'Buddhism' in Singapore

Asian Culture, 2009

Explorations: A Graduate Student Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008

Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, 2016

Religions, 2022

This Special Issue of Religions brings together five articles that explore the diverse beliefs and practices of Buddhist communities in the maritime Southeast Asian states of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. The collection of essays—written by innovative Southeast Asian-based scholars in Anthropology, Chinese Studies, Communication Studies, History, and Religious Studies—provide new perspectives on the lesser-known Buddhist communities in this region. These five articles are empirically grounded in a specific community, but they situate their analyses in much broader disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.

Asian Journal of Social Science, 2010

Journal of Chinese Overseas, 2015

Studies in Chinese Religions 華人宗教研究, 2021

This article focuses on a heretofore little-studied community of Chinese Buddhist women in Singapore, vegetarian women (caigu 菜姑) of China's Minnan 閩南 region (Southern Fujian 福建), exploring their historical origins and social networks in the region. Drawing on ethnographic insights and written sources, this study presents a picture of a twentieth century transnational Buddhist network initiated and maintained by these women. The paper discusses how the fluidity of their Buddhist identities reveals transformations in regional Buddhist movements and their negotiations within that context. Such diverse images of female Chinese Buddhists allow us to reconsider the many historical faces of "traditional Buddhist women." In this case, the Buddhist women's active networks were not confined to the family, and they did not rely on men in socioeconomic endeavors. As an important female diasporic group in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, caigu often negotiated and integrated both their religious resources and dynamic roles across international locales. By establishing vegetarian halls, Buddhist temples, schools, and business networks,

Visakha Puja B.E. 2518, Bangkok: The Buddhist Association of Thailand, Annual Publication, 1975

In 1972-74 I supervised students studying sociology or anthropology in the faculty of social science at Chiang Mai university in carrying out survey and ethnographic research on a sample of Buddhist temple-monasteries (wats) in Chiang Mai city in northern Thailand. The research included structured interviews carried out with the abbots of 21 wats in the munici¬pality of Chiang Mai. In addition, some students from Chiang Mai University working under my direction made observations of Buddhist Sabbath-day observances at 11 wats (8 within the municipality). Final¬ly, unstructured observations and interviews were made at 19 of the wats included within the survey and at an additional 10 wats not included in the survey, 4 of the latter being in the suburbs. In sum, interviews, both structured and unstructured, and observations were made at 32 wats within the mu¬nicipality of Chiang Mai and at another 6 wats in the suburbs of the city. In this paper, I shall attempt, through the presentation of some of the findings from my research, to show how secular and religious changes have manifested themselves within the religious life of Chiang Mai. It is my thesis that such changes do not foreshadow the ultimate decease of Buddhism in Chiang Mai; rather, religion in Chiang Mai is acquiring new meanings as the populace of the city, both lay and clerical alike, adapt to their altered conditions of life.

2018

Reference entry in 'Encyclopedia of Indian Religions; Hinduism and Tribal Religions' edited by Pankaj Jain, Rita Sherma and Madhu Khanna