Singapore Spirituality and the Space of the State

This book examines spirituality in Singapore showing how important the city state is for understanding contemporary global configurations of urban space religion and spirituality. Joanne Punzo Waghorne highlights how the formal religious spaces-temples churches and mosques-have been confined to allotted sites on the map of Singapore whereas various spiritual organizations particularly of Hindu origins and headed by a guru still continue to operate as societies classified by the government with other clubs. <br/><br/>These unconventional religiosities are not confined but ironically make their own places meeting in ostensive secular venues: high-rise flats malls businesses and community centers thus existing in the overall space of religion commerce and the state. The book argues that State of Singapore also operates between the secular and the religious constructing an overarching spatial regime that both accommodates and yet rivals the alternate spheres that spiritual movements construct under its umbrella. <br/><br/>Both spatial configurations challenge the presumed relationships between myth and reality religion and commerce the ethereal and the concrete the sacred and the secular on the levels of self community and polity. Singapore now deemed a model for urban development in Asia also offers an understanding of a new post-secularity and perhaps reveals where the urbanized world is headed.