Authors: Thomas Brisson ^1,2,3

• 1 Centre de recherches sociologiques et politiques de Paris [CRESPPA]
• 2 Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis [UP8]
• 3 Institut français de recherche sur le Japon

Singapore offers an interesting puzzle for the study of differentialist science policies.How can we understand that the city-state, which had long adopted a modernising and universalist scientific stance, came to reverse this agenda in the 1970s, in order to promote an endogenous and particularist conception of the social sciences? This reversal, which saw Singapore oppose the Euro-American scientific establishment, is particularly counterintuitive as it occurred precisely when the island was completing its integration into the circuits of the Western capitalist economy. To understand this, the article proposes to analyse in detail the relations between Singaporean political and scientific circles, in order to identify the configurations in which the differentialist hypothesis gained credibility. In doing so, it shows both the multiplicity of actors and scales involved in this transformation, as well as the still contested and unfinished nature of differential science policies.