No Place, New Places: Death and its Rituals in Urban Asia
Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
2-2012
Abstract
In many land-scarce Asian cities, planning agencies have sought to reduce space for the dead to release land for the living, encouraging conversion from burial to cremation over several decades. This has caused secular principles privileging efficient land use to conflict with symbolic values invested in burial spaces. Over time, not only has cremation become more accepted, even columbaria have become overcrowded, and new forms of burials (sea and woodland burials) have emerged. As burial methods change, so too do commemorative rituals, including new on-line and mobile phone rituals. This paper traces the ways in which physical spaces for the dead in several east Asian cities have diminished and changed over time, the growth of virtual space for them, the accompanying discourses that influence these dynamics and the new rituals that emerge concomitantly with the contraction of land space.
Keywords
cemetery, cultural change, cultural tradition, land use change, mortality, urban area, urban planning, burial, Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China
Discipline
Asian Studies | Human Geography | Place and Environment | Urban Studies
Research Areas
Humanities
Publication
Urban Studies
Volume
49
Issue
2
First Page
415
Last Page
433
ISSN
0042-0980
Identifier
10.1177/0042098011402231
Publisher
SAGE
Citation
Kong, Lily.(2012). No Place, New Places: Death and its Rituals in Urban Asia. Urban Studies, 49(2), 415-433.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1696
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098011402231