Discussion Board 6

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The sanitized environments maintained by multina- tional corporations in Malaysian "free trade zones"l are not immune to sudden spirit attacks on young female workers. Ordinarily quiescent, Malay factory women who are seized by vengeful spirits explode into demonic screaming and rage on the shop floor. Management responses to such unnerving episodes include isolating the possessed workers, pumping them with Valium, and sending them home. Yet a Singapore2 doctor nores rhar "a local medicine man can do more good than tranquilizers" (Chew 1978:51). \Thatever healing technique used, the iure is never certain, for the Malays consider spirit possession an illrtess that affiicts the soul (jiwa).This paper will explore how the reconsrirurion of illness, bodies, and consciousness is involved in the deploy- ment of healing practices in multinational factories.

THE PRODUCTION OF POSSESSION Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. 'W'hat

are some of the main aspects of dominant Malay gender ideologies? How and why have these been challenged by the migration of young women to urban areas for study and work?

2. How does Ong's explanation of the outbreak of spirit possession among young, female factory workers differ from that of the governmenr, media, and factory managers?

3. Vhat does this account teach us about the role of bodies as sites for the production, regulation, and expression of gender relations? How does attention to power, agenqz, and structure help us make sense of the situation?

Anthropologists studying spirit possession phenom- ena have generally linked them to culturally specific forms of confict management that disguise and yet resolve social tensions within indigenous societies. In contrast, policymakers and professionals see spirit pos- session episodes as an intrusion ofarchaic beliefs into the modern setting. These views will be evaluated in the light ofspirit possession incidents and the reactions of factory managers and policymakers in Malaysia.

Different forms of spirit possession have been reported in Malay society, and their cultural sig- nificance varies with the regional and historical circumstances in which they occurred. In the cur- rent changing political economy, new social condi- tions have brought about spirit possession incidents in modern institutional serrings. I believe that the most appropriate way to deal with spirit visitations

Abridged version of Aihrvar Ong, 1988. "Thc Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multina- tionrrl Corporation in Malaysia." ReprodrLced by permission of the American Anthropologicai Association and of the author fromlzerican Ethnologist, \'olume 15, Issue 1, Pages 28-42. February 1988. Not for sale or further reproc{uction.

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in multinational factories is to consider them as part of a "complex negotiation of reality" (Crapan- zaoo 1977:76) by an emergent female industrial workforce. Hailing from peasant villages, these workers can be viewed as neophytes in a double sense: as young female adults and as members of a nascent proletariat. Mary Douglas' ideas about the breaking of taboos and social boundaries (1966) are useful for interpreting spirit possession in terms of what it reveals about the workers' profound sense of status ambiguity and dislocation.

Second, their spirit idiom will be contrasted with the biomedical model to reveal alternative constructions of illness and of social reality in the corporate world. I will then consider the implica- tions of the scientific medical model that converts workers into patients," and the consequences this therapeutic approach holds for mending the souls of the affiicted.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

As recently as the 1960s, most Malays in Peninsular Malaysia lived in rural hampung (villages), engaged in cash cropping or fishing. ln 1969, spontaneous outbreaks ofracial rioting gave expression to deep- seated resentment over the distribution of power and wealth in this multiethnic society. The Malay- dominated government responded to this crisis by introducing a New Economic Policy intended to "restructure" the political economy. From the early 1970s onward, agricultural and industrial- ization programs induced the large-scale infux of young rural Malay men and women to enter urban schools and manufacturing plants set up by mul- tinational corporations. Throughout the 1970s, free-trade zones were established to encourage in- vestments by Japanese, American, and European corporations for setting up plants for offshore production. In seeking to cut costs further, these corporations sought young, unmarried women as a source of cheap and easily controlled labor. This selective labor demand, largely met by hampungso- ciety, produced in a single decade a Malay female

THE PRoDUCTToN oF PossESSroN . 243

industrial labor force of over 47,000 (Jamilah Ariffin 1980:47). Malay female migrants also crossed the Causeway in the thousands to work in mukinational factories based in Singapore.

SPIRIT BELIEFS AND \$TOMEN IN MALAY CULTURE

Spirit beliefs in rural Malay society, overlaid but existing within Islam, are part of the indigenous worldview woven from strands of animistic cosmol- ogy and Javanese, Hindu, and Muslim cultures. In Peninsular Malaysia, the supernatural belief system varies according to the historical and local interac- tions between folk beliefs and Islamic teachings. Local traditions provide conceptual coherence about causation and well-being to village Malays. Through the centuries, the office of the bomoh, or practitioner of folk medicine, has been the major means by which these old traditions of causation, illness, and health have been transmitted. In fulfill- ing the pragmatic and immediate needs of every- day life, the beliefs and practices are often rdcast in "Islamic" terms.

I am mainly concerned here with the folk model in Sungai Jawa (a pseudonym), a village based in Kuala Langat district, rural Selangor, where I con- ducted fieldwork in 7979-80. Since the 1960s, the widespread introduction of 'Western medical prac- tices and an intensified revitalization oflslam have made spirit beliefs publicly inadmissible. Neverthe- less, spirit beliefs and practices are still very much in evidence. Villagers believe that all beings have spiritual essence (semangat) but, unlike humans, spirits (hantu) are disembodied beings capable of violating the boundaries between the material and supernatural worlds: invisible beings unbounded by human rules, spirits come to represent trans- gressions of moral boundaries, which are socially defined in the concentric spaces of homestead, vil- lage, and jungle. This scheme roughly coincides with Malay concepts of emotional proximity and distance, and the related dimensions of reduced moral responsibility as one moves from the interior

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space of household, to the intermediate zone of relatives, and on to the external world ofstrangers (Banks 1983170-174).

The two main classes of spirits recognized by Malays reflect this interior-exterior social/spatial divide: spirits associated with human beings, and the "free" disembodied forms. In Sungai Jawa, toyol are the most common familiar spirits, who steal in order to enrich their masters. Accusations of breeding toyl provide the occasion for express- ing resentment against economically successful villagers. Birth demons are former human females who died in childbirth and, as pontianah, threaten newly born infants and their mothers. Thus, spirit beliefs refect everyday anxieties about the manage- ment of social relations in village society.

It is free spirits that are responsible for attack- ing people who unknowingly step out of the Malay social order. Free spirits are usually associated with special objects or sites (heramat) marking the bound- ary between human and natural spaces. As the gate- keepers of social boundaries, spirits guard against human transgressions into amoral spaces. Such ac- cidents require the mystical qualities of the bomoh to read just spirit relations with the human world.

From Islam, Malays have inherited the belief that men are more endowed with akal (reason) than women, who are overly infuenced by hawa nafsu (human lust). A susceptibility to imbalances in the four humoral elements renders women spiritually weaker than men. \7omen's hawa nafsu nature is believed to make them especially vulnerable to latah (episodes during which the victim breaks out into obscene language and compulsive, imitative behavior) and to spirit attacks (spontaneous epi- sodes in which the affiicted one screams, hyperven- tilates, or falls down in a trance or a raging fit). However, it is Malay spirit beliefs that explhin the transgressions whereby women (more likely than men) become possessed by spirits (kena hantu). Their spiritual frailty, polluting bodies, and erotic nature make them especially likely to transgress moral space, and therefore permeable by spirits.

Mary Douglas (i966) has noted that taboos operate to control threats to social boundaries. In

Malay society, women are hedged in by conventions that keep them out of social roles and spaces domi- nated by men. Although men are also vulnerable to spirit attacks, women's spiritual, bodily, and social selves are especially offensive to sacred spaces, which they trespass at the risk ofinviting spirit attacks.

Spirit victims have traditionally been married women who sometimes become possessed after giving birth for the first time. Childbirth is a dan- gerous occasion, when rituals are performed in order to keep off evil spirits. As a rite of passage, childbirth is the first rraumatic event in the ordi- nary village woman's life. I visited a young mother who had been possessed by a hantu, which the ministrations of two bomoh failed to dislodge. She lay on her mat for two months after delivering her first child, uninterested in nursing the baby. Her mother-inJaw whispered that she had been "pen- etrated by the devil." Perhaps, through some un- intended action, she had attracted spirit attack and been rendered ritually and sexualiy impure.

In everyday life, village women are also bound by customs regarding bodily comporrment and spatial movements, which operate to keep them within the Malay social order. When they blur the bodily boundaries through the careless disposal of bodily exuviae and effiuvia, they put themselves in an ambiguous situation, becoming most vulnerable to spirit penetration.

Until recently, unmarried daughters, most hedged in by village conventions, seem to have been well protected from spirit attack. Nubile girls take special care over the disposal oftheir cut nails, fallen hair, and menstrual rags, since such mate- rials may fall into ill-wishers' hands and be used for black magic. Menstrual blood is considered dirty and polluting and the substance most likely to offend keramat spirits. This concern over bodily boundaries is linked to notions about the vulnera- ble identity and status of young unmarried women.

Since the early 1970s, when young peasant women began to leave the kampung and enter the unknown worlds of urban boarding schools and foreign factories, the incidence of spirit possession seems to have become more common among them

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than among married women. I maintain that like other cultural forms, spirit possession incidents may acquire new meanings and speak to new ex- periences in changing arenas of social relations and boundary definitions. ln hampung society, spirit attacks on married women seem to be associ- ated with their containment in prescribed domes- tic roles, whereas in modern organizations, spirit victims are young, unmarried women engaged in hitherto alien and male activities. This transition from bampung to urban-industrial contexts has cast viliage girls into an intermediate status that they find unsettling and fraught with danger to them- selves and to Malay culture.

SPIRIT VISITATIONS IN MODERN FACTORIES

Multinational factories based in free-trade zones were the favored sites of spirit visitations. An American factory in Sungai \Vay experienced a Iarge-scale incident in 1978, which involved some 120 operators engaged in assembly work requir- ing the use of microscopes. The factory had to be shut down for three days, and a bomoh was hired to slaughter a goat on the premises. The American di- rector wondered how he was to explain to corporate headquarters that "8,000 hours ofproduction were lost because someone saw a ghost" (Lim 1978:33). A Japanese facrcry based in Pontian, Kelantan, also experienced a spirit attack on 21 workers in 1980. As they were being taken to ambulances, some victims screamed, "I will kill you! Let me gol" (New Straits Times, 26 September, 1980). In Penang, another American factory was disrupted for three consecutive days after 15 women became affiicted by spirit possession. The victims screamed in fury and put up a terrific struggle against re- straining male supervisors, shouting "Go away!" (Sunday Echo, 27 November, 1978). The affiicted were snatched off the shop foor and given injec- tions of sedatives. Hundreds of frightened female workers were also sent home. A factory personnel officer told reporters:

THE PRoDUCTIoN oF possEssroN . 245

Some girls started sobbing and screaming hysteri- cally and when it seemed like spreading, the other workers in the production line were immediately ushered out. . . . It is a common belief among work- ers that the factory is "dirty" and supposed to be haunted by a datuk. (Sunday Echo)

Though brief, these reports reveal that spirit posses- sion, believed to be caused by defilement, held the victims in a grip of rage against factory supervisors. Furthermore, the disruptions caused by spirit inci- dents seem a form ofretaliation against the factory supervisors. In what follows, I will draw upon my field research to discuss the complex issues involved in possession imagery and management discourse on spirit incidents in Japanese-owned factories based in Kuala Langat.

THE CRYPTIC LANGUAGE OF POSSESSION

Young, unmarried women in Malay society are ex- pected to be shy, obedient, and deferential, to be ob- served and not heard. In spirit possession episodes, they speak in other voices that refuse to be silenced. Since the affiicted claim amnesia once they have re- covered, we are presentedwith the taskof deciphering covert messages embedded in possession incidents.

Spirit visitations in modern factories with sizable numbers of young Malay female workers engender devil images, which dramatically reveal the contra- dictions between Malay and scientific ways of ap- prehending the human condition. In Malay society, what is being negotiated in possession incidents and their aftermath are complex issues dealing with the violation of different moral boundaries, of which gender oppression is but one dimension. \7hat seems clear is that spirit possession provides a traditional way of rebelling against authority with- out punishment, since victims are not blamed for their predicament. However, the imagery of spirit possession in modern settings is a rebellion against transgressions of indigenous boundaries governing proper human relations and moral justice.

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For Malays, the places occupied by evil spirits are nonhuman territories like swamps, jungles, and bodies of water. These amoral domains were kept distant from women's bodies by ideological and physical spatial regulations. The construction of modern buildings, often without regard for Malay concern about moral space, displaces spirits, which take up residence in the toilet tank. Thus, most vil- lage women express a horror of the Western-style toilet, which they would avoid if they could.

A few days after the spirit attacks in the Pen- ang-based American factory, I interviewed some of the workers. \Tithout prompting, factory women pointed out that the production foor and can- teen areas were "very clean" but factory toilets were "filthy" (ho.tor). A datak haunted the toilet, and workers, in their haste to leave, dropped their soiled pads anywhere. In the Penang factory incident, a worker remembered that a piercing scream from one corner of the shop floorwas quickly followed by cries from other benches as women fought against spirits trying to possess them. The incidents had been sparked by datuk visions, sometimes head- less, gesticulating angrily at the operators. Even after the bomoh had been sent for, workers had to be accompanied to the toilet by foremen for fear of being attacked by spirits in the stalls.

In Kuala Langat, my fieldwork elicited similar imagery from the workers in two Japanese facto- ries (code-named ENI and EJI) based in the local free-trade zone. In their drive for attaining high production targets, foremen (both Malay and non- Malay) were very zealous in enforcing regulations that confined workers to the work bench. Opera- tors had to ask for permission to go to the toilet, and were sometimes questioned intrusively about their "female problems." Menstruation was seen by management as deserving no consideration even in a workplace where 85-90 percent of the work force was female. In the EJI plant, foremen sometimes followed workers to the locker room, terrorizing them with their spying. One operator became pos- sessed after screaming that she saw a "hairy leg" when she went to the toilet. A worker from another factory reported:

'Workers saw "things" appear when they went to the toilet. Once, when a woman entered the toilet she saw a tall 6gure licking sanitary napkins ["Modess" supplied in the cabinetl. It had a long tongue, and those sanitary pads . . cannot be used anymore.

As Taussig remarks, the "language" emanating from our bodies expresses the significance ofsocial disease (1980). The above lurid imagery speaks of the women's loss of control over their bodies as well as their lack of control over social relations in the factory. Furthermore, the image of body alienation also reveals intense guilt (and repressed desire), and the felt need to be on guard against violation by the male management staff who, in the form of fearsome predators, may suddenly marcrialize any- where in the factory,

Even the prayer room (surau), provided on fac- tory premises for the Muslim work force, was not safe from spirit harassment. A woman told me of her aunt's fright in the surau at the EJI fac:.ory; "She was in the middle of praying when she fainted because she said . . . her head suddenly spun and something pounced on her frorn behind." As men- tioned above, spirit attacks also occurred when women were at the work bench, usually during the "graveyard" shift. An ENI factory operator de- scribed one incident which took place in May 1979:

It was the afternoon shift, at about nine o'clock. All was quiet. Suddenln [the victim] started sob- bing, laughed and then shrieked. She failed at the machine . . . she was violent, she fought as the fore- man and technician pulled her away. Altogetheq three operators were aflicted. . . . The supervisor and foremen took them to the clinic and told the driver to take them home. . . .

She did not knowwhat had happened . . . she saw a hantu, a were-tiger. Only she saw it, and she started screaming. . . . The foremen would not let us talk with her for fear of recurrence. . . . People say that the workplace is haunted by the hantu who dwells below. . . . lVell, this used to be all jungle, it was a burial ground before the factory was built. The devil disturbs those who have a weak constitution.

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THE PRODUCTION OF I'OSSESSION ' 247

Spirit possession episodes then were triggered by black apparitions, which materialized in "liminal" spaces such as toilets, the locker room and the prayer room, places where workers sought refuge from harsh work discipline. These were also rooms periodically checked by male supervisors deter- mined to bring workers back to the work bench. The microscope, which after hours of use becomes an instrument of torture, sometimes disclosed spirits lurking within. Other workers pointed to the effect of the steady hum and the factory pol- lutants, which permanently disturbed graveyard spirits. Unleashed, these vengeful beings were seen to threaten women for transgressing into the zone between the human and nonhuman world, as well as modern spaces formerly the domain of men. By intruding into hitherto forbidden spaces, Malay women workers experienced anxieties about invir- ing punishment.

Fatna Sabbah observes that "(t)he invasion by women of economic spaces such as factories and ofEces . . . is often experienced as erotic aggres- sion in the Muslim context" (198417).In Malay culture, men and women in public contact must define the situation in nonsexual terms. It is partic- ularly incumbent upon young women to conduct themselves with circumspection and to diffuse sexual tension. However, the modern factory is an arena constituted by a sexual division oflabor and constant male surveillance of nubile women in a close, daily context. In Kuala Langat, young fac- tory women felt themselves placed in a situation in which they unintentionally violated taboos defin- ing social and bodily boundaries. The shop floor culture was also charged with the dangers of sexual harassment by male management staff as part of workaday relations. To combat spirit attacks, the Malay factory women felt a greater need for spiri- tual vigilance in the factory surroundings. Thus the victim in the ENI factory incident was said to be: "possessed, maybe because she was spiritu- ally weak. She was not spiritually vigilant, so that when she saw the hantu shewas instantly afraid and screamed. Usually, the hantu likes people who are spiritually weak, yes . . . one should guard against

being easily startled, afraid." As Foucault observes, people subjected to the "micro-techniques" ofpower are induced to regulate themselves (1979). The fear of spirit possession thus created self-regulation on the part of workers, thereby contributing to the intensification ofcorporate and self-control on the shop floor. Thus, as factory workers, Malay women became alienated not only from the products of their labor but also experienced new forms of psychic alienation. Their intrusion into economic spaces outside the home and village was experi- enced as moral disorder, symbolized by filth and dangerous sexuality. Some workers called for in- creased "discipline," others for Islamic classes on factory premises to regulate interactions (including dating) between male and female workers. Thus, spirit imagery gave symbolic configuration to the workers' fear and protest over social conditions in the factories. However, these inchoate signs of moral and social chaos were routinely recast by management into an idiom of sickness.

THE \TORKER AS PATIENT

Now I wish to discuss how struggles over the mean- ings of health are part of workers' social critique of work discipline, and of managers' attempts to extend control over the work force. The manage- ment use of workers as "instruments of labor" is paralleled by another set of ideologies, which re- gards women's bodies as the site of control where gender politics, health, and educational practices intersect.

In the Japanese factories based in Malaysia, management ideology constructs the female body in terms of its biological functionality for, and its anarchic disruption of, production. These ideolo- gies operate to fix women workers in subordinate positions in systems of domination that prolifer- ate in high-tech industries. A Malaysian invest- ment brochure advertises "the oriental girl," for example, as "qualified b! nature and inheritance to contribute to the efficiency of a bench assembly production line" (FIDA 1975, emphasis added).

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This biological rationale for the cornmodification of women's bodies is part of a pervasive discourse reconceptualizing women for high-tech production requirements. Japanese managers in the free trade zone talk about the "eyesight," "manual dexter- ity," and "patience" of young women to perform tedious micro-assembly jobs. An engineer put the female nature-technology relationship in a new light: "Our work is designed for females." '$Tithin international capitalism, this notion of women's bodies renders them analogous to the status ofthe computer chips they make. Computer chips, like "oriental gids," are identical, whether produced in Malaysia, Taiwan, or Sri Lanka. For multinational corporations, women are units of much cheap labor power repackaged under the "nimble fingers" label.

The abstract mode of scientific discourse also separates "norrnal" from "abnormal" workers, that is, those who do not perform according to factory requirements. In the EJi factory, the Malay per- sonnel manager using the biomedical model to locate the sources of spirit possession among work- ers noted that the first spirit attack occurred five months after the factory began operation in 7976. Thereafter, "we had our counter-measure. I think this is a method of how you give initial education to the workers, how you take care of the medical welfare of the workers. The worker who is weak, comes in without breakfast, lacking sleep, then she will see ghostsl"

In the factory environment, "spirit attacks" (hena hantu) was often used interchangeably with "mass hysteria," a term adopted from English lan- guage press reports on such incidents. In the man- agert view, "hysteria" was a symprom of physical adjustment as the women workers "move from home idleness to factory discipline." This explana- tion also found favor with some members of the work force. Scientific terms like "penyahit histeria" (hysteria sickness), and physiological preconditions formulated by the management, became more ac- ceptable to some workers. One woman remarked, "They say they saw hantu, but I don't know. . . . I believe that maybe they . . . when they come to

work, they did not fill their sromachs, they were not full so that they felt hungry. But they were not brave enough to say so." A male technician used more complex concepts, but remained doubtful:

I think that this [is caused byl a feeling of "complex"-that maybe "inferiority complex" is pressing them down-their spirit, so that this can be called an illness of the spirit, "confict jiwa," "emo- tional conflict." Sometimes they see an old man, in black shrouds, they say, in their microscopes, they say . . . . I myself dont know how. They see hantuin different places. . . . Some time ago an "emergency" incident like this occurred in a boarding school. The victim fainted. Then she became very strong. . . . It required ten or rwenty persons ro handle her.

In corporate discourse, physical "facts" that con- tributed to spirit possession were isolated, while psychological notions were used as explanation and as a technique of manipulation. In ENI factory a bomoh was hired to produce the illusion of exor- cism, lulling the workers into a false sense of se- curity. The personnel manager claimed that unlike managers in other Japanese firms who.operated on the "basis offeelings," his "psychological approach" helped to prevent recurrent spirit visitations:

You cannot dispel bampung beliefs. Now and then we call the bomoh to come, every six months or so, to pray, walk around. Then we take picures of the bomoh in the factory and hang up the pictures. Somehow, the workers seeing these pictures feel safe, [seeing] that the place has been exorcised.

Similarly, whenever a new secrion of the factory was constructed, the bomohwas senr for to sprinkle holy water, thereby assuring workers that the place was rid of ghosts. Regular bomoh visits and their photographic images were different ways of defin- ing a social reality, which simultaneously acknowl- edged and manipulated the workers' fear of spirits.

Medical personnel were also involved in the narrowdefinition of the causes of spirit incidents

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on the shop foor. A factory nurse periodically toured the shop floor to offer coffee ro rired or drowsy workers. \Torkers had to work eight-hour shifts six days a week-morning, 6:30 A.M. to 2:30 t.u.; afternoon, 2:30 p.u. to l0:30 p.M.; or night, 10:30 p.M. ro 6:30 a.rur.-which divided up the 24-hour daily operation of the factories. They were permitted two ren-minute breaks and a half-hour for a meal. Most workers had to change to a different shift every rwo weeks. This regime allowed little time for workers to recover from their exhaustion between shifts. In addition, overrime was frequently imposed. The shifts also worked against the human, and especially, female cycle; many freshly recruited workers regularly missed their sleep, meals, and menstrual cycles.

Thus, although management poinred to physi- ological problems as causing spirit attacks, they seldom acknowledged deeper scientific evidence of health hazards in microchip assembly plants. These include the rapid deterioration of eyesight caused by the prolonged use of microscopes in bonding processes. General exposure to srong solvents, acids, and fumes induced headaches, nausea, diz- ziness, and skin irritation in workers. More toxic substances used for cleaning purposes exposed workers to lead poisoning, kidney failure, and breast cancer. Other materials used in the fabrica- tion of computer chips have been linked to female workers' painful menstruation, their inability to conceive, and repeated miscarriages. rVithin the plants, unhappyJooking workers were urged to talk over their problems with the "industrial rela- tions assistant." Complaints of "pain in the chest" were interpreted to mean emotional distress, and the worker was ushered into the clinic for medica- tion in order to maintain discipline and a relentless work schedule.

In the EJI factory, the shop floor supervisor ad- mitted, "I think that hysteria is related to the job in some cases." He explained that workers in the microscope sections were usually the ones rc hena ltantu, and thought that perhaps they should not

THE PRoDUCTIoN oF PossEssloN . 249

begin work doing those tasks. However, he quickly offered other interprerarions that had little to do with work conditions: There was one victim whose broken engagement had incurred her mother's wrath; at work she cried and talked to herself, saying, "I am nor to be blamed, nor me!" Another worker, seized by possession, screamed, "Send me home, send me homel" Apparently, she indicated, her mother had taken all her earnings. Again, through such psychological readings, the causes ofspirit attacks produced in the factories were dis- placed onto workers and their families.

In corporate discourse, both the biomedical and psychological interpretations of spirit possession defined the affiiction as an attribute of individuals rather than stemming from the general social situ- ation. Scientific concepts, pharmaceutical treat- ment, and behavioral intervention all identified and separated recalcitrant workers from "normal" ones; disruptive workers became patients. Accord- ing to Parsons, the cosmopolitan medical approach tolerates illness as sanctioned social deviance; how- ever, parienrs have the duty to get well (198'5:146, 149). This attitude implies that those who do not get well cannot be rewarded with "the privileges of being sick" (1985:149).In the ENI factory, the playing out of this logic provided the rationale for dismissing workers who had had two previous ex- periences ofspirit attacks, on the grounds of"secu- rity." This policy drew protests from village elders, for whom spirits in the factory were the cause of their daughters' insecurity. The manager agreed verbally with them, but pointed out that these "hys- terical, mental types" might hurt themselves when they failed against the machines, risking electro- cution. By appearing to agree with native theory, the management reinterpreted spirit possession as a symbol of fawed characrer and culture. The sick role was reconceptualized as internally produced by outmoded thought and behavior not adequately adjusted to the demands of factory discipline. The worker-patient could have no claim on manage- ment sympathy but would have to bear responsi- bility for her own cultural deficiency. A woman in

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ENI talked sadly about her friend, the victim of spirits and corporate policy:

At the time the management wanted to throw her out, to end her work, she cried. She did ask to be reinstated, but she has had three [episodes] abeady. . . . I think that whether it was right or not [to expel her] depends [on the circumstances], be- cause she has already worked here for a long time; now that she has been thrown out she does not know what she can do, you know.

The nonrecognition of social obligations ro work- ers lies at the center of differences in worldview between Malay workers and the foreign manage- ment. By treating the signs and symptoms of dis- ease as "things-in-themselves" (Taussig 1980:1), rhe biomedical mode! freed managers from any moral debt owed the workers. Furthermore, corporate adoption of spirit idiom stigmatized spirit vicrims, thereby ruling out any serious consideration of their needs. Affiicted and "normal" workers alike were made to see that spirit possession was noth- ing but confusion and delusion, which should be abandoned in a rational worldview.

THE TTORK OF CULTURE: HYGIENE AND DISPOSSESSION

To what extent can the bomoh's work of culture convert the rage and distress of possessed women in Malaysia into socially shared meanings? As dis- cussed above, the spirit imagery speaks of danger and violation as young Malay women intrude into hitherto forbidden spirit or male domains. Their participation as an industrial force is subconsciously perceived by themselves and their families as a rhreat to the ordering of Malay cukure. Second, their em- ployment as production workers places them di- rectly in the control of male strangers who moniror their every move. These social relations, brought about in the process of industrial capitalism, are ex- perienced as a moral disorder in which workers are alienated from their bodies, the products of their

work, and their own culture. The spirit idiom is therefore a language ofprotest against these chang- ing social circumsrances. A male technician evalu- ated the stresses they were under; "There is a lot of discipline . . . but when there is too much discipline . . . it is not good. Because of this the operators, with their small wages, will always conrest. They often break the machines in ways that are not ap- parent. . . . Sometimes, rhey damage the products." Such Luddite actions in stalling production reverse momentarily the arrangement whereby work regi- mentation conrrols the human body. However, the workers' resisrance is not limited to the technical problem ofwork organization, but addresses the vi- olation of moral codes. A young woman explained her sense ofhaving been "tricked" into an intoler- able work arrangemenr:

For instance . . . sometimes . . . they want us to raise production. fhis is what we sometimes challenge. The workers want fair treatment, as for instance, in relation to wages and other mafters. \7e feei that in this situarion there are many lissuesl to dispute over with the management . . . . with our wages.so low we feel as though we have been tricked or forced.

She demands "justice, because sometimes they ex- haust us very much as if they do not rhink thar we too are human beings!"

Spirit possession episodes may be taken as ex- pressions both of fear and of resistance against the multiple violations of moral boundaries in the modern factory. They are acts of rebellion, symbol- izing what cannor be spoken directly, calling for a renegotiation of obligations between rhe man- agement and workers. However, technocrats have turned a deaf ear to such protests, to this moral in- dictment of their woeful cultural judgments about the dispossessed. By choosing to view possession episodes narrowly as sickness caused by physiologi- cal and psychological maladjustment, rhe man- agement also manipulates the bomoh to serve the interests ofthe factory rather than express the needs of the workers. Both Japanese factories in Kuala Langat have commenced operarions in a spate of

re spirir idiom is Linst these chang- technician evalu- "There is a lot of : much discipline ris the operators, rys contest. They ; rhat are not ap- rge the products." roduction reverse rereby work regi- ,dy. However, the to the technical

r addresses the vi- ,voman explained " into an intoler-

i want us to false times challenge. s lor instance, in ;. tWe feel that in I to dispute over 'wages so low we . or forced.

metimes they ex- rot think that we

,' be taken as ex- esistance against loundaries in the ebellion, symbol- 'ectly, calling for :r\lreen the man- rechnocrats have ro this moral in- iudgments about view possession

ed by physiologi- ment, the man- moh to serve the express the needs :ctories in Kuala rns in a spate of

spirit possession incidents. A year after operations began in the EJI factorp a well-known bornoh and his retinue were invited to the factory surAu, where they read prayers over a basin of "pure water." Those who had been visited by the devil drank from it and washed their faces, a ritual which made them immune to future spirit attacks. the bomoh pronounced the hantu controlling the factory site "very kind"; he merely showed himself but did not disturb people. A month after the ritual, the spirit attacks resumed, but involving smaller numbers of women (one or two) in each incident. The manager claimed that after the exorcist rites, spirit attacks occurred only once a month.

In an interview, an eyewitness reported what happened after a spirit incident erupted:

The work section was not shut down, we had to con- tinue working. tVhenever it happened, the other workers felt frightened. They were not allowed to look because [the management] feared contagion. They would not permit us to leave. lVhen an inci- dent broke out, we had to move away . . . . At ten otlock they called the bomoh to come . . . because he knew that the hantu had already entered the wom- an's body. He came in and scattered rice four water all over the area where the incident broke out. He recited prayers over holy water. He sprinkled rice flour water on places touched by the hantu . . . 'Ihe bomoh chanted incantations ljampi jampi) chas- ingthe hantu away. He then gave some medicine to the aflicted . . . . He also entered the clinic [to p r onounce) j amp i j amp i.

The primary role of the bomoh hired by corporate management was to ritually cleanse the prayer room, shop floor, and even the factory clinic. After appeas- ing the spirits, he ritually healed the victims, who were viewed as not responsible for their affiiction. However, his work did not extend to curing them after they had been given sedatives and sent home. Instead, through his exorcism and incanrarions, rhe bomoh expressed the Malay understanding of these disturbing events, perhaps impressing the other workers that the factory had been purged ofspirits.

THE PRoDUcrroN oF PossEssroN . 251

However, he failed to convince the management about the need to create a moral space, in Malay terms, on factory premises. Management did not re- spond to spirit incidents by reconsidering social rela- tionships on the shop floor; instead, they sought to eliminate the affiicted from the work scene. As the ENI factory nurse, an Indian woman, remarked, "It is an experience working with the Japanese. They do not consult women. To tell you the truth, they don't care about the problem except that it goes away."

The work of the bomo,D was further thwarted by the medicalization of the affiicted. Spirit pos- session incidents in factories made visible the con- ficted women who did not fit the corporate image of "normal" workers. By standing apart from the workaday routine, possessed workers inadvertently exposed themselves to the cold ministrations of modern medicine, rarher than the increased social support they sought. Other workers, terrified of being attacked and by the threat ofexpulsion, kept up a watchful vigilance. This induced self-regu- lation was reinforced by the scientific gaze of su- pervisors and nurses, which further enervated the recalcitrant and frustrated those who resisted. A worker observed, "[The possessed] don't remember their experiences. Maybe the hantu is still working on their madness, maybe because their experiences have not been stilled, or maybe their souls are not really disturbed. They say there are evil spirits in that place lthat is, factoryl." In fact, spirit victims maintained a disturbed silence after their "recov- ery." Neither their families, friends, the bomolt, nor I could get them to talk about their experiences.

Spirit possession episodes in different societ- ies have been labeled "mass psychogenic illness" or "epidemic hysteria" in psychological discourse (Colligan, Pennebaker, and Murphy 1982). Differ- ent altered states of consciousness, which variously spring from indigenous understanding of social situations, are reinterpreted in cosmopolitan terms considered universally applicable. In multinational factories located overseas, this ethnotherapeutic model (Lutz 1985) is widely applied and made to seem objective and rational. However, we have seen that such scientific knowledge and practices can

)\) BECOMlNG/BEING GENDERED

display a definite prejudice against the people they are intended to restore to well-being in particular cultural contexts. The reinterpretation ofspirit pos- session may therefore be seen as a shift of locus of patriarchal authority from the bomoh, sanctioned by indigenous religious beliefs, toward profession- als sanctioned by scientific training.

In Third 'World contexts, cosmopolitan medi- cal concepts and drugs often have an anesthetizing effect, which erases the authentic experiences ofthe sick. More frequently, the proliferation of positivist scientific meanings also produces a fragmentation of the body, a shatering of social obligations, and a separarion of individuals from their own culture. Gramsci (1971) has defined hegemony as a form of ideological domination based on the consent of the dominatejd, a consent that is secured through the diffusion of the worldview of the dominant class. In Malaysia, medicine has become part of he- gemonic discourse, constructing a "modern" out- look by clearing away the nightmarish visions of Malay workers. However, as a technique of both concealment and control, it operates in a more sinister way than native beliefs in demons. Malay factory women may gradually become dispossessed of spirits and their own culture, but they remain profoundly diseased in the "brave new workplace."3

REFERENCES

Banks, David J. 1983. Malay Kinship. Philadelphia, PA: ISHI.

Chew, P. K. 1978. How to Handle Hysterical Factory lVorkers. Occupational Health and Safety 47(2):50-53.

Colligan, Michael, James Pennebaker, and Lawrence Murphy, eds. 1982. Mass Psychogenic Illness: A Social Psychological Analysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Crapanzano, Vincent. l9TT.lntroduction. In Case Studies in Spirit Possession. Vincent Crapanzano and Vivian Garrison, eds., pp. i-40. New York: John \filey.

Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Pollution and Taboo. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin.

FIDA (Federal Industrial Development Authority), Malaysia. 1975. Malayia: The Solid State for Electronics. Kuala Lumpur.

Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan, trans. New York: Vinrage.

Gramsci, Antonio. i97i. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, trans. New York: International Publishing.

Howard, Robert. 1985. Brave New tVorkplace. New York: Viking Books.

Jamilah Arifin. 1980. Industrial Development in Peninsular Malaysia and Rural-Urban Migration of 'Women Workers: Impact and Implications. Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia l:41-59.

Lim, Linda. 1978. \7omen lVorkers in Multinational Corporations: The Case ofthe Electronics Industry in Malaysia and Singapore. Ann Arbor: Michigan Occasional Papers in'Women's Studies, No. 9.

Lutz, Catherine. 1985. Depression and the Translation of Emotional \Worlds. In Culture and Depression. Arthur Kleinman and Byron Good, eds., pp. 63-100. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Parsons, Talcott. 1985. Illness and the Role ofthe Physician: A Sociological Perspective. In Readings from Talcott Parsons. Peter Hamilton, ed., pp. 145-155. New York: Tavistock. '

Sabbah, Fatna A. 1984. \Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. Mary Jo Lakeland, trans. New York: Pergamon Press.

Taussig, Michael. 1980. Reification and the Consciousness ofthe Patient. Social Science and Medicine 148:3-13.

NOTES

1. "Free trade zones" are fenced-offareas in which multinational corporations are permitted to locate export-processing industries in the host country. These zones are exempt from many taxation and labor regulations that may apply elsewhere in the economy.

2. Singapore is an island state situated south of Peninsular Malaysia. Although separate countries, they share historical roots and many cultural sim ilariries and inrerests.

3. This phrase is borrowed from Howardt (1985) study of changing work relations occasioned by the introduction of computer technology into offices and industries.