Squeezed out by the market, seeking strength in the network: Makeshift temples and the spatio‐affective logics of survival in Singapore

Abstract

AbstractThis paper offers an understanding of the spatio‐affective workings of religious organisations – and the marketplaces they operate in and through – that go beyond capitalist logics. We do so by examining how makeshift temples representing various forms of ‘Chinese religion’ survive in Singapore. Capitalist logics fail to explain how such marginal and precarious religious organisations, which might be ‘squeezed out’ by the market, nonetheless manage to survive amid competition. Moreover, scarce attention has been paid to how religion as a social‐affective system might mediate the functioning of a religious market. This paper fills the lacuna by bringing an understanding of the affective resonances of Chinese religious practices into conversation with religious market theory. Rather than treating the market as a universal mechanism that moderates patterns of competition, growth, and decline, we focus instead on the spatio‐affective conditions through which a plurality of ‘actually existing’ religious marketplaces is made possible. We argue that makeshift temples in Singapore create an alternative order of the religious market that is organised by the affective economies and interpersonal relationships within which different ritual service providers compete, cohabit, and cooperate. These temples dismiss the spatio‐religious boundaries and regulation that define the neoliberal religious marketplace of Singapore by carving out sacred niches instead.