At the “States of Unease” Public Forum 2026, sociologist TEO YOU YENN explained why Singaporeans should not think of the Government as the only relevant conversation partner if they want to change things. This article is based on her remarks at the event.
Over the past months, when I have spoken about my new book, Unease: Life in Singapore Families (Ethos Books, 2026), at events and on podcasts, one question keeps coming up: “how has the government responded to your work?” The persistence of this question—actually not just in these months but over the last decade—has helped me see that there is a dominant theory of change out there: ‘you can have impact (only) if you have the government’s ear.’
This theory of change appears self-evident. We operate in a context of an interventionist and relatively effective government. The state’s hegemony, its influence over multiple areas of economy, society, and polity, is strong enough that having the PAP government’s ear must, we presume, mean a form of power.
Yet, looking at the broad picture of scholarly influence on policy, I am not convinced that this theory of change deserves to be accepted wholesale. We must at least acknowledge that to ‘have the government’s ear’ requires some degree of leaning into their framings, speaking their language, abiding by their terms of engagement. Do scholars have influence on the government, or does the government have influence over scholarship? When I notice the ideological stasis over the past decades in my areas of work—family, inequality, care and welfare—I am less and less convinced that we can do our best scholarship or create the conditions to progress by operating only with this narrow theory of change.
I have gradually come to operate with a slightly modified theory of change that banks more heavily on imagining not just the ear of the government but also the ears of ‘ordinary people.’
What do I mean by ordinary people? I mean a broad range of social actors who are certainly far less powerful and influential than the state and whose lives are deeply shaped by state actions—a broad populace, the diverse and complex range of peoples who make up our society. Over the years, as I put writing out in the public realm and hear from readers, I see glimpses of this quiet force.
There is a palpable hunger, an educated demand; this is an ever-sharpening public who takes in ideas and asks questions, who after the individual acts of reading turn to others to say “you must read this” and through that seemingly small act create ripples on the calm surface of a very viscous status quo. As individual droplets turn into bigger waves, I see the pressure they cause such that there are broader shifts in public discourse, including in politicians’ language. What they shift are the boundaries of what are speakable and thinkable. Over time, I see more serious attention to the problems of poverty and inequality, and the ‘everyday lived experiences’ of ordinary people, not because I have the government’s ear but because they do.
Who we are: Activists of knowledge, creativity, connection
If we as academics and artists operate with this modified theory of change that banks on ordinary people, where would we put our efforts and what might be the payoff?
We would take a more pro-active stance in getting our work out there, and think about our work as vehicles for enhancing social good. We might think of ourselves as activists for the cause of knowledge production and the circulation of ideas, activists of creativity, imagination, and connection. I do not mean that every individual scholar or artist should produce work that is widely accessible to a broad public—that would make for a very narrow and dull scene. But I do mean that we should think of ourselves as players and contributors to a broader ecosystem; we are each part of an ensemble, working for the cause of elevating the place of knowledge, creativity, and connection in society.
I use the word ‘activist’ because activism requires both individual belief and collective action, both values and practice. We have to communicate, coordinate, collaborate, and act with intention and solidarity. We should aspire to create works that don’t just speak to our individual career goals, but also to some broader aspirations and dreams for our society. As activists for knowledge, part of our attention and labour must be oriented toward building a broad community of expression and learning, where there are both rich ideas for a conception of a good life as well as opportunity for continually asking questions.
A space for audiences
Within this community of activists for knowledge, creativity, connection, there must be space for audiences beyond passive consumption. When we re-orient our thinking about where change comes, away from just the powerful and toward regular people, this must mean that we forefront the needs of different audiences who may interact with our work.
Scholars and artists who work in different modalities, disciplines, and topics will have different ways of thinking about this. Let me speak for myself: in my work, the orientation toward ‘ordinary people’ means that I write with the intention of creating an inviting space for a range of readers who have uneven levels of existing knowledge, different personal experiences and biographies. I want them to feel that when they enter into my writing, there is space for them to be thinking, for them to squirm or scoff as they please. This means I make my intentions explicit, signal where I am more and less certain about my views; I warn people when things are about to get difficult, lay out not just my arguments but the pathways through which I arrived there.
Readers thus have to do some work—exercise judgment, place new insights next to old ones, hold contradictory ideas in tension. When they walk away, they may agree or disagree, like or dislike my work—I am satisfied as long as they are energized in some way, engaged, moved, activated. Because I like to imagine myself as part of an ensemble, one actor within an ecosystem, I want to have done my part in sparking curiosity such that encounters with my work also moves readers to seek out other things, perhaps watch a play that explores the experience of poverty (Underclass) or the pain points of our education system (Secondary), read a poem that interrogates fatherhood (Joshua Ip), attend the launch of a novella in which there is a mother who hides in a storeroom because she does not have a room of her own (Eliane Boey, Small Bites).
What can happen: people seeing one another
“The cradle of material change is in our imagination and ideas,” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Message (2024). “The arts tell us what is possible and what is not, because, among other things, they tell us who is human and who is not.”
All the things we generate about our society—plays, poems, essays, novels, nonfiction writing, films, drawings—contribute to members of a diverse society seeing and recognizing one another. This is more important than ever in this moment we’re living in—when what is and what isn’t are so often distorted by powerful actors in business and government, when so much of what is known about the social world is manufactured for purposes of leading voters to certain conclusions or selling things to consumers. Our work as scholars and artists captures, records, and reflects on social life and cultural norms and institutional dynamics, not for purposes of selling a political agenda or a way of life or a product, but really to say something authentic about what it feels like to live in the here and now. When people encounter such works, they have a portal through which to see each other (“a democratic society, built on justice and equality”—what does this even mean if we can’t imagine others in society?). This is a precondition to having multiple conceptions of a good life in a diverse society.
This public forum does not aim to define ‘a good life’ in static or definitive ways. What we want is to create a larger space than currently exists, so that people can expand on a narrow and unsustainable version of it, one that is generating unease in the social body.
This is the kind of event where as part of the price of your ticket, you can enjoy yourself here and have things to take-away: eat-in and tabao. Here are things I hope you’ll continue to mull over as you leave:
First, the core idea embedded in the notion of states of unease is that in Singapore today, there are gaps between ideals and realities. These matter because they cost us. And the gaps, although palpable as experiences, are somehow hard to perceive. The work of scholars and artists is to poke at, uncover, interrogate the gaps. The work of the broader public is to take these articulations, further complicate them, and broaden their visibility in the collective consciousness.
Second, this labor is not one-off and it cannot be done in isolation. Using your education to broaden your education, showing up, pitching in, being activated and staying energized—you, we have to do this over and over again, and we have to do this collectively. A vibrant knowledge ecosystem and community is a dream we can only bring into fruition if we behave like it is already a reality.
It has taken people repeatedly asking what the government thinks of my work for me to realize that I should operate with a different theory of change in which the state is one social actor but not the only social actor worth attending to. It is not that it’s unimportant to ‘have the government’s ear.’ But I believe if we fixate less on that and more on the broad public, we can do better scholarship, make better art, and also contribute to the work of change.
As I write at the end of Unease: “What is a good society, and how will we get there? These are genuine questions only if they are everybody’s right and duty to answer.”