SINGAPORE UNLIMITED1: CONFIGURING SOCIAL IDENTITY IN THE REGIONALISATION PROCESS

Globalisation and deterritorialization of social identity It is a common belief that in the age of globalisation, powerful forces are at work restructuring the economic, technological, social and cultural domains of life so as to sweep aside all forms of localism. Global capitalism is effecting a structural shift: ‘a transfer of power from multilateral economic institutions (controlled by powerful states) to transnational forces without familiar territorial links and therefore without accountability to any formal political authority ’ (Peterson, 1996:14). However, it has also become equally clear that, far from heralding the death of geographical location, global competition has only rendered relativities of place more, not less, important. Whilst modern transportation and communications technology has improved all places' accessibility- and therefore their potential for participation in the global economy- it has also improved the economic potential of selected foci in the new international networks which it has created far more than it has improved that same potential in the rest of the world (Jackson, Huang and Yeoh, forthcoming). It has not destroyed geography or eliminated differences; it has instead created new ‘geographies with quite differen