Necropolitics of the Ordinary

In Necropolitics of the Ordinary: Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore, Dr. Ruth E. Toulson explores the scope of and resistance to state power over the dead.

Toulson demonstrates a shift to transform a Daoist-infused obsession with ancestors into a sterile, more easily controlled "Protestant" Buddhism.

In a context where the dead remain central to family life, forced exhumation tears the social fabric, turning ancestors into ghosts.

Using death ritual and grieving as interrogative lenses, Dr. Toulson explores the legacies of colonialism and consequences of whirlwind capitalist development, offering a new anthropology of death, one both more personal and politicized.