find that the reader is more often imagined as independent and adventurous than connected and concerned with tourist sights. However, the latter were more common in Asia, which suggests that travel writers across the globe imagine readers differently. It suggests that in an increasingly globalised world, the post-colonial power dynamic that has been a stalwart of scholarly thought on travel writing may be outdated and could be more usefully replaced by one that considers the financial privilege of tourism, seen in texts from both hemispheres.Accepted versio

Trans-boundary haze pollution in southeast asia: sustainability through plural environmental governance

Recurrent haze in Southeast Asian countries including Singapore is largely attributable to rampant forest fires in Indonesia due to, for example, extensive slash-and-burn (S & B) culture. Drawing on the “treadmill of production” and environmental governance approach, we examine causes and consequences of this culture. We found that, despite some perceived benefits, its environmental consequences include deforestation, soil erosion and degradation, global warming, threats to biodiversity, and trans-boundary haze pollution, while the societal consequences comprise regional tension, health risks, economic and productivity losses, as well as food insecurity. We propose sustainability through a plural coexistence framework of governance for targeting S & B that incorporates strategies of incentives, education and community resource management.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore)Published versio