Possession in Malaysian Factories

This article touched on many aspects of factories that are known throughout the world. The most well-known fact is that the workers are mostly from villages that need the money, but they are still paid very little for the work that they do. This is extremely relevant for this article because the author notes that the female Malay workers do their best to maintain some type of independence from their male supervisors. This could sometimes result in their possessions, which would trickle down into other workers and inevitably halt production within the factory.

Another huge fact within the text is that it isn't entirely clear the cause of the possessions. It could be that the women actually feel they are being possessed because of societal norms within their own villages, or it could also be because of the work environment itself. When it comes to their societal norms, one could include the fact that their everyday lives are affecting their work lives and this leads to their being possessed, or it could be uncleanliness associated with toilets, the floors, and sometimes even the menstruation cycle itself. But another force of these possessions could be the work environment. Many of the workers are hunched over a microscope for hours on end (about 8 hours per day), dealing with very sensitive materials, breathing in fumes from the chips, cleaning solutions, etc. and these could all cause thoughts of possession and pain in various parts of the body. Even knowing this, the supervisors don't care about their worker's health and continues to push them to do more work. They bring in a bomoh to exorcise any spirits within the factory to entice the workers to continue producing for the factory, which leads to an increase in fume inhalation and possibly more possessions and other complications.

All in all, the main point in this article is the fact that the Malay women are forced to continue working no matter the circumstances. If they are feeling ill, they are taken to a doctor and then brought back to the factory to continue working. If they are having a possessed moment, they are exorcised and brought back to work. If they are having troubles at home, they are to continue working as if nothing matters. This shows the affect that capitalism, especially international capitalism, has on the female Malay factory workers.