About the Project
This project seeks to understand the extent to which religion can enable or disenable the integration of migrant and nonmigrant communities from different religious traditions (e.g., Christian/Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist/Taoist/Chinese religion (hereafter collectively referred to as “Buddhist”) and Sikh, and also religious “nones” (i.e., those with no proclaimed religion)). In doing so, we explore the development of “new” religious pluralisms in migrant-receiving societies. “New” religious pluralisms refer to religious diversity not just between religious groups, but within them as well. The importance of this exploration is it seeks to understand the ways in which new, and arguably more subtle forms of difference are taking root around the world. In more applied terms, it identifies measures that can better enable the management of a more diverse population.
Project Duration
2019-2022Principal Investigator(s)
Orlando WOODS (PI) - Singapore Management University
Lily KONG (Co-I) - Singapore Management University
Funding Agency
Ministry of Education (Tier 2)
Associated Publications
Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2023) ‘The irreducible otherness of desi and desire in Singapore’s gurdwaras: moral boundary-making in the shadows of a multicultural society’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2023.2243326.
Woods, O. (2023) ‘Framing the Muslim subject, contesting the secular citizen: Tablighi Jamaat and the (trans)nationalisation of Islam in Singapore’, Global Networks, 23(3): 599- 615.
Gao, Q., Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2023) ‘Squeezed out by the market, seeking strength in the network: Makeshift temples and the spatio-affective logics of survival in Singapore’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 48(2): 351-364.
Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2023) ‘The Partial Secularisms of Singapore’s Muslim Minorities: Arbitraging Model Citizenship and (In)Complete Selves at the Margins’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 113(3): 616-634.
Gao, Q., Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2023) ‘The Political Ecology of Death: Chinese Religion and The Affective Tensions of Secularised Burial Rituals in Singapore’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 6(1): 537-555.
Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2023) ‘The demands of displacement, the micro-aggressions of multiculturalism: performing an idea of “Indianness” in Singapore’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 46(1): 119-140.
Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2022) ‘Aestheticized temples, rationalized affects: sacred modernities and the micro-regulation of Hinduism in Singapore’, Journal of Cultural Geography, 39(2): 182-200.
Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2022) ‘Class(ify)ing Christianity in Singapore: Tracing the interlinked spaces of privilege and position’, City, 26(2-3): 373-384.
Gao, Q., Woods, O., Kong, L. and Shee, S.Y. (2022) ‘Lived religion in a digital age: technology, affect and the pervasive space-times of “new” religious praxis’, Social & Cultural Geography, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2022.2121979.
Woods, O. (2021) ‘Forging alternatively sacred spaces in Singapore’s integrated religious marketplace’, cultural geographies, 28(1): 109-122.
Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2020) ‘Fractured Lives, Newfound Freedoms? The Dialectics of Religious Seekership among Chinese Migrants in Singapore’, Asian Studies Review, 44(4): 652-670.
Woods, O. and Kong, L. (2020) ‘Parallel Spaces of Migrant (Non-)Integration in Singapore: Latent Politics of Distance and Difference within a Diverse Christian Community’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 41(3): 335-354.
Kong, L. and Woods, O. (2019) ‘Disjunctures of belonging and belief: Christian migrants and the bordering of identity in Singapore’, Population, Space and Place, 25(6): 1-10.