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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Fractured Lives, Newfound Freedoms? The Dialectics Of Religious Seekership Among Chinese Migrants In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Fractured Lives, Newfound Freedoms? The Dialectics Of Religious Seekership Among Chinese Migrants In Singapore, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper explores the negotiations involved in the process of Chinesemigrants converting to Christianity in Singapore. For many Chinesepeople, migration involves being exposed to religion for the first time,and for some, it involves them converting to Christianity. In Singapore,the conversion of Chinese migrants to Christianity occurs in a context of‘shared’ Chinese ethnicity, which can provide both bridges and barriersto the formation of Chinese Christian identities and communities. This‘shared’ ethnicity causes many Christian groups in Singapore to targetChinese migrants in their evangelisation efforts, which can result inmigrant and non-migrant Chinese communities being formed andfractured through religion. Drawing on qualitative data, four …
Disjunctures Of Belonging And Belief: Christian Migrants And The Bordering Of Identity In Singapore, Lily Kong, Orlando Woods
Disjunctures Of Belonging And Belief: Christian Migrants And The Bordering Of Identity In Singapore, Lily Kong, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Migration results in people that are different from one another living in closer physicalproximity. Proximity increases the chances of encountering difference, and can lead to boththe formation of new communities, and the strengthening of old. As a religion that claims tointegrate people into a trans-ethnic, trans-territorial faith community, Christianity encouragessuch encounters, whilst Christian groups play an important role in mediating them.Disjunctures of belonging and belief are the outcomes that arise from encounters withdifference within spaces of Christianity. Drawing on 100 interviews conducted betweenAugust 2017 and February 2018, this paper unravels these disjunctures through a focus on theinterplay between migrant and …
Religious Urbanism In Singapore: Competition, Commercialism And Compromise In The Search For Space, Orlando Woods
Religious Urbanism In Singapore: Competition, Commercialism And Compromise In The Search For Space, Orlando Woods
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper explores the recursive relationship between religious praxisand urban environments. It advances the concept of “religious urbanism” to showhow urban environments play an active role in shaping the praxis of religion,and how religious groups adopt secular logics in response to the pressures ofurban environments. Such logics have given rise to new, more pragmatic forms ofspatial reproduction that lead to the desecularisation of space. Desecularisationinvolves religious groups diminishing the secular properties of space, ratherthan attempting to achieve any lasting notion of sacredness. Drawing on therestrictive religio-spatial context of Singapore, I demonstrate howfast-growing religious groups are forced to compete, commercialise, andcompromise …