Think of Singapore instead as the Air-Conditioned Nation—a society with a unique blend of comfort and central control, where people have mastered their environment, but at the cost of individual autonomy, and at the risk of unsustainability."
Air-Conditioned Nation Revisited is an anthology of essays on Singapore politics by Cherian George. It draws upon his influential collection Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation (2000), on the country's politics of comfort and control, and from Singapore, Incomplete (2017), on its underdeveloped democracy. Updated for the impending transition to a new generation of leaders, this 20th anniversary edition of Air-Conditioned Nation offers critical reflections on continuity and change in Singapore’s unique political culture.
About the Author
Cherian George, born in Singapore in 1965, is a journalist-turned-academic who has written on Singapore politics for 30 years. After studying social and political sciences at Cambridge and journalism at Columbia, he spent the 1990s working at the Straits Times. He received his PhD in communication at Stanford in 2003 and is currently a professor of media studies at Hong Kong Baptist University.
He researches media freedom, censorship, and hate propaganda in Asia and around the world. His six previous books include Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and its Threat to Democracy (MIT Press), which was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the 100 Best Books of 2016.