Disciplining Youth: Age Relations as an Axis of Power in Colonial and Decolonizing Singapore, 1942

In this talk, Dr. Liao shared his dissertation research on the governmentality of youth in Singapore after 1942, where successive governments valorized the young as the pillar and peril of the new colony and country to be built. The government created many programs and institutions to condition, instrumentalize, and mobilize youthful bodies for their political and ideological agendas. The history of childhood and youth is inter-disciplinary in its methods and approaches. Dr. Liao shared with Cluster members how concepts from political philosophy, especially the insights of French philosopher Michel Foucault, can be used fruitfully with the history of childhood and youth's focus on age relations as a category of historical analysis to illuminate and reveal less-visible terrains and mechanics of power.  

Edgar Liao gave this talk as a final-year PhD candidate in the UBC Department of History and has since then successfully defended his dissertation. Congratulations, Dr. Liao. At the time of the talk, Dr. Liao noted that the first restaurant he will definitely go to when this global pandemic is over is Phnom Penh in East Georgia Street. We wish him well for this journey, and all future journeys!