Confluences and contestations: gender politics, grassroots Buddhism and Chinese voluntary associations, 1920s–1970s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers multiple contributing factors resulting to the confluences and contestations between Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs) and religious organizations as two core Chinese social organizations in the 1920s to 1970s Singapore. Employing a historical perspective taking Chinese lay Buddhist associations as a case study, this article demonstrates that sub-ethnic identity formation and networks, such as a shared dialect-group consciousness, common spoken language (dialect) and social engagement in providing welfare needs, are key evidences of confluences between the two interconnected categories. At the same time, gender, language and educational divide, coupled with dynamics and processual development of modernization, are characteristics that distinguished both categories and eventually led them to divergent roads functioning as independent communities. To uncover the gender dimension which is less explored in the topic of migrant institutions, this article employs “Grassroots Buddhism” as a theoretical device.