Transnational politics and poetics in the revival of Chinese death rituals

Religions and religious rituals are being increasingly proclaimed as Intangible Cultural Heritages by UNESCO. Chinese death rituals can thus been conceptualised as significant intangible cultural heritages within the Chinese societies, both within Mainland China and the Chinese Diaspora. Since the Open Door Policy in 1978, there has been a revival of death rituals within the villages of South China. This revival has led to the emergence of the death rituals that have not seen practiced in Mainland China since pre-Cultural Revolution days. This paper argues that the preservation and the practice of death rituals in modern China and the Chinese Diaspora are significant intangible cultural heritages because of their role in informing a group of its identity and in helping with identity construction within these societies. Here, these rituals have re-cemented lost kinship ties among the Chinese villagers within the village setting, between the Chinese villagers and their urban kin in China, and between these two groups and their kin residing in the Diaspora. By coming together and recreating an environment where different groups of individuals participate in the death rituals and pay respects to common ancestors, we are witnessing a rediscovery and reconfiguration of kinship ties and social relationships on the one hand, and, at the same time, a surfacing of tensions and conflicts on the other. In this sense, death rituals, as a complex system of intangible cultural heritages, enables us to understand the dynamics of modern kinship ties and social relationships in contemporary Chinese societies.postprintInternational Symposium on the Politics and Poetics of Asian Intangible Cultural Heritage, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 16-17 October 2009

Cultural heritage in Asia series. Vol. 2, Kaiping Diaolou and the Chinese Diaspora connection

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Cultural heritage in Asia series. Vol. 1, Tulou and the Hakka people

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Maintaining ethno-religious harmony in Singapore

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State, conservation and ethnicization of Little India in Singapore

Using the Little India district as an example, this paper explores the relationship between state and ethnicity in Singapore. The Singapore state, since its formation, has established a clear multiracial framework for its population based on the so-called CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others) model. This multiracial model has become the guiding principle for the formulation of most of its social and development policies. This paper argues that the operation of the CMIO model is very much in place when the state implements its land planning and conservation policies of Little India. It examines how the state and the Indians themselves see the issue of conservation. The Singapore state sees conservation in an instrumental way: to preserve a little of its history and to commoditize it as a cultural form for the tourist industry. The Indians, on the other hand, see the conservation process as an important avenue to transform and ethnicize the place into their own ethnic space. By engaging in the economic, and especially cultural and socioreligious, activities in a visible way, the Indians have transformed the social landscape and established for themselves a distinct Indian ethno-cultural identity, one which differs greatly from the CMIO-based Indian identity that the state confers upon them. This contest of power between the state and the Indians resulted in two distinct types of Indian ethnicity. First, it is state articulated, based on the CMIO of model Indian identity. Second, it is the culturally based Indian ethnicity that the Indians themselves identify with.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

From Ethnic to Transnational Self: A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Chinese Diaspora

Conference Theme: Chinese in the Diaspor

Women in the Global Religious Supermarket

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