CBH Quotes: for those in the know

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The simplest way to make the social visible is to break the rule. Because once you break the rule, the coerciveness will show its head. Some of you say rightly, that you consent to the social, but the moment you are uncomfortable with the social order, then the punishment comes. This is classic Durkheimian deviance. Deviance makes the norm visible. Without deviance, we would not necessarily know that there is a norm.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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... And the thing about liberal individualism is intuitive, it's attractive. Who doesn't want freedom, who doesn't want rights? … You don't have to earn these rights, these rights are by definition already possessed by you as a human being. Sociologically speaking, that's a little absurd. You only become human *after* being socialised. You are always, always within the surrounding of the social. You are born into society… It is from that that you derive your identity as a subject. But that's not intuitive, in the sense that the moment you understand that, you find yourself, "Okay, I'm free". And that "I'm free" is not something you naturally desire, you'd rather have your freedom as rights… Most Singaporeans, including all of you here, are actually very well-socialised. Most Singaporeans don’t really believe in individualism so much. They tend to be fairly accepting that… there will always be rules, and you will always have to abide by them… It's difficult to teach sociology in America, because there will be strong reactions as to why they can't do this. It's actually easy to teach sociology in Singapore, because most Singaporeans… will think "I can't do what I want, naturally, so I will do what I can do best". The government pragmatism is [ingrained]… You do the most within what you think you can do best at… The world that you live in becomes quite different from the American world...

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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You guys have a very interesting idea of power… The way you see the world is as if you are so oppressed... Give me a break! I'm always amazed at how obedient Singaporeans are, and if you think that your obedience is a consequence of the PAP leadership, wouldn't you have rebelled already? Or wouldn't you have left the country, or something? I'm not saying that the way you think isn't affected by some sort of construction, but it's very interesting that you guys jump very quickly to being dominated, that you live the life of the subaltern, while living the good life.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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You learn sociology substantively, not in the sense of how to use it. If you read theories, you have to read theories in trying to understand how they theorise.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

[cbhquotes]

There is a tendency, and please don't do this again, there is a tendency to claim superiority to having studied sociology. There is a tendency to claim that "people who don't take Sociology don't think that". How do you know? ...The ability to be sympathetic to other people's positions and so on, don't speculate that non-sociology students are dummies who don't think like you do. There's too much privileging of yourselves.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

[cbhquotes]

Don't get bogged down by details; details change all the time. Sometimes, too much emphasis is placed on empirical evidence, but you can do a lot with limited amount of empirical evidence. Whatever the phenomena, you try to eliminate the details as much as possible, especially those that are not essential to the phenomena, you strip it down to the essentials… That’s how you conceptualise. To conceptualise is to reduce a lot of empirical information into a set of statements, or better still, a single idea.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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People always talk about how we always measure success with academic achievements. That's not true… The most successful businessmen are usually the lowly educated.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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Everybody in this room will want to insist that they are an individual different from the other, because who wants to be the other, right? If everybody is truly individual, it will be a sociological nightmare, because everybody will be unpredictable.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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Some of you write as if there's no more facts. How do you know there's a fact? It's very easy, just walk to the wall. Just keep walking. You think it's like Platform 10-and-a-half in Harry Potter, just walk into the station? There are obviously facts in the world. Just take something solid and knock against it.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

[cbhquotes]

Knowledge is no longer this thing that is affirming the real, but knowledge is always mediated. So what happened to truth, then? Could anything still be true? If knowledge are socially constructed, can anything still be true? (Student: You die.) Even that is problematic, right? You get reincarnated. You often see in the newspaper about a good death, right, the choice to die… about living in dignity. There is a thing called death, but the meaning of dying is completely culture. So basically, you will then reduce to truth – truth becomes only things that are factual. Facts itself becomes a problem, right? What is a fact?

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

[cbhquotes]

“You think in point form, y'know? I think it’s the way you treat your readings, the way you listen to lectures, the way you're always looking for key words. So, in fact, you think in point form. It's like here, here, here, everywhere. There is nothing wrong with the points; the points are meant to be a system, and there is meant to be an organisational system… You don't think deductively, in a logical fashion. Nothing you said is wrong, it's just that it never hangs together ultimately, which often also ends up being without depth, because you don't see the processes that are getting deeper and deeper. Each point is just hanging in the air.”

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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... very few people dare to wear high fashion, because people will stare at you. Most people can't stand that much attention.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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...thinking sociologically, is always thinking about positionality. You should never claim that you know any particular individual as such. If you look at any person, or situation, occupies a certain position – they are always examples of categories. We are all sons or daughters, we are all parents or children. It is not personal.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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Equality in democracy is a useful fiction; it's really fictional. People are not equal. Just think about the amount of money spent running for Presidency, it cannot be equal. But the law says that we are equal, so they say we are equal. Politics is never equal, although it pretends that there's equality.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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Friendship is so peculiar because it is a relationship where inequality shouldn't matter.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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The idea versus structure can be very micro – how micro can it get? Family itself. But more interesting than that, is the sociology of friendship. How is friendship structured? In friendship, all your terms of hierarchy [...] all collapse. You can't have a hierarchy in friendship. If you place a friend above you, will it still be "friend"? Why not? So you see, how is friendship structured? There is no hierarchy. So how would you describe friendship conceptually? What does friendship therefore emphasise? Equality of status. So your relationship is horizontal, rather than vertical.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat

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You cannot escape social structure, you are already embedded in it, you are assigned the position already. So in the university, you are a student. In the family, you are children. And when you go out to work, you're no longer a student, you're a worker, you're a wage earner. So throughout your [life], you are assigned a position that is already embedded in the structure.

Prof. Chua Beng Huat