Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Religion (6)
- Singapore (6)
- Community (2)
- Cultural geography (2)
- Meteorology (2)
-
- Modernity (2)
- Place (2)
- Secular (2)
- Space (2)
- State (2)
- (dis)embodied convert;geographies of religion (1)
- (im)mobile convert (1)
- Adaptation (1)
- Affect (1)
- Ageing populations (1)
- Alternative geopolitics (1)
- Appropriation (1)
- Buddhism (1)
- Burial spaces (1)
- Change (1)
- Children literature (1)
- Chinese Religion (1)
- Chinese religion (1)
- Chinese temples (1)
- Churches (1)
- Citizenship (1)
- Civilization (1)
- Clan and regional associations (1)
- Climate (1)
- Collaborative digital humanities platform (1)
- Publication Year
Articles 1 - 26 of 26
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
When Planetary Cosmopolitanism Meets The Buddhist Ethic: Recycling, Karma And Popular Ecology In Singapore, Siew Ying Shee, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
When Planetary Cosmopolitanism Meets The Buddhist Ethic: Recycling, Karma And Popular Ecology In Singapore, Siew Ying Shee, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
By thinking with and through Buddhist cosmology, this paper explores the emergence of an ethical sensibility—what we call planetary cosmopolitanism—that is based on not just a spatially expanded ethic of care to ecological worlds, but also a temporally extended sense of justice to the future Earth. This transtemporal sense of ethical becoming reflects how the possibility of future ‘rebirth’ and accountability for past actions can motivate new ecological consciousness in the present. We forge these ideas through an empirical focus on popular Buddhist ecological practices in Singapore, where green recovery visions have primarily been driven by a secular and technocratic …
The Political Ecology Of Death: Chinese Religion And The Affective Tensions Of Secularised Burial Rituals In Singapore, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
The Political Ecology Of Death: Chinese Religion And The Affective Tensions Of Secularised Burial Rituals In Singapore, Quan Gao, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper explores the political ecology of death and the affective tensions of secularised burial rituals in Singapore. Although scholars have recently acknowledged the roles of biopower and affect in shaping environmental politics, religion and death as socio-affective forces have not been substantively engaged with by political ecologists. We argue that death is inherently both a spiritual and ecological phenomenon, as it exposes not only the spiritual geographies that structure how people see the natural world, but also the affective tensions and struggles over what counts as a “proper” form of burial in relation to religion and nature. First, we …
Heat And Colonial Weather Science In The Straits Settlements C. 1820-1900, Fiona Williamson
Heat And Colonial Weather Science In The Straits Settlements C. 1820-1900, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection College of Integrative Studies
Historical explorations of tropical heat in a colonial context have largely focussed on two interconnected spheres: colonial perceptions of place and body or, the implications of heat on different bodies in medical thought and practice. This paper seeks to move the discussion towards a history of colonial scientific thought about heat as component of weather and of escalating nature-induced hazards, studied in the observatory or meteorological department. A central theme is to think about heat in its relationship to nascent meso-scale atmospheric knowledge, meteorological theory and, as a by-product of urbanisation and land-use change. In so doing, it conceptualises the …
Just Doing Their Job: The Hidden Meteorologists Of Colonial Hong Kong C.1883–1914, Fiona Williamson
Just Doing Their Job: The Hidden Meteorologists Of Colonial Hong Kong C.1883–1914, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article investigates the contribution made by indigenous employees to the work of the Hong Kong Observatory from its inception and into the early twentieth century. As has so often been the case in Western histories of science, the significance of indigenous workers and of women in the Hong Kong Observatory has been obscured by the stories of the government officials and observatory director(s). Yet without the employees, the service could not have functioned or grown. While the glimpses of their work and lives are fleeting, often only revealed in minor archival references, this article seeks to interrogate these sources …
A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step: Towards A Confucian Geopolitics, Lily Kong
A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step: Towards A Confucian Geopolitics, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This commentary welcomes the opportunity of a dialogue on the development of a Confucian geopolitics that offers an alternative to the prevailing dominant geopolitical theories. Three areas are discussed to further development of such an alternative. The first is the challenges (and not only the opportunities) of recovering Confucian values to inform foreign policy and international relations. The second is the appropriation of Confucian philosophy to legitimize state action, and how this is actually playing out in present-day China. The third is the slippage between narrative and practice – that is, how a narrative of Confucian geopolitics is translated in …
Chinese Temple Networks In Southeast Asia: A Webgis Digital Humanities Platform For The Collaborative Study Of The Chinese Diaspora In Southeast Asia, Yingwei Yan, Kenneth Dean, Chen-Chieh Feng, Guan Thye Hue, Khee-Heong Koh, Lily Kong, Chang Woei Ong, Arthur Tay, Yi-Chen Wang, Yiran Xue
Chinese Temple Networks In Southeast Asia: A Webgis Digital Humanities Platform For The Collaborative Study Of The Chinese Diaspora In Southeast Asia, Yingwei Yan, Kenneth Dean, Chen-Chieh Feng, Guan Thye Hue, Khee-Heong Koh, Lily Kong, Chang Woei Ong, Arthur Tay, Yi-Chen Wang, Yiran Xue
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article introduces a digital platform for collaborative research on the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, focusing on networks of Chinese temples and associations extending from Southeast China to the various port cities of Southeast Asia. The Singapore Historical Geographic Information System (SHGIS) and the Singapore Biographical Database (SBDB) are expandable WebGIS platforms gathering and linking data on cultural and religious networks across Southeast Asia. This inter-connected platform can be expanded to cover not only Singapore but all of Southeast Asia. We have added layers of data that go beyond Chinese Taoist, Buddhist, and popular god temples to also display …
Disasters Fast And Slow: The Temporality Of Hazards In Environmental History, Fiona Williamson, Chris Courtney
Disasters Fast And Slow: The Temporality Of Hazards In Environmental History, Fiona Williamson, Chris Courtney
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Popular representations of disasters tend to focus upon dramatic moments of chaos. They envision panicked communities desperately scrambling for safety as earthquakes reduce cities to rubble or lava turns villages to ashes. Yet disasters actually unfold on numerous temporal scales. Media reports tend to reduce disasters to discrete events, initiated on the shallow causal timescale of a meteorological fluctuation or seismic disruption. Social scientists, by contrast, have often sought to emphasise the processual nature of disasters—embedding causality in the deeper timescale of a community, in which risk and vulnerability build over months or years.2 Environmental historians elongate causality even further, …
Uncertain Skies: Forecasting Typhoons In Hong Kong Ca. 1874-1906, Fiona Williamson
Uncertain Skies: Forecasting Typhoons In Hong Kong Ca. 1874-1906, Fiona Williamson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper explores the conceptualisation of «uncertainty» in late nineteenth- century meteorological thought. By investigating the story of meteorological forecasting in nineteenth and early twentieth century Hong Kong, it considers the changing ways in which forecasting was judged historically. In the early nineteenth century forecasting the weather was considered impossible. By the end of the century, it was confidently expected that the much improved understanding of weather patterns would lead to the ability to better predict them. During the intervening period «uncertainty» competed with «certainty» and «prediction» was mistaken for «predictability». The shift in perception was driven by various factors, …
Review: Humanist Geography: An Individual's Search For Meaning By Yi‐Fu Tuan, Justin K. H. Tse
Review: Humanist Geography: An Individual's Search For Meaning By Yi‐Fu Tuan, Justin K. H. Tse
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Yi‐Fu Tuan's latest book is a defence of individualism aimed at a wide lay readership, “a book on education that could benefit children everywhere” (p. ix). It is also a fascinating illustration of the relevance of geographies of religion to ongoing interests in humanistic geography. Indeed, one of Tuan's central arguments is that “religious thinking both undergoes and completes humanist thinking” and is therefore not “a relic that humanism has to outgrow,” for that would be a “regrettable” narrowing of the “scope of inquiry” in humanistic geography that “offends the spirit of humanism” (p. 5). It is this latter interest …
Introduction: Religion And Place: Landscape, Politics, And Piety, Elizabeth Olson, Peter Hopkins, Lily Kong
Introduction: Religion And Place: Landscape, Politics, And Piety, Elizabeth Olson, Peter Hopkins, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In 2010, a 14-year-old boy was brutally murdered in a suburb outside of Rio de Janeiro when a group of skinheads observed him at a party and suspected that he might be gay (McLoughlin 2011). This scale of horrific homophobia is not uncommon in Brazil, where rates of violence against gays, lesbians, and transgendered people are reported to be amongst the highest in the world. A study conducted with the support of Grupo Gay da Bahia offers the conservative estimate of 260 gays killed in the country in 2010, indicating that rates doubled in only 5 years. The statistic sits …
Balancing Spirituality And Secularism, Globalism And Nationalism: The Geographies Of Identity, Integration And Citizenship In Schools, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Geographies of education have drawn more research attention in the last decade. The varied motivations for geographical attention to education have led to divergent approaches. First, a macro, political economy or "outward looking" approach has examined educational provision and what it tells us about wider social, economic and political processes. Second, a micro, social-cultural or "inward looking" approach has emphasised social difference within school spaces, and the links between home and educational spaces. This latter approach has also acknowledged the importance of the voices of children and young people in understanding educational experiences. In this paper, l take stock of …
Homo Religiosus? Religion And Immigrant Subjectivities, David Ley, Justin Kh Tse
Homo Religiosus? Religion And Immigrant Subjectivities, David Ley, Justin Kh Tse
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Once ignored in national and international public policy, religion has made a comeback as policymakers have noticed the significance of the resurgence of religion, especially due to migration flows. While laudatory of these developments, this chapter specifies the need for a theological reading of the migrant religious practitioner as homo religiosus. First, we describe the social geographies of immigrant religion in an international context, drawing attention to the vibrancy of religious devotion, especially Christianity from the global south, among migrant groups. Second, we re-conceptualise religious belief through the theoretical work of John Milbank and Charles Taylor as they recuperate a …
Grounded Theologies: ‘Religion’ And The ‘Secular’ In Human Geography, Justin K. H. Tse
Grounded Theologies: ‘Religion’ And The ‘Secular’ In Human Geography, Justin K. H. Tse
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper replies to Kong’s (2010) lament that geographers of religion have not sufficiently intervened in religious studies. It advocates ‘grounded theologies’ as a rubric by which to investigate contemporary geographies of religion in a secular age. Arguing that secularization can itself be conceived as a theological process, the paper critiques a religious/secular dichotomy and argues that individualized spiritualities presently prevalent are indicative of Taylor’s (2007) nova effect of proliferating grounded theologies. Case studies are drawn from social and cultural geographies of religious intersectionalities and from critical geopolitics.
The Geographies Of Religious Conversion, Orlando Woods
The Geographies Of Religious Conversion, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The paper reviews the corpus of research that attempts to explain the process of religious conversion, and explores the ways in which geographers can add new perspectives to the discourse. It argues that religious conversion is a phenomenon that goes beyond the reorientation of individual belief, and is instead a process of change that involves the (re)definition of self and other. Five conceptual frames are proposed - (1) conversion of space; (2) spaces of conversion; (3) spaces of negotiation; (4) the (im)mobile convert; and (5) the (dis)embodied convert - which are used to help define the geographies of religious conversion.
Global Shifts, Theoretical Shifts: Changing Geographies Of Religion, Lily Kong
Global Shifts, Theoretical Shifts: Changing Geographies Of Religion, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The paper evaluates the burst in geographical research on religion in the last decade. It examines: (1) the relative emphases and silences in analyses of different sites of religious practice, sensuous geographies, population constituents, religions, geographies and scales of analyses; (2) the rise in the discourse of postsecularization; and (3) four contemporary global shifts (growing urbanization and social inequality, deteriorating environments, ageing populations, and increasing human mobilities), the ways in which religion shapes human response to them, and the implications for new research agendas. © 2010 The Author(s).
Music And Moral Geographies: Constructions Of "Nation" And Identity In Singapore, Lily Kong
Music And Moral Geographies: Constructions Of "Nation" And Identity In Singapore, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, I attempt to pull together sociological and geographical perspectives in the study of music to understand the ways in which pop and rock music are socio-cultural products with political and moral meanings and implications. I examine state engineering of moral panics, focusing on a case study of pop and rock music in post-independence Singapore. Such engineering is aimed at political and ideological ends, in particular, "nation"- building outcomes. In engineering moral panics through both discursive and legislative acts, the contours of a moral geography are delineated at various spatial scales. First, at the scale of the national …
Religion And Technology: Refiguring Place, Space, Identity And Community, Lily Kong
Religion And Technology: Refiguring Place, Space, Identity And Community, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper reviews the literature on the religion-technology nexus, drawing up a research agenda and offering preliminary empirical insights. Firsts I stress the need to explore the new politics of space as a consequence of technological development, emphasizing questions about the role of religion in effecting a form of religious (neo)imperialism, and uneven access to techno-religious spaces. Second, I highlight the need to examine the politics of identity and community, since cyberspace is not an isotropic surface. Third, I underscore the need to engage with questions about the poetics of religious community as social relations become mediated by technology. Finally, …
Mapping 'New' Geographies Of Religion: Politics And Poetics In Modernity, Lily Kong
Mapping 'New' Geographies Of Religion: Politics And Poetics In Modernity, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article reviews geographical research on religion in the 1990s, and highlights work from neighbouring disciplines where relevant. Contrary to views that the field is incoherent, I suggest that much of the literature pays attention to several key themes, particularly, the politics and poetics of religious place, identity and community. I illustrate the key issues, arguments and conceptualizations in these areas, and suggest various ways forward. These 'new' geographies emphasize different sites of religious practice beyond the 'officially sacred'; different sensuous sacred geographies; different religions in different historical and place-specific contexts; different geographical scales of analysis; different constitutions of population …
Religion And Modernity: Ritual Transformations And The Reconstruction Of Space And Time, Chee Kiong Tong, Lily Kong
Religion And Modernity: Ritual Transformations And The Reconstruction Of Space And Time, Chee Kiong Tong, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, we use the case of Chinese religion in Singapore to examine the relationships between religion and modernity, and between social processes, on the one hand, and spatial conceptions, forms and structures and temporal practices, on the other. Specifically, we look at how traditional Chinese rituals are being modified, reinterpreted and invented to fit with modern living. Such ritual transformations entail reconstructed notions of space and time. Through such transformations, modernity does not simply lead to the demise of religious beliefs and practices but allows for a continued role for religion in providing a meaning system for Chinese …
Exalting The Past: Nostalgia And The Construction Of Heritage In Children's Literature, Lily Kong, Lily Tay
Exalting The Past: Nostalgia And The Construction Of Heritage In Children's Literature, Lily Kong, Lily Tay
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, we analyse the portrayal of Singapore in local children's literature and seek to understand why such a portrayal was prominent, and to what effect. We argue that this literature is characterized by a nostalgic recollection of past times and places. This emergence of the past as an important concern in Singapore is not limited to the literary arena, but reflects a larger condition: a broader adult yearning to transcend the constrictions of present place and time. We suggest that this nostalgia has surfaced because of the phenomenal changes in Singapore, which have caused people to come face …
The Commercial Face Of God: Exploring The Nexus Between The Religious And The Material, Lily Kong
The Commercial Face Of God: Exploring The Nexus Between The Religious And The Material, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper explores the nexus between the cultural and the material by examining the ways in which religion and the economy are integrated in the context of economy-driven Singapore. The mutually constitutive relationships between the cultural and the material are explored through a discussion of the role of the state, capital and religious institutions in pulling together the sacred and the secular. Specifically, the analysis focuses on how the state harnesses religion ideologically in its economic development strategies; how capital harnesses the potential of religion in commercial enterprises in practical terms; and how religious institutions themselves behave as financial institutions. …
Folktales And Reality: The Social Construction Of Race In Chinese Tales, Lily Kong, Elaine Goh
Folktales And Reality: The Social Construction Of Race In Chinese Tales, Lily Kong, Elaine Goh
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper illustrates how folktales are a repository of primary material for the geographer. Using the example of The Strange Tales of Liaozhai, we discuss how these tales are not purely fictive constructs but constitute instead fictive, historical and projected realities. As an example of the value of such analysis, we discuss Chinese constructions of race as revealed in the tales.
Popular Music In Geographical Analyses, Lily Kong
Popular Music In Geographical Analyses, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
As an area of geographical inquiry, popular music has not been explored to any large extent. Where writings exist, they have been somewhat divorced from recent theoretical and methodological questions that have rejuvenated social and cultural geography (see, for example, Cosgrove and Jackson, 1987; Jackson, 1989; Cosgrove, 1989; 1990; Anderson and Gale, 1992; Bames and Duncan, 1992). In this article I will focus on the interface between geography and popular music, focusing specifically on the contributions of such exploration towards cultural and social understanding. In what follows, I will first discuss the reasons for geographers’ relative neglect of popular music …
Ideological Hegemony And The Political Symbolism Of Religious Buildings In Singapore, Lily Kong
Ideological Hegemony And The Political Symbolism Of Religious Buildings In Singapore, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Cultural geographers have for too long ignored the association between the 'religious' and the 'political', concentrating instead on separating the 'religious' from the sociopolitical and economic forces in society. The challenge is taken up in this paper in an analysis of the contemporary meanings and values of religious buildings in Singapore as invested by the state. Attention is paid to the state's conceptions of religion and religious space and the roles it plays in influencing such space. The ways in which, through its various roles, the state in Singapore plays a significant part in influencing context and hence in shaping …
Negotiating Conceptions Of 'Sacred Space': A Case Study Of Religious Buildings In Singapore, Lily Kong
Negotiating Conceptions Of 'Sacred Space': A Case Study Of Religious Buildings In Singapore, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
In this paper, I approach the study of religious place from a re-theorized cultural geographical stance. Using multi-religious Singapore as a case study, I examine the tensions which arise over the meanings and values associated with religious buildings because of the conflict between state hegemony on the one hand and the oppositional meanings and values of religious groups and individuals on the other. I also examine the ways in which individuals negotiate their conceptions of sacred space in order to cope with changes imposed on their religious places by the state. Primarily, my argument is that conflict is avoided because …
Geography And Religion: Trends And Prospects, Lily Kong
Geography And Religion: Trends And Prospects, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
That geography and religion can and do meet to form a valuable focus of inquiry has not always been immediately apparent. While the study of religions has engaged the attention of a large and ever-widening circle of scholars, research has tended to proceed under the varied rubrics of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, and certainly, theology. Classics that have had significant impact on the development of 'religious thought' have emerged from the pens of scholars professing several diverse disciplines. For instance, Weber (1904-1905), Durkheim (1976), Otto (1950), and Eliade (1959) represent but a sample of the multifarious writings that have shaped …