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sociology into the analytical framework allows macro-level societal stimuli, including nationalism, urban redevelopment, legislative directives, ethnic prejudice and transnational cultural flows, via technologies of religious synthesis, to be connected to specific religious developments, the effects of which can be observed on the micro level, manifested in the ritual and material cultures of each religious landscape. The following example is illustrative of this process. Historically, whips were the first man-made object to cross the sound
synthesis and the inversion of tradition in the context of Confucian and Buddhist influences on contrasting ethical codes in Singapore’s contemporary Underworld tradition. The case-study temples As well as the creation and expansion of Underworld temple networks based on reciprocity by individual tang-ki , and distinctive to Singapore’s religious landscape, ritual connections based on temples’ prior locations pre-urban redevelopment have been constructed in Singapore by the post-relocation generation of tang-ki . This
weighs up the effects of urban redevelopment and governmental promotion of religious harmony as catalysts to unique forms of temple networking and to Tua Di Ya Pek’s far-reaching reinvention to explain why, in Singapore’s contemporary religious landscape, Hell’s enforcers are perceived as the most appropriate deities to approach for assistance both to the living and to the souls of the recently deceased. Chapter 6 connects the Underworld tradition to graveyards through Lunar Seventh Month (Ghost Month) ‘salvation rituals’ performed in
ambiance of temple settings generated by the contrasting environments afforded by Singapore’s urban redevelopment in a rich, Chinese-majority city-state with a comparatively less developed and unregulated ethnic Chinese minority in an urban township, this sub-chapter will instead focus on communal rituals and community events. My intention is to convey how an emotional attachment to Yinfu Tan’s Di Ya Pek, underpinned by reciprocity and debt, has contributed to the generation of a close-knit ethno-religious community. Recognition of this temple
resemble ‘everyday forms of resistance’ against government-sanctioned urban redevelopment. Returning to the ‘Master Plan’ for the Republic of Singapore, it has undergone seven reviews since it was first approved by the government in August 1958, and multiple amendments have been, and continue to be, made. The 1972 amendments allowing for the destruction of cemeteries ultimately led to the following chain of events – events which provided the societal catalyst for the transfiguring hybridisation observed in 2017’s cemetery rituals