02031nas a2200337   4500000000100000008004100001260001200042653001700054653001100071653001400082653001200096653001300108653001000121653001500131653001100146653001200157653001500169653001200184653001500196653002700211653002200238653001400260653001100274653000900285653001200294100001300306245008700319300001400406490000700420520126600427       2008                            d  c2008///10aUniversities10aStigma10aSingapore10aScience10aResearch10aPaper10aMotivation10aMalaya10aleprosy10aInterviews10aHistory10aGovernment10aCompulsary segregation10aColonial medicine10aAustralia10aAsylum10aAsia10aAnxiety1 aSeng L K00a'Our lives are bad but our luck is good': A Social History of Leprosy in Singapore  a291 - 3090 v213 aThis paper examines the social history of individuals with leprosy living in Singapore under the law of compulsory segregation. Using official sources and oral history interviews, the paper explores both the colonial and postcolonial states' motivations behind the policy and its effects on leprosy sufferers and the public at large in a cosmopolitan, progressive country. First, by tracing the continuity of the colonial policy into the postcolonial period, segregation, it is argued, stemmed not only from British anxieties towards the Asian 'races', which appeared to be the case in the earlier era, but from a deeper 'high modernist' resolve, shared by both the British and the postcolonial People's Action Party governments, to mould individuals into model subjects and citizens using the principles and techniques of modern science and administration. This paper also presents patient experiences of and responses to segregation and the social stigma against leprosy. It contends that official social control over the leprosarium was never completely hegemonic but was continually contested, individually and collectively, and overtly and covertly, by the residents, giving form in the long run to semi-autonomous ways of everyday life in the institution.