Hygiene in a Landlord State: Health, Cleanliness and Chewing Gum in Late Twentieth Century Singapore

This article provides historical context for Singapore’s fabled preoccupation with cleanliness. Beyond the legacy of British colonialism and post-colonial concerns with international branding, the city-state was globally unique in shifting nearly all its citizens into a new urban infrastructure in one sustained campaign. Public health bureaucracies came to play an important supporting role in the creation of this ‘landlord state’, in which health became imbricated with cleanliness and habitation, all three becoming realms of state responsibility. The ban on the importation of chewing gum in the early 1990s can also be set within this context, that substance having emerged for infrastructure builders as not just a nuisance, but a tool of low-level sabotage