Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia

by Aihwa Ong

New edition of the classic ethnographic study of Malay women factory workers.

Genres: Anthropology, Feminism, Nonfiction, Ethnography, Labor, Gender, Social Science

268 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1987

About the author

Aihwa Ong is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty and Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality.

Reviews

[Talea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked it :)

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ong's study of Malaysia's industrialization is a more sweeping structural analysis of Malay society than the specificity of its subtitle may suggest. The first half, Parts I and II, is taken up with a discussion of the neoliberal transformation of late twentieth-century Malaysia as it becomes integrated into the global system of industrial capitalism. First under the aegis of colonial power, and later the political machinery of indigenous nationalism, rural Malays have been mobilized as a new base of workers and consumers in the service of multinational corporations. At the same time, however, Ong demonstrates that "[t]he organization of capitalist production is embedded in and transformed through cultural discourse/practices"(155). Just as market forces begin to destabilize traditional power relations within families and communities, the factory's organizational hierarchy in fact reproduces that of the peasant household in its coordination of gendered obligations and power differentials toward common production targets.

This sets the stage for Part III, where one particular manifestation of this neoliberal transformation - the young female factory worker - is examined in depth. These young women (most of whom are in their late teens and early twenties) occupy a highly ambivalent position in Malay society and public discourse, as their new means of material independence are facilitated by exploitative working conditions, and their potential autonomy checked by the moralizing rhetoric of media and politicians giving voice to the interests of social controls both traditional and capitalist. The women's responses to these constraints inside and outside the workplace, Ong observes, do not constitute the formation of a class-consciousness, and rarely even articulations of overt protest - episodes of contagious spirit-possession on the factory floor being one noted exception - but rather forms of self- and peer-policing. Cast in terms of social and spiritual 'vigilance' and 'moral purity', this heightened self-consciousness and -discipline becomes a strategy for self-determination within the terms set by hegemonic power.

Ong's work here is most successful in its high-level theorization of social structures, and while she explicitly draws upon individual informants' explanations and perceptions, the intricacies of the cultural ground in which those structures are embedded remain largely opaque. Things like the meanings in filial relationships beyond forms of obligation, or the epistemological status of the spirits who possess factory girls, need to be explored in their own right if the full implications of Ong's analysis are to be appreciated.

[Cabot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is understandably a classic— even at 40ish years old it still has relevant insights about capitalist market penetration and the accompanying social change, and makes a compelling argument for viewing such processes through a localized lens. However, the organization of the book diminishes it significantly: the introduction is an incomprehensible bunch of academic jargon and Foucault citations, and it’s not until the conclusion that Ong’s argument is made succinctly. When people criticize academic writing, it’s sentences like those in this book they talk about.

[Wenjing]

A little boring reading this book after read Chinese Women Workers by PAN Yi. The author has laid out too much historical background, but the impact of capitalism on female workers and their resistance is not fully covered, especially the "resistance" in the title.

[Nana · Rating 4 out of 5]

review to follow

[Kavya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shocked that it only had one chapter about the 1st half of the title. Where is the revolution?

[John Wiswell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ong presents how the lives and power of women have changed in Malaysia with the explosion of jobs that they can do (and often, are the only applicants for). Ong follows the changes in the family dynamic (girls can now be breadwinners and are much more valuable to their households, drastically changing their pull, rights and the marriage process), and in the culture at large. Yet as an ethnographic work this does not look nearly enough at how Malaysian women feel about the change or their cultural sense of value in things like finally being able to earn and own property; it makes conclusions for them. Furthermore, be warned that this writing gets extremely dry, dense and generally tough to get through.