Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore.

The inevitability of life is death. While emotions surrounding the loss of a loved one is complex, people ultimately have to manage the practical reality of a passing. Funeral rituals seek to mitigate disorder and disruption for the living, as enactment of ritualized actions provide a sense of ackno...

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Main Author: Moo, Emily Li Ling
Other Authors: Ivy Yeh
Format: Final Year Project
Language:English
Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147269
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1472692023-03-11T20:11:36Z Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore. Moo, Emily Li Ling Ivy Yeh School of Humanities hyyeh@ntu.edu.sg Humanities::History The inevitability of life is death. While emotions surrounding the loss of a loved one is complex, people ultimately have to manage the practical reality of a passing. Funeral rituals seek to mitigate disorder and disruption for the living, as enactment of ritualized actions provide a sense of acknowledgement of loss in the sending off of the deceased. As ways to die proliferate, so do ways to memorialize. Paraphrasing Derrida, “while all people die, they do not die alike”. Similarly, they do not grieve alike. How societies prioritize and assign precedence in loss are informed by social and material conditions of a specific time and place. The religious Chinese believe that death is not the end. It is merely a point of transition. The reciprocal relationship between the dead and the living reinforces the importance of rituals, ensuring the process of continual exchange between family and ancestors. Being a Chinese in post-independence Singapore (1965-2020) is not as straightforward as one thinks. This paper illuminates how the syncretic religion and subsequent identity of the religious Chinese community came to be through the study of imperial Chinese funeral rituals as well as the contestation between a modernising state and the survival of the funeral industry in post-independent Singapore – which relates to our broader understandings of how rituals reinstate the religious Singaporean Chinese identity as well. Bachelor of Arts in History 2021-04-01T03:54:06Z 2021-04-01T03:54:06Z 2021 Final Year Project (FYP) Moo, E. L. L. (2021). Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore.. Final Year Project (FYP), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147269 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147269 en application/pdf Nanyang Technological University
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Humanities::History
spellingShingle Humanities::History
Moo, Emily Li Ling
Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore.
description The inevitability of life is death. While emotions surrounding the loss of a loved one is complex, people ultimately have to manage the practical reality of a passing. Funeral rituals seek to mitigate disorder and disruption for the living, as enactment of ritualized actions provide a sense of acknowledgement of loss in the sending off of the deceased. As ways to die proliferate, so do ways to memorialize. Paraphrasing Derrida, “while all people die, they do not die alike”. Similarly, they do not grieve alike. How societies prioritize and assign precedence in loss are informed by social and material conditions of a specific time and place. The religious Chinese believe that death is not the end. It is merely a point of transition. The reciprocal relationship between the dead and the living reinforces the importance of rituals, ensuring the process of continual exchange between family and ancestors. Being a Chinese in post-independence Singapore (1965-2020) is not as straightforward as one thinks. This paper illuminates how the syncretic religion and subsequent identity of the religious Chinese community came to be through the study of imperial Chinese funeral rituals as well as the contestation between a modernising state and the survival of the funeral industry in post-independent Singapore – which relates to our broader understandings of how rituals reinstate the religious Singaporean Chinese identity as well.
author2 Ivy Yeh
author_facet Ivy Yeh
Moo, Emily Li Ling
format Final Year Project
author Moo, Emily Li Ling
author_sort Moo, Emily Li Ling
title Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore.
title_short Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore.
title_full Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore.
title_fullStr Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore.
title_full_unstemmed Implications of modernity on Chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in Singapore.
title_sort implications of modernity on chinese funeral rituals and the continued success of the funeral industry in singapore.
publisher Nanyang Technological University
publishDate 2021
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147269
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