Fabian Graham
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Analysis
A baseline of comparison
in Voices from the Underworld
Chapter DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526140586.00010
Online Publication Date:
11 Feb 2020
Abstract only
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Chapter 2 first details the framework of analysis, ‘self-perpetuating technologies of religious synthesis’, a theory which links combinations of societal catalysts to the development of specific religious trends. The ethnographic data illustrates that these ‘technologies’ are triggered in reaction to societal catalysts, resulting in religious transformations that function as ‘self-perpetuating mechanisms’ for the wider religious tradition. The individual ‘technologies’ are drawn from two discourses: first, the ‘politics of syncretism’, incorporating appropriation, absorption, acculturation, transfiguration, hybridisation and transfiguring hybridisation; and second, a broadening interpretation of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s ‘invention of tradition’, including the reinvention, reinterpretation, inversion and Sinification of tradition. The chapter then details essential information concerning the historical development of Singapore and Malaysia’s secular and religious landscapes. In highlighting Japanese massacres in both locations during the Second World War; religious harmony, urban redevelopment, the Master Plan for land use of 1965 and the subsequent destruction of cemeteries in Singapore vis-à-vis Malay ‘special rights’ and the active promotion of Malay interests under the New Economic Policy (1971) and the National Development Policy (1990), a diverse selection of societal catalysts later incorporated into the broader analysis are introduced. The chapter concludes with a summary of the book’s structure and chapter outlines.
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Voices from the Underworld

Chinese Hell deity worship in contemporary Singapore and Malaysia

eISBN:
9781526140586
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Cover Voices from the Underworld
Subjects:
Sociology
Keywords:
Chinese Underworld traditions; Singapore; Malaysia; Hell deities; Taoist and Buddhist cosmologies; spirit possession; non-physical phenomena
Page Count:
292
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Series: Alternative Sinology

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