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Welcome to the Department
of Sociology Website!
Our Department is one of the largest
in the Faculty, with over 30 staff members. Our research
and teaching interests are also ranging broad. From
its earliest beginnings, the Department has combined
the disciplines of Sociology and anthropology. Students
can thus benefit from learning a wide range of theoretical
and methodological approaches within both disciplines.
While many of our staff specialize on Singapore society,
a number of others are engaged in research on other
Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia,
Burma, Thailand and Vietnam. Teaching and research about
the political sociology and anthropology of the Southeast
Asian region as a whole, as well as Singapore itself,
is thus one of our major strengths.
Our undergraduate courses cover a wide
range of topics designed not only to give students a
solid grounding in sociological and anthropological
ways of thinking, but to provoke them to apply these
to all kinds of social problems and taken-for-granted
aspects of everyday life, including the world of work,
gender and the body, the changing family, popular culture,
health and illness, urbanization crime and deviance,
the role of the emotions in social life, science and
technology in society, human rights, globalization,
and the analysis of visual media. Our goal is to enrich
the way you see the world, and your understanding of
your own social life and experience!
Over the last few years we have worked
hard to expand and build up our Graduate Programmes,
with a slate of new advanced courses and specialized
supervision for Masters and Ph.D. students wishing to
do research in Singapore or elsewhere in the Asian region.
From academic year 2004/05, graduates will be able to
learn how to use digital video as a research tool in
our new course, The Practice of Visual Ethnography.
Our Fieldwork Gallery, below gives
you some idea of the diversity of research being carried
on in our Department.
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Roxana Waterson researches with
the Sa'dan Toraja people of Sulawesi (Indonesia), who
are well known for their unique architecture and elaborate
rituals, especially funerals. She has also made a special
study of indigenous architectures throughout the SE
Asian region. The first photo (below)shows a group of
Toraja people on their way to a funeral. The second
(on the right) shows people performing the ma'badong
funeral dance. The third photo shows a family origin
house, called tongkonan. |
Vineeta Sinha specializes in the
study of Hinduism in Singapore. Her photo shows the
Kuul Varuppu celebrations for the Goddess Samyapuram
Mariamman, held at a housing estate in Jurong West (2003).
The female medium, in trance, is " Dancing the
Goddess" as part of the Kuul Varuppu celebrations. |
Maribeth Erb researches
with the people of Manggarai, West Flores (indonesia).
Like most Indonesian peoples, the Manggarai are rice
cultivators. The first photo shows a rice ritual in
progress in the rice fields. The second shows the "Whip
duels", called Caci, are traditionally
believed to help the rice grow better, and more recently
have become a tourist attraction.Tourists can arrive
by boat at neighbouring Komodo island to see the famous
large reptiles known as Komodo Dragons. |
