Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore
Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore

Author: Tong Chee Kiong

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-03-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1135798435

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Through a cultural analysis of the symbols of death - flesh, blood, bones, souls, time numbers, food and money - Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore throws light upon the Chinese perception of death and how they cope with its eventuality. In the seeming mass of religious rituals and beliefs, it suggests that there is an underlying logic to the rituals. This in turn leads Kiong to examine the interrelationship between death and the socioeconomic value system of China as a whole.

Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China
Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China

Author: Paul Williams

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-26

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1107003881

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Death rituals and Buddhist imagery of the afterlife have been central to the development and spread of Buddhism as a social and textual tradition. Bringing together ethnographic, historical and theoretically informed accounts, the book presents in-depth studies of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China.

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China
Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China

Author: James L. Watson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9780520060814

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During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture.

Deathpower
Deathpower

Author: Erik W. Davis

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-12-08

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0231540663

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Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Cambodia, Erik W. Davis radically reorients approaches toward the nature of Southeast Asian Buddhism's interactions with local religious practice and, by extension, reorients our understanding of Buddhism itself. Through a vivid study of contemporary Cambodian Buddhist funeral rites, he reveals the powerfully integrative role monks play as they care for the dead and negotiate the interplay of non-Buddhist spirits and formal Buddhist customs. Buddhist monks perform funeral rituals rooted in the embodied practices of Khmer rice farmers and the social hierarchies of Khmer culture. The monks' realization of death underwrites key components of the Cambodian social imagination: the distinction between wild death and celibate life, the forest and the field, and moral and immoral forms of power. By connecting the performative aspects of Buddhist death rituals to Cambodian history and everyday life, Davis undermines the theory that Buddhism and rural belief systems necessarily oppose each other. Instead, he shows Cambodian Buddhism to be a robust tradition with ethical and popular components extending throughout Khmer society.

The Funeral of Mr. Wang
The Funeral of Mr. Wang

Author: Andrew B. Kipnis

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 0520381971

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The funeral of Mr. Wang -- Of transitions and transformations -- Of space and place : Separation and distinction in the homes of the dead -- Of strangers and kin : moral family and ghastly strangers in urban sociality -- Of gifts and commodities : Spending on the dead while providing for the living -- Of rules and regulations : governing mourning -- Of souls and spirits : secularization and its limits -- Of dreams and memories : a ghost story from a land where haunting is banned -- Epilogue.

Death Across Cultures
Death Across Cultures

Author: Helaine Selin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-07-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 3030188264

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Death Across Cultures: Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures, explores death practices and beliefs, before and after death, around the non-Western world. It includes chapters on countries in Africa, Asia, South America, as well as indigenous people in Australia and North America. These chapters address changes in death rituals and beliefs, medicalization and the industry of death, and the different ways cultures mediate the impacts of modernity. Comparative studies with the west and among countries are included. This book brings together global research conducted by anthropologists, social scientists and scholars who work closely with individuals from the cultures they are writing about.

Chinese American Death Rituals
Chinese American Death Rituals

Author: Sue Fawn Chung

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2005-09-15

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0759114625

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Death is a topic that has fascinated people for centuries. In the English-speaking world, eulogies in poetic form could be traced back to the 1640s, but gained prominence with the 'graveyard school' of poets in the eighteenth century often stressing the finality of death. Chinese American Death Rituals examines Chinese American funerary rituals and cemeteries from the late nineteenth century until the present in order to understand the importance of Chinese funerary rites and their transformation through time. The authors in this volume discuss the meaning of funerary rituals and their normative dimension and the social practices that have been influenced by tradition. Shaped by individual beliefs, customs, religion, and environment, Chinese Americans have resolved the tensions between assimilation into the mainstream culture and their strong Chinese heritage in a variety of ways. This volume expertly describes and analyzes Chinese American cultural retention and transformation in rituals after death.

Voices from the Underworld
Voices from the Underworld

Author: Fabian Graham

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1526140594

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In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell’s ‘enforcers’, the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Voices from the Underworld offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple’s spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions on the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham’s innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the de-stigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.

Handbook of Death and Dying
Handbook of Death and Dying

Author: Clifton D. Bryant

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 1146

ISBN-13: 0761925147

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Review: "More than 100 scholars contributed to this carefully researched, well-organized, informative, and multi-disciplinary source on death studies. Volume 1, "The Presence of Death," examines the cultural, historical, and societal frameworks of death, such as the universal fear of death, spirituality and varioius religions, the legal definition of death, suicide, and capital punishment. Volume 2, "The Response to Death," covers such topics as rites and ceremonies, grief and bereavement, and legal matters after death."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004.

Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore
Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore

Author: Marjorie Topley

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2011-01-01

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 9888028146

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The volume collects the published articles of Dr. Marjorie Topley, who was a pioneer in the field of social anthropology in the postwar period and also the first president of the revived Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Her ethnographic research in Singapore and Hong Kong set a high standard for urban anthropology, and helped creating the fields of religious studies, migration studies, gender studies, and medical anthropology, focusing on topics that remain current and important in the disciplines. The essays in this collection showcase Dr. Topley's groundbreaking contributions in several areas of scholarship. These include “Chinese Women’s Vegetarian Houses in Singapore” (1954) and “The Great Way of Former Heaven: A Group of Chinese Secret Religious Sects” (1963), both important research on the study of subcultural groups in a complex urban society; “Marriage Resistance in Rural Kwangtung” (1978), now a classic in Chinese anthropology and women’s studies; her widely known and cited article, “Cosmic Antagonisms: A Mother-Child Syndrome” (1974), which investigates widely shared everyday practices and cosmological explanations that Cantonese mothers invoked when they encountered difficulties in child-rearing; and “Capital, Saving and Credit among Indigenous Rice Farmers and Immigrant Vegetable Farmers in Hong Kong's New Territories” (2004 [1964]).