K. C. Ho, Zaheer Baber and Habibul Khondker ‘Sites’ of resistance: alternative websites and state- society relations 1 ABSTRACT Much attention has been focused on Singapore’s attempt to use information technology to build a knowledge-based economy. This paper examines the impli- cations of the unintended consequences of the Internet in the restructuring of state and society relations in Singapore. We use the data on Singapore-based and Singapore-related websites to show (a) the diversity of positions expressed by civil society organizations, fringe groups and even mainstream segments of society; (b) the negotiation process between the state and civil society over various rights and how developments in cyber-space have implications for ‘reality’; (c) how censorship and content regu- lation itself is a more complex multi-dimensional process such that while local politics is regulated, the multi-ethnic character of the resident population has led to greater religious tolerance such that religious groups banned in some coun- tries have found a safe haven in Singapore and have used the city-state as a stra- tegic Internet node. KEYWORDS: Internet; Singapore; politics; religion; sexuality The forte of sociology as a mode of social inquiry lies more in exploring the unintended consequences of changes in social institutions than the intended ones. Singapore, an island-state with a per capita income of US$29,610 or the ninth highest per capita income in the world (World Bank 2000: 275), reveals the use of information technology as a tool in cre- ating a ‘new economy’ as much as a ‘new society’. While a great deal of attention has been devoted to the role of IT in fuelling the ‘new economy’, the potential reconguration of the state-society relationship as an un- intended consequence of the new technology received scant scholarly attention. This paper examines the implications of the unintended consequences of the Internet in the restructuring of state and society relations in Singapore. Rather than assuming that Internet technology will automatically pry open space for public sphere, this paper argues that the potential for the British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 53 Issue No. 1 (March 2002) pp. 127–148 © 2002 London School of Economics and Political Science ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online Published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd on behalf of the LSE DOI: 10.1080/00071310120109366