secularisms and the formations of religion in asia ... asia/documents... · secularisms and the...

Secularisms and the Formations of Religion in Asia: Pluralism, Globalization, Modernities 29 February – 1 March 2016 HSS Conference Room (HSS-05-57) Convenors: Francis LIM and Kyuhoon CHO HSS Global Asia Research Cluster Nanyang Technological University 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore

Sponsored by School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Global Asia

SECULARISMS AND THE FORMATIONS OF RELIGION IN ASIA: PLURALISM, GLOBALIZATION, MODERNITIES HSS GLOBAL ASIA CLUSTER, NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, SINGAPORE 29 Feb.–1 Mar. 2016 _____________________________________________________________________________________

1

SECULARISMS AND THE FORMATIONS OF RELIGION IN ASIA: PLURALISM, GLOBALIZATION, MODERNITIES

In recent years there has been growing academic and public interest in the global “resurgence” of religion around the world. This has in turn stimulated scholarly debates concerning “secularism” and its conceptual imbrication with notions such as modernity, the public sphere, multiculturalism, governance, citizenship and global civil society. Some have even envisioned the desecularization of the world or the coming of the “post-secular” era. Against this backdrop this conference will focus on the complex interactions between politics of secularism and changing religious expressions across contemporary Asia, especially how the “secular” and “religious” have mutually defined and shaped each other in diverse social, cultural and political settings. Inter-disciplinary studies on “the secular” have contributed to better scholarly understanding of not only the rise of the category of religion, but also the different transformations of the religious sphere in modern times. However, a dominant thread in existing scholarship tends to focus on how the majority of contemporary societies in Asia have reacted and responded to Western versions of secularism through colonial encounters. This workshop seeks to go beyond this action-reaction model, and to examine the ways in which societies in Asia have been active contributors to the global engagement with, and formulation of, different expressions of secularism and the “religious”. Whether through accepting, appropriating or resisting secularism as a result of colonial experiences, or through elaborating and promoting their own versions of secularism, societies in Asia have diversely defined their various traditions as “religion”, “civilization”, “spirit” or “magic/cult/superstition” in their respective colonial and postcolonial contexts. In this conference, we will particularly examine how the interactions between forms of secularism and religious discourses and traditions have in Asian societies contributed to the rise of nation-states, transformed the religious terrains and reformulated the modern functional systems such as legal, financial and educational institutions. We invite proposals from different approaches such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy, religious studies, international relations, law, history, geography, political science, media studies and cultural studies that examine, but not restricted to, the following questions: ● In what ways have societies and cultures in Asia contributed to the discourses and conceptualizations of secularism, the post-secular and the religious in the context of regional and global encounters? ● How do secular state and religious tradition shape the spaces of civil society? What are their implications for the formulation and practice of citizenship? ● How is ethnic or identity politics related to the interplay of religion and secularism? ● What forms of relationship do religion and the secular state have across Asia? ● How do religions interpret and response to the building of secular nation-states across Asia? ● How do different forms of secularism influence the growth or decline of religious institutions or engage with other forms of religious change or innovation across Asia? ● How do secularisms and religious traditions affect the geopolitics and international relations of a globalized Asia?

Conveners: Associate Professor Francis LIM Dr. Kyuhoon CHO Global Asia Research Cluster School of Humanities and Social Sciences Nanyang Technological University, Singapore


2

DAY ONE, 29 FEBRUARY (MONDAY) 08:45 – 09:30 REGISTRATION

09:30 – 09:45 WELCOME / OPENING REMARKS

Francis LIM / Kyuhoon CHO Global Asia Research Cluster, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, NTU

09:45 – 10:45 KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Chairperson: 09:45 – 10:30 10:30 – 10:45

Francis LIM, Nanyang Technological University

Religion, Nation, City Peter VAN DER VEER Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany

Questions & Answers

10:45 – 11:10 TEA BREAK

11:10 – 12:40 SESSION 1: Religion, Nations and the Post-Secular in a Globalized Asia

Chairperson: 11:10 – 11:30 11:30 – 11:50 11:50 – 12:10 12:10 – 12:40

Kenneth DEAN, National University of Singapore

Secularism, Religion and Federalism in Asia: Complex Connections and Challenges HE Baogang, Laura ALLISON and Michael BREEN Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Explaining Religious Secularisation and Religious Resurgence, with Reference to Singapore Geoffrey BENJAMIN, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Is the Return of Religion the Return of Metaphysics? Or, The Renewed Spirit of Capitalism in Post-Secular Age Sam HAN, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Questions & Answers

12:50 – 14:10 LUNCH

14:10 – 15:40 SESSION 2: Secularization, Education and Religion-Making in South and Southeast Asia

Chairperson: 14:10 – 14:30 14:30 – 14:50 14:50 – 15:10 15:10 – 15:40

Kamaludeen MOHAMED NASIR, Nanyang Technological University

Secularization and the Politics of National Identity in Bangladesh Hasan MAHMUD Northwestern University in Qatar

Hindu School in a Secular State: Interpreting Secularism in Nepal VedVidhyashram Avash BHANDARI, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Approaching the ‘Ahmadiyah Question’: Religion-Making in Contemporary Indonesia Kari TELLE Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Norway

Questions & Answers

15:40 – 16:10 TEA BREAK

16:10 – 17:40 SESSION 3: Comparing Christian Modernities in Japan and Korea

Chairperson: 16:10 – 16:30 16:30 – 16:50 16:50 – 17:10 17:10 – 17:40

PARK So Jeong, Nanyang Technological University

The Rise of Wedding Churches– The “Nonreligious” Transformation of Japanese Christianity Jesse LEFEBVRE, Harvard University, USA

Catholic Church and Compressed Modernization: South Korea and Japan Compared Denis KIM Sogang University, Korea

Protestantism and the National Education: The Shifting Location of Protestant Schools in Modern Korea Kyuhoon CHO, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Questions & Answers

17:40 END OF DAY

18:00 – 20:00 CONFERENCE DINNER (For Speakers, Chairpersons & Invited Guests)


3

DAY TWO, 1 MARCH (TUESDAY) 09:30 – 10:00 REGISTRATION

10:00 – 11:30 SESSION 4: Muslim and Christian Spaces in Contemporary Chinese Cities

Chairperson: 10:00 – 10:20 10:20 – 10:40 10:40 – 11:00 11:00 – 11:30

LIANG Yongjia, China Agricultural University/National University of Singapore

“Lived Secularism”: Young Chinese Female Muslims Converts in Hong Kong CHEE Wai-chi University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

The Role of the Protestant Church in Building a Civil Society in Contemporary China: The Case of Shouwang Church in Beijing CHAN Shun-hing & LAW Wing-leung, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

“A Blessing to the City”: Constructing Christian Social Imaginary, Publicity and Publics in Shanghai Steven B. HU, University of California Santa Barbara, USA

Questions & Answers

11:30 – 13:00 LUNCH

13:00 – 14:30 SESSION 5: Religion, Ethnicity and the Secular in East Asian Nations

Chairperson: 13:00 – 13:20 13:20 – 13:40 13:40 – 14:00 14:00 – 14:30

Franklin PERKINS, Nanyang Technological University

“Framing” the King Pan: Plural Concepts of Religion in Creating a Pan-Yao Identity CHEN Meiwen, Leiden University, the Netherlands

Promoting Indigenous Spiritual Culture against Society's Secularization: Ōkura Kunihiko and the Role of Shintō’s Sacred Scriptures in a Globalized Japan Michael WACHUTKA, Tuebingen University Center for Japanese Studies, Germany

Between Religion and the Secular: New Religious Movements in Korea Today Donald L. BAKER University of British Columbia, Canada

Questions & Answers

14:30 – 15:00 TEA BREAK

15:00 – 16:00 SESSION 6: Buddhism and the Making of Modern Religion in Asia

Chairperson: 15:00 – 15:20 15:20 – 15:40 15:40 – 16:00

Sam HAN, Nanyang Technological University

Buddhism and the Secular Conception of Religion Victor Sōgen HORI Mcgill University, Canada

The ‘Book Explaining Various Things’ and the Entanglement of Conceptual Grammars Tracing the ‘Buddhist Secular’ in 19th century Siam Ruth STREICHER, University of California Berkeley, USA

Questions & Answers

16:00 – 16:30 CONCLUDING REMARKS

16:30 END OF CONFERENCE

● For inquiries about the conference, please contact the conference convenors, Francis LIM at [email protected] and Kyuhoon CHO at [email protected] ● This conference is sponsored by the Center for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Global Asia Cluster at Nanyang Technological University.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


4

DAY ONE


5

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Religion, Nation, City

Peter VAN DER VEER Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany [email protected]

This paper argues that religious and political practice in the modern world is in important ways shaped and framed by nationalism. This argument qualifies the general critique of methodological nationalism that is a feature of current literature on globalization and transnationalism. It shows the importance of the anthropological understanding of the generality of the nation-form and the specificity of its historical articulation. The paper exemplifies the argument by examining the different but related pathways of secular framing of religion in Chinese cities and in Singapore.

Peter VAN DER VEER is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany, and Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. His most recent books are The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India (Princeton University Press, 2014), Handbook of Religion and the Asian City (University of California Press, 2015), and The Value of Comparison (Duke University Press 2016, forthcoming).


6

Secularism, Religion and Federalism in Asia: Complex Connections and Challenges HE Baogang Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [email protected] Laura ALLISON Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [email protected]

Michael BREEN Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [email protected]

Approaches to secularism and religion within federal proposals and structures vary greatly in Asia. Nepal’s interim constitution of 2007 stated that Nepal was to be a secular state. India, during the early years of post-independence, also adhered to the principle of secularism in order to ‘hold-together’ the profuse and diffuse ethnic and religious groups within the state. The constitution of Malaysia stipulates that the state religion is Islam, which is interpreted symbolically by some who promote a secularist approach and by others who advocate the implementation of Sharia law and courts.

The balance between accommodation of diversity and equal treatment and representation of all groups within diverse states is a difficult one to achieve for states in Asia. In our article we therefore critically analyse the connection between religion, secularism and federalism in federal states such as India and Malaysia, and those that are aspiring to implement federalism, such as Nepal and Myanmar. We argue that secularism, and the forging of common values and overlapping identities and loyalties contribute to the ‘holding-together’ dynamic noted as being intrinsic to Asian federalism (Stepan, 1999) and facilitate negotiation and peaceful interaction among sub-state ethnic and religious groups. Secondly, the cases of Sri Lanka and India, as well as the debates ongoing in Nepal, suggest that a certain level of renegotiation of values with reference to identity, religion, culture and ethnicity is required to take the first steps of federalization. Once this has occurred, the likely reaction is for demands to increase for ethnic representation, rights and autonomy - at this stage, renegotiation which blends secularism and ethnic and religious accommodation occurs in the form of negotiated approaches to federal structures. A particular challenging question is, how the introduction of Sharia law at the state level will impact the working mechanism of federalism at national level.

In addition, we hypothesize that there are connections between the development of federalism and the religious basis of states. For example, Hinduism and Islam appear to be more conducive to federalism than Buddhism and Confucianism. By investigating this further, we contribute to the literature on religion, secularism and federalism and a greater understanding of the connections among these three concepts. HE Baogang is the head of Public Policy and Global Affairs program at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and tenured Professor and Chair of International Studies program since 2005, at Deakin University, Australia. He graduated with PhD in Political Science from Australian National University in 1994, Professor He has become widely known for his work in Chinese democratization and politics, in particular the deliberative politics in China. He has published 4 single-authored books, 63 international refereed journal articles resulting in total Google citation count of 2410 (as of 15 June 2015) and Hirsch


7

index of 26. His publications are found in top journals including British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Peace Research, Political Theory, and Perspectives on Politics. In addition, he published 3 books, 15 book chapters and 63 journal papers in Chinese. He has also held several honorary appointments and research fellowships at renowned universities including Stanford University, University of Cambridge, Columbia University, Leiden and Sussex University. Laura ALLISON is Research Fellow at the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is also Associate Fellow at the EU Centre, Singapore. She received her PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include comparative regionalism, comparative federalism and EU-ASEAN relations. She is the author of ‘The EU, ASEAN and Interregionalism: Regionalism Support and Norm Diffusion between the EU and ASEAN’. Michael BREEN is a PhD candidate at Nanyang Technological University, researching federalism and minority accommodation in Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Michael has a Masters in International Politics, Graduate Diploma in Public Administration and is an Australia Award Research Fellow. Michael also has extensive practical experience in these areas having worked extensively for Indigenous rights, across Australia’s federal system, and internationally for AusAid and the UN.


8

Explaining Religious Secularisation and Religious Resurgence, with Reference to Singapore Geoffrey BENJAMIN Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [email protected]

This presentation discusses the question of religious ‘secularisation’ and its reversals. For sociologists, this covers two sub-issues: First, is religion on its way towards disappearing from human life? Second, under what social circumstances do people or governments become more religious or less religious? A brief survey of classical and recent sociological studies of this topic shows that no single explanation can encompass the changes in the degree of religiosity that people and societies exhibit over time and space, but that certain recurrent themes are nevertheless worthy of serious consideration. These suggestions are then exemplified with reference to the data on religion reported in Singapore’s last four population censuses, supplemented by brief accounts of the interrelations of religion and politics in the republic. Geoffrey BENJAMIN is currently Senior Associate at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) and Senior Lecturer (Part-time) in the Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, both at Nanyang Technological University. He has previously held positions at the (former) University of Singapore, the Australian National University, NUS and NTU. Since completing his PhD in Social Anthropology at Cambridge University in 1967, he has continued to publish in the fields of religion, comparative social organisation, language (including Austronesian and Mon-Khmer linguistics) and other topics, with special attention to the Malay World and Southeast Asia. He also publishes on areas of general socio-cultural theory that deserve more attention from social scientists. His detailed monograph Temiar Religion, 1964–2012: Enchantment, Disenchantment and Re-enchantment in Malaysia’s Uplands was published by NUS Press in 2014; it touches on some of the issues discussed in today’s presentation. Several other books and papers on a variety of themes are in active preparation.


9

Is the Return of Religion the Return of Metaphysics? Or, The Renewed Spirit of Capitalism in Post-Secular Age Sam HAN Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [email protected]

If, as according to the classical social theory of Weber, the spirit of modern capitalism was the “transvaluation” of religious, specifically Protestant, values, then it follows that today’s capitalism may also contain some relationship to contemporary religiosity. This paper brings the arguments and themes addressed in previous research, regarding the changing contours of religious life today, to bear on whether we are entering a “post-secular” age and what this means for understanding contemporary capitalism.

Thinkers associated with deconstruction, including Derrida himself but also Gianni Vattimo and John Caputo, inaugurated the “return of religion” in social theory in the 1990s. Most surprising about this intellectual moment was precisely that thinkers who claimed to partake in the project of ending metaphysics were arguing for the return of something that many would deem as being metaphysical. Of course, for them, the idea was that what was returning was not religion as such but something like “religion without religion,” or “religion without metaphysics.”

In recent years, there has been growing interest in some of the recent heuristics in the fields of “digital religion” and “everyday religion” within the sociology of religion. The net result of this interest has been the broadening of the traditional social scientific definitions of religion beyond belief to include affectivity, sociality (belonging) and experience. I take the significance of these conceptual contributions to the sociology of religion to bear squarely on questions raised earlier by deconstruction regarding religion outside of the bounds of religion. By tying particular studies of contemporary religiosity from digital religion and everyday religion with the larger question of “religion without religion,” I bring to bear these resonant points with parallel developments on secularity and post-secularity. In assessing the major statements in the “post-secular” debates, including Talal Asad, Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas, alongside scholarship from “digital religion” and “everyday religion,” this paper goes on to argue that living in a post-secular age can also mean living in amid the “return” of metaphysics, specifically under the regime of what Scott Lash has labeled a “metaphysical capitalism” that demonstrates similar values as contemporary religion. Sam HAN is an interdisciplinary social scientist, working primarily in the areas of social/cultural/critical theory, new media studies, religion, and East Asia (as well as their various overlaps and nodal points). He is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore and Adjunct Research Fellow at the Hawke Research Institute of the University of South Australia. He is author of Technologies of Religion: Spheres of the Sacred in a Post-Secular Modernity (Routledge, 2016), Digital Culture and Religion in Asia (Routledge, 2015)(with Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir), Web 2.0 (Routledge, 2011), Navigating Technomedia: Caught in the Web (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) and editor (with Daniel Chaffee) of The Race of Time: A Charles Lemert Reader (Paradigm Publishers, 2009).


10

Secularization and the Politics of National Identity in Bangladesh Hasan MAHMUD Northwestern University in Qatar

[email protected]

Bangladesh is a predominantly Muslim country with nearly 90 percent of its population adhering to Islam. Almost every aspect of social, economic and political life in Bangladesh is extensively influenced by Islam. Interestingly, the current ruling party has launched a secularization campaign, which has inevitably generated frictions and brought Islam in the forefront of public discourses on political and religious expression in Bangladesh. The biggest challenge for the secularization project is to orient majority population away from religiously influenced politics. This allows for examining a unique case whereby secularization confronts religion in a context characterized by substantial role of religion in political and social history. Based on content analysis of mainstream newspapers in Bangladesh and abroad, this paper examines the interaction of secularization and the politics of ethnic and national identity in Bangladesh in the context of globalization. Particular attention is given to the role of the discourses of universal human rights and global religious resurrection movements in shaping the experience of individuals in Bangladesh. Appadurai’s perspective on ‘Fear of Small Number’ is used to explain how locally originated conflicts over religious and political rights sprung up to the national level and ultimately are bound to global affairs. Contrary to the generally expected enhancement of democratic rights of the citizens, this secularization project results in dwindling spaces for religious and political expression due to the shrinking religious as well as democratic institutions of free speech, universal suffrage and right to justice. The apparent rejection of the state-sponsored secularization project among majority citizens in Bangladesh eventually pushes the government to seek support from global actors, which paradoxically restricts individuals’ rights that secularization promises to uphold, exposing another face of the secularization project. Hasan MAHMUD is an assistant professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. He has a PhD in sociology from the University of California Los Angeles, an MA in global studies from Sophia University in Tokyo, and an MSS and a BSS in sociology from the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. His teaching and research interests include sociological theories, globalization, international migration and development, religion and national identity politics, and global ethnography. His research has appeared in such academic journals as Sociological Perspective, Current Sociology, Migration & Development, Contemporary Justice Review, and Journal of Socio-economic Research and Development.


11

Hindu School in a Secular State: Interpreting Secularism in Nepal Ved Vidhyashram Avash BHANDARI Tribhuvan University, Nepal [email protected]

In the newly secular country of Nepal, the meanings of secularism remain unclear and highly contested. The reinstated parliament declared Nepal as a secular state in 2006, curtailing the power of the monarchy which was historically derived from Hindu religion. The Constituent Assembly ended the monarchy and declared Nepal as a secular, federal, and democratic republic on May 2008, and it is almost certain that the forthcoming constitution of 2015 will uphold these basic tenets. Nevertheless, secularism is still a highly contentious issue, with various parties and factions demanding a return to Hindu state. My research provides a case study to illustrate how social tensions around the adoption of secularism are played out in a school, which is primarily dedicated to the study of ancient Hindu texts.

Secularism in Nepal does not mean total separation of state from religions or even Hindu religion. Rather, secularism is interpreted as equal support and protection of all religions by the government, at least on paper. Nepal’s constitutional secularism is silent about the state’s relationship with denominational schools, which mostly impart religious education despite the fact that these gurukuls, gumbas, vihars and madrassas also occupy a prominent space in Nepal’s educational landscape. Although the number of students educated in gurukuls is relatively small, these schools play an important social role as centers for the preservation and transmission of ancient Hindu knowledge. In this paper, I will examine one gurukul’s relationship with the secular state as mediated by the Pashupati Area Development Trust (PADT), a statutory body headed by the Prime Minister. The school is a site for both the preservation of traditional Sanskrit education and for the production of English-educated citizens who will carry forward the state’s goals of modernization and development. Though the avowedly secular state’s support of Vedic education may seem contradictory, I will explore the ways in which the actors involved perceive it as an appropriate strategy for promoting historical continuity, preserving religious heritage and identity, and contributing to national pluralism. Avash BHANDARI is currently an MA student in Sociology at Central Department of Sociology, Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu and is currently completing his thesis titled “Hindu School in a Secular State: Interpreting Secularism in Nepal Ved Vidhyashram”. He completed his undergraduation in English literature from St Xavier’s College in Kathmandu and has previously worked as sports correspondent for English language newspapers in Nepal including The Kathmandu Post. He research interests lie in Modern South Asian History, Sports Sociology, Religion, and Nationalism among others. Beside his studies, Bhandari also works as a freelance translator and editor.


12

Approaching the ‘Ahmadiyah Question’: Religion-Making in Contemporary Indonesia Kari TELLE Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Norway [email protected]

This paper explores the Indonesian ‘variety of secularism’ (Bubandt and Beek 2011) by looking at what I call the Ahmadiyah question. The central argument advanced in this paper is that the Ahmadiyah, a controversial minority Muslim movement that has been present in Indonesia since the late 1920s, occupies a central position in the state’s efforts at ‘religion-making from above’ (Mandair and Dressler 2011). While much work on the Ahmadiyah in the post-1998 era has focused on the violence targeting this group and explained the violence as perpetrated by radical elements, this paper examines the interplay of legal and religious restrictions directed at this group as ‘religion-making’ practices which aim to produce particular religious subjects and citizens. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from the island of Lombok, the paper examines how the local state has responded to the Ahmadiyah community since 1998 when the community began to face vigilante-style acts of intimidation and violence. In this paper particular emphasis is paid to the state initiated effort to employ Muslim preachers (tuan guru) to teach Sunni Islam to the displaced Ahmadis who live in a shelter in the provincial capital. While both Ahmadis and the religious teachers describe the educational program as a failure, this program is nonetheless instructive for understanding how seriously the state takes its responsibility for creating ‘proper’ religious subjects. Besides revealing how religious affiliation is considered a fundamentally public matter in contemporary Indonesia, the state-sponsored effort to make Ahmadiyah members ‘return to Islam’ also shows the limits of this approach when faced with global religious reform movements whose members are inclined to interpret their current plight as a confirmation of divine revelation. The paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of how Indonesia’s distinct variety of secularism is articulated and challenged in relation to the ‘Ahmadiyah question’. Kari TELLE is a social anthropologist and Senior Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen, Norway. Her research in Indonesia focuses on ritual and the politics of religion, ethnicity with particular focus on Hindu-Muslim relations, militias and security, and the anthropology of place and landscape. She recently completed the research project ‘Regulating religion: Secularism and ‘religious freedom’ in the global era’ funded by the Norwegian Council. She has co-edited the volume Contemporary Religiosities: Emergent Socialities and the Post-Nation State (2010).


13

The Rise of Wedding Churches— The “Nonreligious” Transformation of Japanese Christianity

Jesse LEFEBVRE Harvard University, USA [email protected]

Some scholars suggest that Japanese Christianity is on the verge of extinction. Christian churches have not been able to attract members of Japan’s postwar population. Even indigenous movements have had considerable trouble sustaining long-term growth. This data along with the low rate of baptisms and an aging church population has led some researchers to suggest that an already marginal Christianity is scheduled for rapid decline in the years to come.

However, as the explosive and widespread popularity of Christian weddings attest, this is not the entire story. Christian wedding ceremonies have in the last thirty years moved from the sideline to the mainstream of Japanese society. Christian wedding ceremonies represent the widespread acceptance, commercialization, and popularity of a new religious ceremony.

As a general trend—and despite a growing percentage of “non-religious” individuals—one could argue that in the postwar period Japanese weddings have become more and not less religious. By 1982, the Shinto wedding rite had become the dominant form of wedding ritual—replacing traditional communal weddings—and accounted for over ninety percent of wedding ceremonies. Subsequently, by the mid-1990s, the Christian wedding ceremony had surpassed the Shinto rite and has since 1999 continued to be the wedding ceremony of choice among roughly seventy percent of couples in Tokyo with similar trends in popularity in most other regions throughout the country.

The postwar history of Christian wedding ceremonies can also be characterized by attempts by both traditional Christian churches and the bridal industry to meet the religious needs and demands of “non-religious” individuals. These changes have not only significantly transformed both Protestant and Catholic Christianity in Japan and elsewhere but have given rise to a bridal industry which competes openly with religious institutions to provide an authentic religious experience. In addition to creating and servicing hotel chapels, the bridal industry has produced an entire fleet of “wedding churches” (kekkonshikikyōkai). In responding to the needs and desires of “non-religious” Japanese, commercial and religious institutions not only cooperate to produce and provide Christian weddings they also vie to satisfy expectations for religious authenticity. Jesse LEFEBVRE is a doctoral candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. His work on “nonreligiousness” and Christian wedding ceremonies in contemporary Japan was recently featured in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. His ongoing innovative research explores the nonreligious transformation of Japanese Christianity.


14

Catholic Church and Compressed Modernization: South Korea and Japan Compared Denis KIM Sogang University, Korea [email protected]

Scholars in religious or Asian studies have been curious why Christianity in S. Korea exceptionally grow in East Asia in which Japan and Korea have shown a similar pattern of social transformation—that is ‘compressed modernization’ led by the state. Christianity has become a major religion in Korea, whereas the counterpart in Japan is still a tiny minority in spite of more missionary support. What accounts for this difference? My research explores to answer this question, focusing on the Catholic case.

The growth or the un-growth of Catholicism in these two countries has been studied in separation but rarely compared. A common explanation is based on the cultural argument. For instance, the Japanese cultural and religious system makes it hard for Western religion to enter. On the contrary, the growth of Catholicism in Korea is owed the ‘cultural vacuum’ that colonialism and modernization has created by destroying traditional cultural system.

Different from the cultural argument which has theoretical and empirical weakness, my research tries to explain the growth or stagnation of Catholicism by the interaction between the Catholic church and the compressed modernization of postwar period in two countries. In Japan, the church tried to culturally accommodate itself into Japanese society but focusing on ‘religious’ sphere and keeping distance from the social transformation, such as ‘imposed democracy’ from the outside and the citizens protest of the 1960s. In contrast, in Korea, the church has socially engaged in modernization process by confronting the state’s abusive power, defending human rights of laborers, and contributing to democratization from the inside. As a result, the church in Japan has been a ‘bystander’ to civil society whereas the counterpart in Korea became its ‘midwife’. Therefore, whereas the former has remained as a foreign element in the Japanese society, the latter has shaped the participatory citizenship practice. This study aims at providing more nuanced understanding of the Catholic Church in Northeast Asia, manifesting the complexities among religion and civil society in the context of compressed modernization. Denis KIM is professor of the Department of Sociology, Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea. His current research interest are Modernization/Globalization & Catholicism in East Asia; migration, nation, and Christianity in Korea and Japan. He has published articles, in Korean or English, in International Migration Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Concilium, Gregorianum, Korean Journal Sociology, etc.


15

Religion and the National Education: The Shifting Location of Protestant Schools in Modern Korea Kyuhoon CHO Nanyang Technological University, Singapore [email protected]

This presentation explores the changing role of Protestant schools in relation to the transformation of secular modernity in Korea. I argue that the historical process of secularization in the late 19th and 20th centuries enabled Protestantism to take a lead in creating a modern public sphere in Korea. In the former half of the 20th century Japanese colonial secularism became the fertile soil for Protestant mission schools to cultivate Korean nationalist aspiration. The incorporation of East Asia into the Cold War world order led South Koreans to use Protestant institutions as a space to practice the spirit of capitalism and also to secure citizenship under the anti-communist dictatorship. By way of educational modernization and national education, Protestant educational institutions made a great contribution to the rise of modern public education in colonial Korea and post-colonial South Korea.

Since the late 20th century, however, Protestant schools have transformed into a field in which the religious and the secular clash. This clash has exposed the acute conflict between Protestant churches claiming a right to the freedom of religious education and students and the civil society asking for the liberty to choose religion or not. Apart from the development of the nation’s public educational system, the social and ideological transformation of contemporary South Korea has increasingly required the equal representation of cultural and religious differences in the educational system. Protestant schools and their allied institutions suffer from deprivation as there has been a relative decrease in their socio-cultural status in the public sphere, which was caused by the change in Korea’s landscape of modernity. Protestantism, once the symbol of modern civilization, has been increasingly viewed in contemporary South Korea as an obstacle to the nation’s progress in a newly globalized Asia.

Kyuhoon CHO is a sociologist of religion and postdoctoral fellow in School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Prior to the current position, he was postdoctoral fellow in Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore and visiting research fellow in Institute of Asian Research at University of British Columbia. He is interested in the intersection among diversity, religion and the secular in a globalized Asia. He has recently focused on the religious dynamics of the Korean nation building, Muslims in East Asia and transnational networks of Korean Protestantism in Southeast Asia. His publications include “Another Christian Right? The Transformation of Korean Protestantism in Contemporary Global Society” in Social Compass (2014) and “Muslims in Contemporary South Korea: Islamic Religion and the Politics of Ethnicity” in Muslim Minorities in East Asian Politics and Society (Forthcoming).


16

DAY TWO


17

“Lived Secularism”: Young Chinese Female Muslims Converts in Hong Kong CHEE Wai-chi The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong [email protected]

This paper examines the way the “secular” and “religious” shape each other in everyday practices through the experiences of a group of well-educated young Chinese female Muslim converts in Hong Kong. Among Hong Kong’s population of seven million, about 270,000 are Muslims, predominantly Indonesian domestic workers, and South Asian and African migrants. Only about ten percent are ethnic Chinese – most have a root that can be traced to the Hui minority in Mainland China. Thus, in Hong Kong, Islam largely evokes imaginaries of ethnic minorities and “otherness.” To most Hong Kong people, it is particularly unimaginable that local Chinese females born and raised in this modern city should convert to Islam because many Islamic practices are often stereotypically perceived to be incompatible with Chinese traditions as well as Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan ideals.

Islamic practices may be at odds with certain Chinese traditions. For example, Chinese tradition prescribes ancestor worship as a fundamental obligation of filial piety and family loyalty, which is often performed with elaborated rituals and lavish offerings. However, this violates the very core tenet of Islam of opposing idol worship. Islamic practices may also be in tension with Hong Kong’s social norms as a modern city. For example, Islam discourages dating, but love marriage is the norm in Hong Kong, implying individual liberty. Conforming to Islamic marriage practices goes against the cultural ideal of autonomy.

Thus, the women in this research find themselves challenged by everyday realities that constantly require creative adaptation. This paper argues that instead of putting Islam and Chinese traditions/Hong Kong social norms in opposition to each other, these women, on the contrary, make reference to Chinese traditions/Hong Kong social norms to make sense of Islamic practices and vice versa. As such, Chinese traditions/Hong Kong social norms and Islam legitimize each other. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, this study unpacks the ways in which these women understand and employ a secular interpretation of certain Islamic practices, or an Islamic interpretation of certain Chinese traditions/Hong Kong social norms to illuminate the construction and reconstruction of the “secular” and “religious” as an evolving process on individual level.

CHEE Wai-chi is a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures in the University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include migration, education, youth, globalization, religion, and culture and identity. She has published in several international journals including Asian Anthropology, Taiwan Journal of Anthropology, Ethnography and Education, and Multicultural Education Review. She has also contributed chapters to Refugees, Immigrants, and Education in Global South (2013 Routledge; Winner of 2014 Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award), Religious Pluralism, State and Society in Asia (2014 Routledge), and Detaining the Immigrant Other: Global and Transnational Issues (2016 Oxford University Press).


18

The Role of the Protestant Church in Building a Civil Society in Contemporary China: The Case of Shouwang Church in Beijing CHAN Shun-hing Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong [email protected] LAW Wing-leung Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong [email protected]

This paper examines the role of new urban house churches in building a civil society in contemporary China by investigating Shouwang Church in Beijing using Robert Putnam’s theory of civic community. This study used fieldwork and in-depth interviews to collect data in Beijing from April to July 2012. The research findings suggest that the clergy and members of Shouwang Church have largely displayed the four components of civic virtue suggested by Putnam, namely, civic engagement, political equality, solidarity, trust, and tolerance, and civic associations, through the incidents of independent registration, changing the church model, purchasing a new flat for a church office and religious activities, and organizing outdoor services. The Discussion and Conclusion section discusses the implications of the case of Shouwang Church and the potential role of Protestant churches in building a civil society in China. CHAN Shun-hing is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research focuses on the sociology of religion, church-state relations, and religion and social movements. He is the editor of A Carnival of Gods: Studies of Religions in Hong Kong (2002) and the author of Changing Church and State Relations in Hong Kong, 1950–2000 (with Beatrice Leung, 2003). His publications have appeared in Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, Chinese Sociological Review, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, The China Quarterly, Journal of Church and State, and Review of Religion and Chinese Society. LAW Wing-leung is a research assistant in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research focuses on social change, state-society relations, social movements, the sociology of religion, and religions and politics. His publications have appeared in Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion and Fu Jen Religious Studies.


19

“A Blessing to the City”: Constructing Christian Social Imaginary, Publicity and Publics in Shanghai Steven B. HU University of California Santa Barbara, USA [email protected]

The rapid global expansion of Christianity in the last century is most evident in China’s urban centers where the religion has carved out a space for itself. In cities like Shanghai, unsanctioned Protestant churches are increasingly engaging the public in attempts to win converts and assert a public presence. These urban churches, whose membership consists of white-collar professionals and intellectuals, differentiate themselves from rural Christians and house churches that are more conservative in their theological outlook and approaches to public engagement.

This paper explores the ways Chinese Christians in China’s cities publicize Christianity in a secular landscape. Specifically, I examine how the Shanghai Church Planting Network (CPN), a consortium of evangelical churches, endeavors to be “a blessing to the city” through public engagement with the city. An example of this is the “God Loves Taxi Drivers” bumper sticker campaign which seeks to bring issues of civility, public good, and the place of religion in Chinese society to the public’s attention.

By analyzing the strategies and methods employed by the consortium, this paper demonstrates how CPN imagines and articulates a concept of the city that demarcates it as a place needing “transformation by God’s grace.” This theology of the city provides an arena of meaning and action that emplaces CPN participants in bounded space while compelling them beyond those boundaries to disclose that which cannot be readily discussed publicly in Chinese society: religion. The “God Loves Taxi Drivers” campaign and strategies employed by CPN construct discursive and physical spaces that allow proselytization as a religious practice to be conducted in an otherwise secular landscape. Such practices enact what Michel Foucault calls a “heterotopia” or counter-sites that demonstrate how existing spaces, specifically that of secular urban space, may be altered to manifest and reveal the religious. I also suggest these actions forge a “revealed public” and constitute unique urban spaces allowing CPN and its members to skirt the prevailing secular order established and enforced by the Chinese state. This paper is based on analysis of sermons, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation conducted in Shanghai during the summer of 2014. Steven HU is a Ph.D. candidate in religious studies at the University of California Santa Barbara and a Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal and Development fellow. His research explores the growth and development of Protestant Christianity in China’s rapidly urbanizing landscape. He is currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork examining how Chinese Protestants discuss and enact their ideas of civility and citizenship in Shanghai, China, and how their engagement with the public is blurring the private-public dichotomy in contemporary Chinese society. Steven is also a contributor to the Huffington Post.


20

“Framing” the King Pan: Plural Concepts of Religion in Creating a Pan-Yao Identity CHEN Meiwen Leiden University, the Netherlands [email protected]

This essay addresses the issue of how ethnic or identity politics are related to the interplay of religion and secularism by probing the different level of “framing” strategies as regards the ethnic hero/mythic ancestor King Pan (Panhu) in Yao ritual tradition. The essay points out the necessity of differentiating two types of conceptualization of “religion” at work on the state level and the local level respectively, albeit their common goal is to create a modern society. On the state level, the concept of “religion” at work resulted from China’s encounter with western imperialism in the early 20th century. While on the local level, particularly since the 1980s, the concept of “religion” largely emerged from local reactions to the state’s cultural policy that revolved around national projects for economic development. With a geographical focus on Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County, the essay undertakes a preliminary investigation of the different schema of interpretation utilized in the communicative process between the state and local levels regarding the public representations of the King Pan Festival, the aim of which is to create a pan-Yao identity. Most importantly, it points to the importance of individuals’ everyday experiences, in particular their ethnic experiences, in their appropriations or rejections of state discourses about religion. CHEN Meiwen is a PhD candidate in Chinese studies at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), Leiden University. She is doing dissertation research on the Mien and the Mun (Yao) of Guangxi and Yunnan provinces, southwest China. She has published Conceptualizations of Personhood and the Origins of Life as Seen in Naming Traditions among the Pangu Yao of Tianlin, Guangxi (2003).


21

Promoting Indigenous Spiritual Culture against Society's Secularization: Ōkura Kunihiko and the Role of Shintō’s Sacred Scriptures in a Globalized Japan Michael WACHUTKA Tuebingen University Center for Japanese Studies, Germany [email protected]

The industrialist and educator Ōkura Kunihiko (1882–1971) in a 1929 interview drew a bleak picture of Japan’s contemporary society, seeing it in a state of confusion of ideas where devotional life that once was the foundation of the national life has eroded. In his eyes, the spiritual and religious realms control the root of thoughts, yet their present condition were defective and the people needed to be spiritually “awakened”. He thus founded the still existing Ōkura Institute for Research of Spiritual Culture (Ōkura seishinbunka kenkyūjo), which, according to his opening speech, should “explore the essential values of spiritual culture and establish a truly faith-based attitude towards the state”.

His first endeavor was the compilation and editing of ancient texts into a novel work titled Shinten, Shintō’s “Sacred Scriptures”. Frequently reprinted until today, it was promoted as a reference to timeless cultural memory for true national citizens. With its deliberate appearance in leather binding, lightweight paper, and gilt edging, Shinten was conceived as “Bible for Japan” equivalent to canonical writings of other religious traditions. The ideological notion of ethnic identity versus foreign influences and the religious–secular dichotomy were likewise blurred by the Institute’s architecture that consciously combines elements from pre-Hellenistic sanctuaries, Christian churches, Zen-Buddhist practice halls, and Masonic temples — all set in a landscape-garden symbolizing East Asia as “geographic mandala”.

His pluralistic life of having spent a decade in China at the East Asia Common Culture Association’s Institute in Shanghai and maintaining close personal relations with the Indian contextual modernist Rabindranath Tagore fostered Ōkura’s philosophical idea of a “universal mind” (uchū-shin) that globally connects all beings. Nevertheless, at a time where the domains of “religion” and “secular politics” were no static binaries but explicitly linked in the national agenda of saisei ichi (unity of worship and politics), his quest for an indigenous spiritual modernism made him also a strident nationalist whose religious-ideological deeds eventually led to a post-war detention as category A war criminal. This paper elucidates Ōkura’s ideas and activities in shaping the complex discourse on indigenous religious traditions and identity politics in an inevitably secularizing global Japan.

Michael WACHUTKA studied Japanology and Sinology at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and later obtained an M.A. in Comparative Cultures / Asian Studies from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. After several long-term research positions in Tokyo he returned to his alma mater in Tübingen to optained a Ph.D. in Japanology in 2007 and subsequently served among others as interim acting professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. Since 2009 he is the Director of Tübingen University’s Center for Japanese Studies (TCJS) at Doshisha University in Kyoto. He has published several monographs and articles on Japanese intellectual history, national identity, and religion. His latest book is called: Kokugaku in Meii-period Japan: The Transformation of ‘National Learning’ and the Formation of Scholarly Societies (Global Oriental, 2013).


22

Between Religion and the Secular: New Religious Movements in Korea Today Donald L. BAKER University of British Columbia, Canada [email protected]

Before the 20th century, religion as a concept was not significant in Korea. The government and the broader society distinguished between “correct teachings” (Confucianism) and “immoral teachings with licentious rituals” (Shamanism, Buddhism, and Christianity), and had neither a clear understanding of religion nor of its opposite, secularity. When the Japanese colonized Korea in 1910, they imported onto the peninsula a clear definition of religion, but that definition covered only Buddhism, Christianity, and sect Shinto. Both state Shinto and Confucianism were defined as secular. In between there was the amorphous realm of what the Japanese term “pseudo-religions” (new religious movements) and superstition (the folk religion).

The Japanese had to leave Korea in 1945 but their four-fold distinction has remained relevant in South Korea today. The realm of authentic religion has been expanded to include many new religious movements, including some originating in Japan that once were labeled “sect Shinto.” State Shinto has been expelled from Korea but Confucianism continues to maintain a presence and, despite its attempt to label itself a religion, continues to be seen as secular. The folk religion also has survived and, though it is officially treated by the government as culture rather than religion, is still seen by much of the population as superstition. And there remain many new religious movements that the general population regards as “pseudo-religions.”

Some of those newer of religious movements of Korean origin have attempted to avoid being called “pseudo-religions” by trying to rise above the “religion” label. They do so by calling themselves a Way (Jungsando), an association (Taesunchillihoe, and the Family Federation for World Peace and Unity, better known as the Unificationist Church), or a method of physical exercises with spiritual connotations (DahnYoga). These organizations try to occupy a middle ground between the religious and the secular. I will examine why they wish to do, and how the government and the general public view them. Don BAKER is professor of Korean civilization in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the religious and philosophical history of Korea from the eighteenth century to the present day. He has published on Korean Confucianism, on Christianity in Korea, and on Korea’s new religions. He is the author of Korean Spirituality (University of Hawaii Press, 2008).


23

Buddhism and the Secular Conception of Religion Victor Sōgen HORI McGill University, Canada [email protected]

Is modernized Buddhism merely Buddhism with Western characteristics? In the twentieth century, Buddhism attracted the attention of Western scholars who claimed that Buddhism was undergoing a radical transformation, that a new form of Buddhism—modernized Buddhism—was coming into being. This new modernized Buddhism would be egalitarian rather than hierarchical, open to women not male-dominated, individualistic not group-oriented; it would practice meditation and de-emphasize ritual. It would be Buddhism Westernized. This paper argues that the process of modernization is not just a one-way imprinting of Western values onto Asian tradition. We can see a more complex process of modernization occurring at the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1880s and 90s, the West’s very concept of religion itself underwent modernization. In the traditional Western concept of religion, religion had a fourfold hierarchy: Christianity, Mosaism, Mohammedanism and heathen paganism. But when the West encountered Buddhism, it had to revise its fourfold hierarchy. This revision triggered the modernization process which eventually produced the modern secular concept of world religion, a conception which views world religions without hierarchy, without presuming the truth of any one. Before Asian Buddhism got modernized in the 20th century, the West’s very concept of religion got modernized in the 19th century partly through its encounter with Asian Buddhism. Victor Sōgen HORI is associate professor (retired), Japanese Religions, at McGill University. After taking a PhD in Western philosophy at Stanford University in 1976, he was ordained as a Rinzai Zen monk in the temple of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, Japan and did Zen monastery training for thirteen years. In 1990, he resumed the academic life and taught at several universities, including Stanford University and Harvard University, before settling down at McGill University in 1994. His present research interests include Zen Buddhism, Japanese Religion, the Kyoto School of Philosophy and Buddhism in the West. He has published Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Zen Kōan Practice (2003), translated The Ten Oxherding Pictures: Lectures by Yamada Mumon Rōshi (2004) and edited several other volumes. On Buddhism in the West, with John Harding and Alexander Soucy, he has co-edited Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada (2010) and Flowers on the Rock: Global and Local Buddhism in Canada (2014). His current research projects include The Modernization of Buddhism in Global Perspective and Little Jade: Language and Experience in Zen.


24

The ‘Book Explaining Various Things’ and the Entanglement of Conceptual Grammars Tracing the ‘Buddhist Secular’ in 19th century Siam

Ruth STREICHER Freie Universität Berli, Germany | University of California Berkeley, USA [email protected]

My paper makes two overarching arguments. On a conceptual level, I argue that critical secular studies offer valuable analytical tools to unpack the intertwinement of Buddhism and state power in Thailand. However, I also highlight the (Eurocentric) limitations of this analytical lens with regards to the context of Thailand, and instead propose to inquire, genealogically, into the entanglement of different conceptual grammars of the secular in concrete colonial encounters. For the case of Siam (today Thailand), such an approach entails asking about formulations of the secular within both the tradition of Buddhist kingship and the conceptual grammars of missionaries and oriental scholars. The construct of what I call the ‘Buddhist secular’ emerged, I argue, as a result of the entanglement of these conceptual grammars.

On an empirical level, I trace this formation of the ‘Buddhist secular’ in ChaophrayaThipakorawong’s ‘Kitchanukit’ (A Book Explaining Various Things, 1867), a pivotal source in Siamese intellectual history. In my reading, the ‘Kitchanukit’ not only documents Thipakorawong’s interactions with missionaries and oriental scholars in the geo-political context of semi-colonial Siam, but also his imbrication in the Buddhist tradition and discourses of regional religious networks. Thus on the one hand, the ‘Kitchanukit’ indulges in a modern missionary discourse of comparative religion, and promotes a number of (binary) concepts demonstrating an epistemological shift towards secular formulations of religion. On the other hand, however, the ‘Kitchanukit’ endorses the tradition of Buddhist kingship to determine the supremacy of Buddhism over Christianity. Most importantly, it establishes the notion of a ‘rational’, ‘true’ and ‘secular’ Buddhism uniquely capable of transcending itself through the figure of the universal Buddhist monarch.

In conclusion, I discuss the implications of this formulation of the ‘Buddhist secular’ both for the debate of critical secular studies in general and the governance of religion in Thailand in particular. Ruth STREICHER is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. In her current project, Buddhist Secularism?, she explores the genealogies of ‘Buddhist modernity’ and the production of knowledge on the Muslim minority in Thailand. The project builds on her dissertation, where she has investigated the gendered dimensions of military counterinsurgency in the ongoing conflict in sotuhern Thailand. Ruth is a political scientist with a broad interest in critical secular studies, gender, postcolonial studies, and a regional focus on Southeast Asia. She has published on masculinities in peace and conflict studies, feminist methodology, and the conflict in southern Thailand, and is co-editing a blog titled ‘Provincializing Epistemologies’.


25

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Name Affiliation Email Address

1 ALLISON, Laura Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

2 BAKER, Donald University of British Columbia [email protected]

3 BENJAMIN, Geoffrey Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

4 BEYER, Peter University of Ottawa [email protected]

5 BHANDARI, Avash Tribhuvan University [email protected]

6 BREEN, Michael Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

7 CHAN, Shun-hing Hong Kong Baptist University [email protected]

8 CHEE, WAi-Chi University of Hong Kong [email protected]

9 CHEN, Meiwen Leiden University [email protected]

10 CHO, Kyuhoon Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

11 DEAN, Kenneth National University of Singapore [email protected]

12 HAN, Sam Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

13 HE, Baogang Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

14 HU, Steven B. University of California Santa Barbara [email protected]

15 HORI, Victor Sōgen Mcgill University [email protected]

16 KIM, Denis Sogang University [email protected]

17 LAW, Wing-leung Hong Kong Baptist University [email protected]

18 LEFEBVRE, Jesse Harvard University [email protected]

19 LIANG, Yongjia China Agricultural University / National University of Singapore

[email protected] [email protected]

20 LIM, Francis Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

21 LIU, Hong Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

22 MAHMUD, Hasan Northwestern University in Qatar [email protected]

23 MOHAMED NASIR, Kamaludeen

Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

24 PARK, So Jeong Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

25 PERKINS, Franklin Nanyang Technological University [email protected]

26 STREICHER, Ruth University of California Berkeley / Freie Universität Berlin

[email protected]

27 TELLE, Kari Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) [email protected]

28 VAN DER VEER, Peter Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity

[email protected]

29 WACHUTKA, Michael Tuebingen University Center for Japanese Studies

[email protected]


26

NOTE


27

NOTE


28

NOTE


29

NOTE


30

From NEC To Conference Venue HSS Conference Room, School of Humanities and Social Sciences Address: HSS-05-57, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637332

1. 103 M

Nanyang View: Head west on Nanyang View

2. 4 M

Nanyang View: Slight left to stay on Nanyang View

3. 147 M

Nanyang View: Turn right at Nanyang View

4. 16 M

Nanyang View: Turn right to stay on Nanyang View

5. 188 M

Nanyang Ave: Slight left at Nanyang Ave

6. 3 M

Covered walkway along Nanyang Avenue: Slight left at Covered walkway along Nanyang

Avenue

You are now

here

http://maps.ntu.edu.sg/maps







31

7. 396 M

Covered walkway along Nanyang Avenue: Turn right to stay on Covered walkway along

Nanyang Avenue

8. 69 M

Covered walkway between Nanyang Avenue and Student Services Centre: Turn left at Covered

walkway between Nanyang Avenue and Student Services Centre

9. 61 M

Covered walkway behind Student Services Centre: Slight right at Covered walkway behind

Student Services Centre

10. 43 M

Covered walkway between S3 and Student Services Centre: Slight left at Covered walkway

between S3 and Student Services Centre

11. 61 M

Walkway between S3 and HSS: Turn left at Walkway between S3 and HSS

12. 25 M

School of Humanities and Social Science: Turn right at School of Humanities and Social Science

13. END

Conference Room (HSS)

Arrive at Conference Room (HSS), School of Humanities And Social Science (HSS), 14

Nanyang Drive, HSS-05-57.

You are now

here







secularisms and the formations of religion in asia ... asia/documents... · secularisms and the...

Documents