The Production of Possession: Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia- Ong

1. Power and Resistance in Context: Globalization and Neoliberalism

Core Idea:

Ong analyzes how global structures of power—particularly multinational capitalism and state neoliberalism—shape the everyday experiences of individuals, especially Malay factory women in Southeast Asia.

Key Points:

• Power is not solely top-down; individuals and communities negotiate, resist, and reinterpret it in culturally meaningful ways.

• Ong bridges macro-level global political economy with micro-level embodied resistance.

2. Science and Biomedicine as Tools of Power

Central Argument:

• Scientific discourse, particularly biomedicine, operates as an apparatus of control, often delegitimizing local knowledge by branding it irrational or backward.

• Healing practices in factory settings become a means to redefine bodies, minds, and behaviors in line with capitalist efficiency.

Implication:

• The rationalizing power of science serves to marginalize indigenous beliefs while making workers more compliant and self-disciplined, aligning with Foucault’s concept of biopower.

3. Spirit Possession as Cultural Resistance

Main Idea:

• Spirit possession emerges as a culturally coded form of resistance among Malay female factory workers, expressing their distress, dissent, and dislocation under the strain of industrial discipline and gendered oppression.

Context:

• Spirit visitations are not random or irrational; they occur within new institutional settings like factories and serve to symbolize protest against labor exploitation, gender subjugation, and cultural alienation.

4. Gender, Culture, and the Body

Key Dynamics:

• Traditional Malay gender norms depict women as more emotionally susceptible and less rational, thus marginalizing them from public and male-dominated spaces.

• Spirit possession disproportionately affects married women—especially those restricted to domestic and subordinate roles—highlighting their psychic stress under modern labor regimes.

Interpretation:

• The factory becomes a site of gendered biopolitics, where women’s bodies are policed, and their cultural identities eroded or pathologized.

5. Symbolic Inversion and Transgression

Theoretical Insight:

• Spirit possession reverses hierarchies, giving factory women a voice and agency they otherwise lack.

• It allows them to transgress social expectations without direct confrontation or punishment, functioning as a tactical resistance under authoritarian or patriarchal structures.

6. Spirit Beliefs and Indigenous Moral Worlds

Cultural Depth:

• Spirit beliefs in Malay society are deeply tied to natural boundaries, moral codes, and ancestral landscapes.

• These spirits regulate social conduct and embody collective anxieties about moral disorder and social transformation.

Factory Context:

• By transgressing indigenous moral boundaries—both physical and ethical—corporations trigger spirit visitationsthat reflect moral discomfort and social strain.

7. Neoliberal Discipline and Psychic Alienation

Foucaultian Frame:

• Ong uses Foucault’s ideas on self-regulation to show how the fear of possession becomes a disciplinary mechanism: workers internalize control and conform more readily to factory expectations.

Result:

• Workers become alienated not only from their labor but also from their own emotions, bodies, and traditions—a psychic as well as social fragmentation.

8. Reinterpretation and Erasure of Indigenous Knowledge

Biomedical Reframing:

• The dominant discourse around spirit possession shifts from indigenous healers (bomohs) to scientifically trained professionals, marginalizing traditional explanations.

• This medicalizes protest, recasting spiritual crises as personal pathology rather than collective or systemic distress.

Cultural Consequences:

• This shift silences alternative narratives, fragments community solidarity, and invisibilizes structural exploitation.

9. Symbolic Pacification and Fragmentation

Corporate Strategy:

• Factory management frames spirit possession as an individual disorder, not a collective response to exploitation, thus deflecting blame and preventing labor organizing.

Effect:

• Workers are divided and pacified, their grievances rendered private rather than political.

• Spirit victims remain silent after recovery, indicating both internalized shame and continued subjugation.

10. Cosmopolitical Medicine as Control

Final Point:

• Global medicine doesn't merely heal; it reconstructs and dismembers the body in ways that disrupt traditional obligations and strip meaning from illness experiences.

• It acts as a mechanism of social control, anesthetizing not only physical pain but also cultural memory and political awareness.

Thematic Table Summary

Conclusion

Ong’s analysis weaves together cultural anthropology, feminist critique, and Foucauldian theory to reveal how everyday acts and symbols—like spirit possession—encode deep forms of resistance. These acts are not irrational outbursts but socially and politically meaningful responses to exploitation, cultural erasure, and gendered oppression. By focusing on lived experience, Ong powerfully critiques the "modernizing" narratives of neoliberal capitalism and foregrounds the subtle, embodied ways in which power is both exercised and contested.