DEATH, DIFFERENTIATION AND DUTIFUL DAUGHTERS: THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE FUNERAL RITUALS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the gender differentiation of ritual practices and its effects on women's selfhood in traditional Chinese funerary rituals within Singapore. Traditional Chinese funerals are key sites of gendered ritual roles, whose normative customs and traditions not only inform gendered expectations, but devalue the role of women, dismiss their kinship identities and disregard female subjectivities. Why then, do Chinese women continue to maintain such a strong sense of obligation towards a cultural system that neglects and subordinates them? Through employing a lived and material religion approach to the study of women’s ritual lives, this thesis finds a paradoxical situation where women's "submission" to subordinate ritual roles are actually agentic, becoming redefined as filial piety towards the deceased.