JY 00:08
Welcome to the latest episode of Lecture Theatre. With us today we have Lynette Chua, associate professor of law at the National University of Singapore as well as Head of Law and Liberal Studies at Yale-NUS College. Professor Chua has authored two books. The first is a really influential ethnography of the LGBTQ movement in Singapore titled Mobilizing Gay Singapore. It came out in 2014. And just this year [2019], she published a new book on the Politics of Love in Myanmar, an account of the LGBTQ movement in another Southeast Asian country. Thank you so much for being with us today.
So tell us a bit more about your life story. Why, and how, did you become an academic?
Lynette 01:02
I started out in Malaysia, and I went through the public school system in the Chinese language stream in East Malaysia, Primary 1 through Primary 6. And then I completed my secondary education in what is known as an independent Chinese school in Malaysia. So I did six years of that. And after that, I wanted to go overseas. And I was fortunate enough to be able to do an undergraduate degree in the US. I focused on journalism. So that took me about three and a half years. And then I was a journalist for a little while in the States. At the time I really wasn't planning on becoming academic. I was doing what I felt I wanted to do as a young person—exploring different interests.
Shortly after working at a newspaper in the States, I wanted to try something different. I wanted to be back in Southeast Asia. I had an interest in studying law. And so that's how I applied to NUS Law School and I got accepted. And then law became my second degree. I never had the plan of becoming a lawyer; I was not interested in practicing at the law firm. I was always interested in the intellectual side of studying law and understanding and analyzing issues. So after I finished law school, I did not go to a law firm, I worked outside for two years. And then one thing led to another and I went on to go overseas to pursue my PhD. And so that was 2005. The PhD program I was accepted into was Jurisprudence and Social policy, known as JSP, at the University of California, Berkeley, and that really started my path on becoming an academic. I fell in love with doing all the things that academics do: research, writing, teaching. And so that's how I ended up also being hired by my alma mater, NUS Law. And so I started teaching at NUS after I graduated with my PhD in 2011.
JY 04:02
Do you think having this kind of nonlinear path and having exposure to three fields—law, journalism, and sociology—has made you a more insightful writer and thinker?
Lynette 04:16
I'm not too sure. I think maybe it has made me a different kind of legal scholar. I wasn't interested in following the path of what many of my colleagues at NUS Law do, and do well— either doing legal theory or doing doctrinal case analysis. Your conventional sort of legal scholar. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. And that's why JSP at UC Berkeley was a good fit for me. It had a great influence on the way that I thought about the research that I wanted to do.
Perhaps I also felt that I was never really in sync with my so-called cohort—if you can go by that. I'm not sure what cohort I am. And so there is no sense of, "how would I be in comparison to my peers?" I never really thought about it in that way. So I just pursued what I thought was important and interesting to me.
JY 05:27
So let's talk a bit more about your field of study, which I think we might broadly categorize as law and society. For listeners who are less familiar, tell us more about this field, and how it has developed in Singapore.
Lynette 05:44
I think it's one of those fields where, when you talk about origins, every sort of research tradition—North American, Continental European, British, and different countries in Asia—has their own origins story. But I think there are some common strands across them. One of them would be that they are all interested in the interactions and relationship between, well, guess what? Law and society. That means that the way they try to understand law is beyond understanding the interpretation of statutes, analyzing the judgments by the courts, or making prescriptive philosophical arguments about how the law ought to be. We're really interested in understanding social processes in which law might be involved and embedded in the lives of actors. So it is not just about whether an argument or judgment of a court had been correctly written, or whether the statute is correctly interpreted.
Rather, it is trying to understand how a law that's on the books actually plays out in real life. Does it really have any impact in changing or regulating conduct, thinking and behavior of people? How does it change the way we think about ourselves, if at all? Do people actually use the law and if they do, in what ways? Those ways may involve actions apart from going to court. It could be the way it changes the way you relate to your employer, for instance, or the way you think about yourself as a citizen.
So it involves looking at not just formal legal actors, not just formal legal arenas, which we can imagine to be courts, lawyers and judges. Although we do study that, we are also looking at the lives of activists and the lives of ordinary people and how they understand law and interact with it. And that means that their interpretation of law may diverge quite greatly from the way that judges or lawyers will understand it, or how the drafters of law intended it to be used.
JY 08:19
Have legal scholars and students in NUS and Yale-NUS been receptive to this approach to legal studies?
Lynette 08:28
The kind of work that I do is not so common within the faculty. But I think that there are people who are interested in what I do. They may not necessarily see themselves going down that path. But I say I've been fortunate to have found colleagues and students who are interested, although you know, it's not in great numbers. It's a little bit far left, in a sense.
JY 08:58
Well, so let's talk a bit about your first book, Mobilising Gay Singapore. In the book, you argued that pragmatic resistance has structured the way in which activists in Singapore pursue their goals. It's just been a few years since 2014. Yet, so much seems to have changed. We are on the cusp of a new constitutional challenge against 377A. So I was wondering if you can just reflect on the book and how your thinking has evolved or has been borne out by events since.
Lynette 09:33
Since the publication of the book, I've not conducted serious field work or research on LGBT groups in Singapore. The only piece I did after that, in terms of original field work, was following the process of litigation through the courts. That was the only other extra piece of work that I did since the publication of the book. So what I have to say isn't really grounded in thorough analysis of the data.
When I talked about pragmatic resistance in the book, it was never intended as a prescription or normative argument as to what the groups should be doing. Rather, it was a theoretical framework for understanding what I've learned about the movement from the 90s, up to the point that I finished. So it's a way of theorizing about the data rather than looking ahead and saying this is, you know, pragmatic resistance, and this is what you should, what you shouldn't do.
If you looked at the strategies and tactics that have been used since the publication of the book, some people might take the view that, well, maybe this is no longer a theoretical framework that can explain what's going on. Another view, which I might lean toward—and my view is nowhere conclusive— is to say that these are just changes in strategies and tactics that can still be explained using pragmatic resistance.
Over the years, in cumulation, the boundaries—perhaps at least in the perception of activists—have shifted and changed. And what was not seen as advisable to carry out 10 years ago, now is accepted as a way of doing things. Even compared to the 1990s, up to when Pink Dot first started, the strategies and tactics have changed. But that's part of the explanatory power, I think, of the theoretical framework of pragmatic resistance. I stand to be corrected.
JY 12:45
So the boundaries of what is pragmatic have shifted?
Lynette 12:52
The thing that I hope people do remember is that it's not an objective shifting, necessarily. It sometimes is what you perceive in the subjective interpretation of an activist. Or perhaps people feel that there been a few constitutional challenges—while they were not successful in the courts, but hey, you know, it has been done. Now, that boundary has been shifted—there is this perception that it's doable, and we can try it again. That's what I'm thinking—that for some actors, that's what they're thinking.
JY 13:30
So let's turn to talk a bit more about your latest book that came out earlier this year, The Politics of Love in Myanmar. It has been a while since I've read it, but I really enjoyed it. But for those of us who haven't read it, do you think you can sum up the argument very quickly?
Lynette 13:55
Lots of times when people talk about human rights, or when they study human rights, you encounter different kinds of arguments about whether human rights are universal. They are intended to be salvation for certain problems or a panacea for certain problems. Another camp would say there are many problems with human rights. They create inequalities in distribution of resources, and they are external discourses that are imported into a country or society that may not be familiar with it. And often some of these arguments are made normatively; it's based on legal theory or philosophical arguments. Some of these arguments are based on research that is grounded in ethnography or other kinds of empirical data. So I come from the latter approach in terms of grounding my research in ethnography .
Instead of what rights mean, or what they should mean, in the formal instruments, I was looking at people on the ground who come into contact with human rights—how they interpret it, how they understand it, and how they make it relevant or choose not to make it relevant, in some cases, in their lives or in the issues that they care about. So this is the approach that I'm coming from. Through the fieldwork that I did among the activists and people related to organizations in the LGBT movement, I tried to understand how the LGBTQ movement came about; how human rights played a role in the in the practice, the formation and the perpetuation of the movement; its strategies and tactics; and what sort of consequences and effects that came out of practicing human rights and putting human rights in action.
So what I found was that human rights practice for these activists formed a way of life for them, in the sense that it changed the way they understood who they are. It gave them a different meaning about their place in society. And it was through that, that they managed to come together and saw themselves as being linked through a certain identity that has coalesced around human rights, and in this case, LGBTQ identities. And it's through the formation of this movement, that they slowly tried to make claims against the state. So I'm not just looking at whether they were successful in making state claims, but how it started with the way they understood and felt about themselves.
Integral to this analysis is the idea that human rights practice is not just about understanding the substantive meanings of human rights. For instance, what does equality for all mean? What does human dignity mean? Those are all important in adapting human rights to the local context, and putting it into interaction with local norms, and local beliefs and understandings. That's important. But human rights practice is also intricately weaved into relationships and emotions. So to understand human rights is also to feel. It is also about building bonds, and creating fellowship and friendship and creating identities with an affinity bond. And those were all integral to what I call the emotional fealty that activists have to human rights and their emotional bonds to each other as activists.
JY 18:52
So was there a moment where you came to realize that emotion and affect will be central to your argument?
Lynette 19:01
No, this is completely arising from the fieldwork I did. I went to the field not looking for it. It just came to me through the field work, through the interviews. And over time, I felt that this was a very important theme. I started to explore the literature, and analyzed the interview data and all the supplementary data that I had more closely, with that in mind.
JY 19:33
And did you consider any alternative theoretical frameworks?
Lynette 19:37
Of course,a very different person doing this research may have a completely different take. That's why it's called interpretive fieldwork. I could go back and look at the data and tell a very different story. And it could still be quite persuasive and convincing, but this is a story that I felt very strongly is the version that I want to tell.
JY 20:05
Tell us more about the Myanmar context. Is there any particular challenge or reward to doing fieldwork in Myanmar?
Lynette 20:13
Well, this is where I sort of reflect on my positionality as a researcher. There's a language issue and I'm am outsider; I'm, you know, not Burmese. So all these are considerations that any researcher would have when they go into the field. And I think these are issues that I thought about a lot throughout the work. Similarly for the Singaporean context, although it's easier not to be seen as an outsider— being Malaysian and having lived in Singapore before—in some ways, I was still an outsider. But I think the Myanmar project made me reflect much more than I did in the Singaporean project.
JY 21:05
And what does being an outsider do to the way you conduct yourself as a researcher?
Lynette 21:10
I think that there has always been writing about being the insider versus the outsider. There are benefits or advantages to being an insider; you have access; you are seen as somebody who would be able to do the research. You understand what the circumstances are. For the outsider, how would you know our situation? That kind of criticism —you sometimes might encounter.
However, I cannot change the fact that I am not an insider. There are also people who write about the advantages of being an outsider. What you can do as an outsider is to make the most of your position. And I embrace the fact that I'm outsider. And in some ways, I think that as an outsider, you sometimes can notice things that insiders or people involved in the context that you are studying seem to take for granted. Things that never seem curious, things that are taken as assumed. And I think as an outsider, you oftentimes are more curious. All these sorts of actions or words or behavior stand out to you. And then you want to pursue that a little bit more. Sometimes, I think as an outsider, you can ask questions that perhaps an insider, if they were to ask it, might not be appropriate. You know you are an outsider, so just embrace it.
JY 22:50
Is there any story that was particularly memorable or moving?
Lynette 22:58
I think this goes back to when you asked me about how emotions became important in the analysis. There were moments in which prior to this encounter, I noticed that emotions are important. But I guess it sort of solidified when I conducted the interview with one of the protagonists in the book—the younger fella I opened with in the story about the young boy from the barracks.
I had a long interview with him—it took a couple of hours, and then we went to lunch. Everybody was tired. And then it continued into the early afternoon. And throughout his story, when he told it, it was full of emotions. There were a lot of ups and downs in his life, and you feel very sad in some moments, some moments you see the humor coming through, and sometimes you were happy for him. And I thought, well, his life story is interwoven with the political turmoil in this country, and some of the violence he has experienced. So the micro and macro are so interwoven through this guy's story. And emotions really came through in that interweaving of the micro experience with the macro processes.
JY 24:33
So at your book launch in January, one of the speakers, I think the Dean of NUS Law, referred to the "Lynette Chua model." And if I recall correctly, he characterized it as really trying to find a greenfield topic that no one else has done before, and then just approaching it with laser-like focus, and committing to empirical study in a very serious way. So tell us more about this model and how you organize your projects.
Lynette 25:04
I did not come up with this name. I did not realize there was such a model. I just do what I think is important and what I want to do, okay? And, you know, being a very committed law and society scholar and qualitative scholar, I really take that very seriously and do my research through fieldwork. Perhaps, when other people talk about it in this way, maybe it's just doing it with commitment and not being afraid about, "oh, is this good mine for my career?" Because nobody has written about this, is this significant? For me, now that I have moved along a little bit in my career, I feel that I'm going to make it my job to make it important. It's my job to make people care about the topic that I work on. Of course, life may have been easier if I worked on a topic that's already super hot. But that's not what the path that I chose.
JY 26:32
But what's that feeling like? One thing that struck me is that if you're working in the context outside of the United States and Western Europe, you may often be the only person writing, perhaps in English, about a particular subject. So with the LGBTQ movement in Myanmar, I hope it's not the last work. But it's the only work at the moment and might be for a while. So how do you have think about that burden of representation?
Lynette 27:07
To be honest, I don't really think about it as a burden. It is probably a responsibility to do the fieldwork justice, and to do my interviewees and research subjects justice. To say that it's a burden that I have to make sure that I do it right, because it's going to be the only book—that's perhaps a little bit egotistical. I just think my responsibility as a scholar is to do the project well.
JY 27:38
Your work touches on controversial topics and your research situates yourself in in close proximity to activists. So what has that been like for you? And what do you think should be the relationship between academia and activism?
Lynette 27:54
You know, different scholars have different approaches to it. Some of them are more engaged with the community that they study. So they are activist scholars. And so they not only write about the activism, but they also participate in it. So that's one way of doing scholarship and doing activism at the same time.
For me, I wouldn't consider myself in that category. I consider myself as a scholar who is interested in and care about the issues advocated by activists I study, but I'm certainly not involved. And I don't think I'm qualified to be involved in the movement. Unfortunately, I think that there some people—especially those who do not agree with the issues being advocated by the groups that I study—who do not see a difference between studying the activism and actually being engaged in it.
And if you run into folks like that, people might think of you as being a controversial figure. I don't really think of myself in that way. I just think that I am studying activists working on potentially controversial issues. I wish that people did not conflate it in that way, but I can't control the way folks like to think about these issues. In Singapore, unfortunately, I think maybe it's because activism isn't as in your face, or as much talked about. Some circles may have this negative image. Maybe things will change. I don't know, but I I know what you're getting at.
That's not how I see myself. Because I'm just more interested in studying, observing. That's just my approach. And if you want to get involved with actors, I think that you have a responsibility to the group and you have to commit and I am just not inclined.
JY 29:59
Has the backlash or conflation of activism and scholarship ever been an issue?
Lynette 30:12
I think it hasn't come to me in my face. I think that in many ways, a lot of this is fear. And fear, not just of what you know, but a fear of the unknown. If I do this, what might happen to my career? I think fear can be very paralyzing. And, of course, everybody has fear; it's very difficult to make it go away. But I try to move forward. I believe in what I'm doing, and hopefully, things will be fine. You know, if you think too much about fear, you can become really paralyzed. And I think that I am not doing anything wrong. I'm doing research and research that has been recognized. And that is what I'm going to focus on.
JY 31:15
Do you have any advice for young, aspiring law and society scholars?
Lynette 31:21
I think it's always gonna be a challenge being a law and society scholar, as many interdisciplinary scholars would tell you. I think that I would say, commit to this identity; commit to doing this kind of work. Otherwise, it's just going to be quite difficult. And there's going to be ups and downs. I just worked through them.
JY 31:47
In terms of teaching, you helm the Law and Liberal Arts program here at Yale-NUS , which is a double degree—five years between Yale-NUS and the law school. So how has the programme panned out? And what's your perspective on it?
Lynette 32:03
Well, I've only been in this position for nine months. I took over this as Head of Studies in January of this year. So I'm trying to learn the ropes. And I have a clearer picture of how it works administratively. Moving forward, we have very good students. Some are more interested in law than liberal arts, some are more interested in the liberal arts and not so much in law, and you have some, a good mix or balance of the two. Moving forward, I would like to have that stronger interaction and intersection between law and liberal arts—broadly defined as the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. I think we can do more of that. But the program is still young. We are in a good spot, we're developing well, and I'm hoping the future can be more students who can actually learn to integrate those two sides of what they're learning.
JY 33:08
So one final question. Tell us a bit more about what you're working on now. And what you think you will be working on in 10 years time, if you were to hazard a guess.
Lynette 33:22
I am currently doing a project. It's been ongoing since 2016, and probably will go on for a few more years. It's a project looking at the mobilization as well as non-mobilization of state laws that require adult children to provide per maintenance. That means financial support to their parents. I'm interested in these laws in the context of Taiwan, Mainland China, Vietnam, and Singapore—among the ethnic Chinese in Singapore.
The reason I choose these four societies is because every society has a different so-called filial piety tradition. And these four societies, they have a Confucian tradition—or a Confucian-informed filial piety tradition. And so I'm conducting fieldwork at different sites in these four societies. Not all across the country in all these places, but selected sites for urban, rural, provincial sites, and for different age groups. I am also talking to legal experts and mediators to understand whether and how people engage with this sort of law. Does it have any relevance at all in their lives? I'm also talking to lay people to understand: how do they normally organize family relationships around the care of the elderly? What kinds of problems do they face? How do they resolve it?
So you're not just looking at trouble cases, going through the formal legal system, but also trying to understand how these things usually work on the ground. Very classic law and society study. But of course, in a context and about issues that I think has not gotten as much attention in law and society scholarship. What the theoretical framing is like, what the issues and what the analysis are going to look like—that's to come. I don't know yet. As for your question about what I'll be doing in 10 years? Honestly, it's very hard to tell. Probably some other law and society project.
JY 35:37
How do you come to these topics?
Lynette 35:41
They come to me, based on issues that I care about. I think the parental maintenance law has been something that has stuck out to me for a long time. I always wonder in that kind of context—given this intimate relationship between parent and child—why and how would a parent take the step to legal action? And how would the child respond? Do people actually use this law? That's the first question I have. Maybe because it's also that all of us have family—whether it's family of your own choosing or biological family. We all have family relationships to think about and contend with especially as we get older. And perhaps that also has relevance to me.
JY 36:38
Thank you so much for your time. And listeners, thank you for tuning in.
