TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT (TMA02)

This assignment is worth 20% of the final mark for HBC251 Religion in Contemporary Societies.

The cut-off date for this assignment is Thursday, 06 March 2025, 11.55pm.

Note to Students:
You are to include the following particulars in your submission: Course Code, Title of the TMA (if applicable), SUSS PI No., Your Name, and Submission Date.

(Full marks: 100)

(a) Conduct a site visit of at least TWO different places related to religion. Some places of religion you can visit include:

• Hindu temples

• Mosques

• Churches

• Multi-religious sites such as the Loyang Tua Pek Kong Temple or Sri Muneswarar Peetam Temple located within the Sze Keng Cheng Taoist Temple

• Places of religious significance such as kramats and shrines

• Centres related to New Religious Movements such as the Arya Samaj Temple, Sri Sathya Sai Society

Reflect upon your visit and explain how the visit impacted upon your understanding of the practice of race and religion in Singapore. In doing so, your discussion should first critically demonstrate evaluation and comparison of the significance of rituals and practices of the religious practitioners (worshippers and religious leaders) being examined. Apply course concepts and include empirical examples where relevant.

Your report should include photos (and or videos) of what you found interesting (if photography and videography is allowed at the religious site).

(50 marks)

(b) Examine the concept and state of inter-faith tolerance and peaceful co-existence in Singapore. Sketch government efforts to promote inter-faith harmony sufficient in contemporary Singapore and question if more and/or different kinds of initiatives should be undertaken by government and members of society. Apply course concepts and include empirical examples where relevant.

(50 marks)

Student’s Notes for (a)

• You may visit the site on your own, with a friend and/or classmate, or in small groups of three or four, but you will ultimately be responsible for producing your own essay based on your experience.

• Before the actual visit to the site, visit the temple website for some background knowledge and also inform yourself of temple-going etiquette such as dress codes.

• At your chosen site, observe the social rituals and behaviours that are connected to religious worship and seek permission before photography/videography or interviews.

• Although (a) is primarily field research and based on firsthand observations, you will need to refer to secondary sources, such as media articles, for background information on the temple. Ensure that you include references and a bibliography of the cited sources in your assignment.

Additional guidance/instructions

• The answer should be in the format of a well-structured essay.

• The word allowance for the answer is 1,800 words.

• This essay is about your ability to demonstrate that you have understood the
complexity of the issue and have a good grasp of different sides of the arguments around the issue. From a social science perspective there is no single correct or wrong answer, only better or worse answers. Weaker answers tend to fall back on preconceived and personal opinions and fail to engage with the course materials and literature. Better answers define the concepts used and reflect on their underlying assumptions, take an argumentative position that is coherent and consistently followed, and support their arguments with reference to course materials and the relevant academic literature.

• In your references you must use both course material (Study Guide, assigned readings, lecture notes) and at least FIVE other academic resources from your own research. Avoid over-relying on your sources by merely summarising or paraphrasing them, instead use them as sources of data or ideas to support your own interpretations and analyses.

• Ensure that you acknowledge all the sources through proper in-text citations and a list of references / Bibliography at the end of your discussion.

o Academic sources such as journals should include working hyperlinks and
DOI (digital object identifier) numbers.

o There should be robust in-text citations; paraphrasing material from
resources still requires in-text citations to acknowledge the source it was
paraphrased from.

Resources for Writing

• Purdue Online Writing Lab
• APA Style Guide
• See “Examples of Responsible Uses of Generative AI Tools” in Academic Integrity

Plagiarism & Generative AI

Copying text from a reference source (without putting it in quotation marks, or paraphrasing it) is considered plagiarism. Attribute all sources properly and consistently, including any AIgenerated text (see example below).

Answers that merely regurgitate or reproduce information from any sources, including generative AI tools, will be heavily marked down. Students should refer to Section 5.2 and Section 3 of the Student Handbook. If there is ample reason to believe that the work is not entirely the student’s own, a viva voce may be held to determine authorship.

Submission

It is strongly recommended that you make an early submission to check the originality report and, if necessary, make amendments to your document for resubmission. Note that the Turnitin report is usually generated immediately after the first submission,however, subsequent reports may take up to one day to generate. Do note that Turnitin will not accept any further submissions AFTER the cut-off time. There is a 12-hour grace period after the cut-off time, which is not an extended deadline but solely meant for solving any technical problems that you may encounter while attempting to make a submission before the cut-off time. Please email Canvas Support immediately (with relevant screenshots and your TMA attached) and follow up with Canvas Support first thing in the morning to ensure that the problem is resolved before the grace period is over.

One late submission is allowed only if no prior submissions were made before the cut-off time. Do note that the Canvas system will automatically deduct penalty marks for every day that your assignment is late. With this automatic deduction, there will be no need to request for extensions from your tutor because your tutor does not have the mandate to over-ride the Canvas system settings. You will need to form your own judgement as to how many marks
you are willing to forego for each extra day that you gain to work on your assignment.

Take care to ensure that you upload the correct TMA document to the correct folder of the correct course. Requests to transfer incorrectly uploaded documents to the correct folder will require an official appeal (and an administrative fee). Backup your TMA at all times. Once you have uploaded your TMA (in Word document format only), retain the Turnitin digital receipt as evidence of a successful submission. View
your submission to ensure that the entire document has been uploaded successfully.

Plagiarism and Collusion

The assignment is to be completed on your own. You may discuss the TMA with your course-mates; however, the assignment must be written independently. Do not share your notes, draft or final TMA with anyone before the marked TMAs are returned to you.

Avoid plagiarism by giving yourself sufficient time to research and understand the material so that you can write up your assignment in your own words. Quotations should be used sparingly. Simply citing the source of ‘copied’ chunks of text does not excuse it from plagiarism. Do ensure that any paraphrasing is done appropriately, even if you use text from your own work that you have submitted as part of another assignment for the same or another course.

The University takes a very serious view of plagiarism (passing off someone else’s ideas as your own, or recycling of contents from your own earlier marked TMA from the same course or another course) and collusion (submitting an assignment which is the same or very similar to another student’s). Both are very serious academic offences. Please refer to the Student Handbook on the penalties of plagiarism or collusion. You are strongly advised to submit your TMA early, check the plagiarism report yourself, and if needed revise and resubmit your TMA before the submission deadline.