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Podcast: New Books in Human Rights
Episode: Lynette J. Chua, “Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State” (Temple UP, 2014)
Description: Singapore has a well-deserved reputation as a state that stifles dissent and polices activism. But as Lynette Chua shows in Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State (National University of Singapore Press, 2014), repressive government nowhere goes unchallenged, even if the forms that resistance takes are not manifest. Turning away from social movement theory that tends to valorize public protest and other forms of highly visible contentious politics, Chua tells another story: a story of contingent, incremental gains through strategic adaptation; a story of “pragmatic resistance” to authoritarianism.Mobilizing Gay Singapore is a highly readable and...