Advocates and activists in Singapore contribute to policy discussions and positive change through a combination of deft manoeuvres and patient politics. Yet civil society is often unacknowledged, their skill and labour instead frequently misunderstood, even earning them the label of “troublemakers” or “enemies of the state”. This collection of essays and interviews is a candid reflection on the intentions, beliefs and strategies behind the practice of advocacy across a spectrum of causes. The contributors come from varying backgrounds and include academics, artists, lawyers, journalists, non-profit and advocacy organisations, student and community organisers. They share practical insights into their aims and community-building work, and the tactics they employ to overcome obstacles, shedding light on how to navigate a city-state with shifting socio-political fault lines and out-of-bound markers. With an introduction, “It is Time to Trim the Banyan Tree”, by Constance Singam, and a conclusion, “Their Struggle is Ours to Continue”, by Suraendher Kumarr.

Commercial Practice is the work done for the earning, acquisition, and ownership of existence and within existence! What one acquires, the one is said to own, resulting in the application of ownership to anything at all acquirable, including the slave; however, the slave is held in possession disowned and hence cannot be said to be owned! We cannot accurately say that one owns a slave nor that a slave has owner, when the slave is held disowned! The disowned thing has no owner. The application of ownership to the slave has brought difficulty in telling the relationship between parent and child, husband and wife, employer and employee, and citizen and state, for instance, as a person being owned sounds as the person being a slave. We have redeemed the reality of ownership. There are things one can own and things one cannot own although acquirable: therefore, there are things one has the Right to acquire and things one has no Right to acquire. If you cannot own it and you acquire it then you have stolen it, rendering you a criminal, as theft is a crime! Learn Commercial Practice: it is the legitimate method of acquiring and possessing, and ownership.

This book focuses on how Indonesian civil society organisations interact with ASEAN to shape human rights institutionalisation in the region. Using Bourdieu-inspired constructivist IR as an analytical lens, the book argues that there are pre-reflexive norms that dominate the field of interaction in the region that shape the way civil society organisations operate. This has resulted in the diverging advocacy practices, thus complicating human rights institutionalisation process in ASEAN.

This book is an arresting interdisciplinary publication on Christian education, comprising works by leading scholars, professionals and practitioners from around the globe. It focuses on the integrated approaches to Christian education that are both theoretically sound and practically beneficial, and identifies innovative pedagogical methods and tools that have been field-tested and practice-approved. It discusses topics such as exploring programmes and courses through different lenses; learning challenges and opportunities within organisational management; theology of business; Christian models of teaching in different contexts; job preparedness; developing different interpretive or meaning-making frameworks for working with social justice, people with disability, non-profit community organisations and in developing country contexts. It offers graduate students, teachers, school administrators, organisational leaders, theologians, researchers and education practitioners a fresh and inspiring reimagining of Christian education perspectives and practices and the ramifications of their application to life-long learning.