Temple Tracks

The notions of labour, mobility and piety have a complex and intertwined relationship. Using ethnographic methods and a historical perspective, Temple Tracks critically outlines the interlink of railway construction in colonial and post-colonial Asia, as well as the anthropology of infrastructure and transnational mobilities with religion. In Malaysia and Singapore, evidence of religion-making and railway-building from a colonial past is visible in multiple modes and media as memories, recollections and ‘traces’.

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Methodological Musings, Analytical Signposts

Chapter 1. Retelling Railway Histories: Centring Labour
Chapter 2. Constructing Colonial Railway Networks in Malaya
Chapter 3. Work and Living Spaces of Railway Labour
Chapter 4. Mapping ‘Railwaymen Temples’ in Singapore and Malaysia
Chapter 5. Sojourneying with Muṉīsvaraṉ the ‘Railway God’
Chapter 6. Railways and Religion: Negotiating Colonial and Post-colonial Modernities

Conclusion: Sedimented, Intertwined Histories

Appendices

Glossary
Index