This course aims to provide an understanding of rituals and practices of various religious traditions in Hong Kong, their social and cultural significance for the local population. The course will focus on three areas: (1) Chinese religions, including Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism and popular religion; (2) Christianity, including Catholicism and Protestantism; (3) religious minorities, such as Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism.

This course offers an anthropological and ethnographic exploration of how religious rituals and everyday practices shape social inclusion, cultural heritage, and identity among Hong Kong’s diverse ethnic and religious communities. As a cosmopolitan city built on migration, Hong Kong serves as a critical site for understanding how minority and majority populations negotiate belonging, difference, and coexistence through religion. 

Adopting a comparative and grounded approach, the course examines three interconnected domains of religious life: 

1. Domestic Spheres: How gendered divisions of labor, family hierarchies, and moral economies are produced and contested through daily rituals in Chinese religious traditions—including Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religion. Ethnographic attention is given to home altars, ancestral rites, and the labor force participation of women and elders in transmitting intangible heritage.
2. Sacred Sites and Social Inclusion: A spatial ethnography of religious sites—Christian churches (Catholic and Protestant), temples, mosques, synagogues, and Hindu and Zoroastrian prayer spaces—analyzing how these sites function as arenas of intercultural encounter, ethnic boundary-making, and religious minority resilience in a predominantly Chinese urban landscape. 
3. Festivals and Public Rituals: How religious festivals connect local communities to each other and to transnational religious networks. Special focus on religious minorities such as Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians, and how their public celebrations navigate visibility, heritage preservation, and social inclusion in a migrant city. 

The course places Hong Kong in comparative perspective with other migrant cities (e.g., London, Singapore, Vancouver) and overseas Chinese communities, examining how diaspora, heritage, and religious pluralism are reshaped by migration, urban spaces, and ethnic conflicts. Students will engage with ethnographic case studies, visual media, and fieldwork-based assignments to develop nuanced understandings of religion as lived, embodied, and contested in multicultural societies.