Of Gods, Gifts and Ghosts: Spiritual Places in Urban Spaces

Author:   Terence Heng (Glasgow School of Art Singapore, Singapore)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
ISBN:  

9781138347342


Pages:   237
Publication Date:   03 December 2020
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Of Gods, Gifts and Ghosts: Spiritual Places in Urban Spaces


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Overview

How do individuals inscribe their spiritual identities and diasporic ethnicities in the city? Through a series of sociological and photographic essays, Terence Heng maps the various rituals, collectives, individuals and events that characterise Chinese religion practices in Singapore. From spirit mediums to the Hungry Ghost Festival, each chapter engages with the social, the spatial and the ephemeral, and in so doing it will explore the significance and relevance of Chinese religion in a secular nation-state; reveal the strategies and tactics used by diasporic individuals to perform and retain their identities; uncover the importance of flow and fluidity in the making of sacred space; and evidence the value and efficacy of the use of photographs in social research. Of Gods, Gifts and Ghosts is a ground-breaking exploration into the intersections between visual sociology, cultural geography and creative photographic practice. A visual monograph that gives equal importance to image and text, it interrogates the tensions between sacred and profane, official and unofficial, state and individual, physical and spiritual, peeling away the myriad layers of the spiritual imagination.

Full Product Details

Author:   Terence Heng (Glasgow School of Art Singapore, Singapore)
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.453kg
ISBN:  

9781138347342


ISBN 10:   1138347345
Pages:   237
Publication Date:   03 December 2020
Audience:   College/higher education ,  General/trade ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2. Visualising the (Spiritual) City 3. The Social Dead, The Agentic Spirit 4. The Hungry Ghost Festival and Aesthetic Juxtaposition 5. Tang-ki as Embodied Spiritual Capital and Arbiters of Sacred Space 6. Intimate Sacred Spaces – The Body and Home 7. The Ebb and Flow of Sacred Spaces 8. Movement and Motion in Sacred Flowscapes 9. Conclusion Epilogue

Reviews

This stunning book takes a new step for Visual Sociology. Terence Heng has created a remarkable visual monograph. He adeptly brings together his scholarship as a sociologist of religion with a remarkable set of images which engage possibilities of documentary photography to bring us up close to the embodied and performative realities of everyday domestic and public spatialities of Chinese religion in Singapore. Of Gods, Gifts and Ghosts will be a deeply insightful text for researchers and students of visual sociology and the sociology of religion. - Professor Sarah Pink, Director, Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University, Australia


Author Information

Terence Heng is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Visual Methods in the Field: Photography for the Social Sciences (Routledge, 2016), and his work has been featured in Area, The Sociological Review, Cultural Geographies and Visual Communication. He is the 2015 winner of The Sociological Review's Prize for Outstanding Scholarship.

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