differences between various religious traditions. It offers numerous courses
focusing specifically on the role of religion in South and Southeast Asian
societies.
(www.fas.nus.edu.sg/oop/undergrad6_5.htm)
The program and its reach are detailed as follows:
Religious Studies at NUS will involve the scholarly exploration both of the
phenomenon of religion and different specific religious traditions. Religious
Studies, as a scholarly and intellectual discipline, transcends individual
disciplines to consider beliefs, practices, texts, history and social functions
of religion from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. This program will
train students to discuss – with respect and grace – some of the most volatile
issues of our time.
(http://fas.nus.edu.sg/oop/undergrad6_1.htm)
Since its inception, the popularity of the religious studies minor is evident in
the large numbers of students who have enrolled in the program, something
that will no doubt inspire the development of the minor in more comprehensive
and creative modes. At the moment, however, the religious studies minor leans
heavily on support from colleagues in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
where the study of religion has been institutionalized for a considerable period
of time.
In the same vein, and speaking more generally, the same can be said of the
wider region where the academic study of religion and its teaching in
departments of social sciences and humanities have had a sustained and
vigorous presence. For decades, scholars based in Southeast Asian universities
have researched a variety of religious traditions and its intersections with social,
economic, and political forces, culminating in nuanced accounts of the field
in question. Research on Chinese religion, Buddhism, and Taoism is associated
with such names as Leon Comber, Cheu Hock Tong, John Clammer and
Vivienne Wee, whose scholarship has enriched social science theorizing about
the practice of these religious traditions in Singapore and Malaysia. Others,
such as Syed Hussein Alatas and Geoffrey Benjamin, have asked questions
about how ‘religion’ and ‘religiosity’ should be conceptualized. The body of
work referred to is not only ethnographically rich but also engages important
theoretical questions, starting with the very critique of the category ‘religion’.
The latter was developed in the pioneering work of prominent Malaysian
sociologist, Syed Hussein Alatas, then at the University of Singapore. Already
in 1977 he was asking, ‘What is meant by religion?’ and highlighting the
problems entailed in its definition, highlighting its Judeo-Christian roots and
arguing that this conception of religion is inappropriate for theorizing non-
Western, non-Jewish and non-Christian traditions.
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
145
