The spirit in the machine

Towards a spiritual geography of debt bondage and labour (im)mobility in Cambodian brick kilns

Bibliographic Data

ID8962826
AuthorsLaurie Parsons (0000-0002-3461-3468, Department of Geography Royal Holloway University of London London UK, corresponding author), Katherine Brickell (0000-0002-0638-6106, Department of Geography Royal Holloway University of London London UK)
Year2020
Volume46
Issue1
Pages44-58
Publication date2020-05-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/tran.12393
OpenAlexW3027190754
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited49

This paper draws on evidence from debt bonded brick workers in Cambodia to explore how animism and formal religion are articulated to retain workers in dangerous and difficult conditions. The paper shows first how factory labourers, owners, and local religious figures actively articulate spiritual beliefs by legitimising workers’ confinement to the kiln through moral recourse to Buddhist notions of merit, character, and destiny. Secondly, it shows how informal animist beliefs play a key role in shaping interpretations of, and responses to, the extreme physical conditions of the kilns. Thus, by exploring how superstition and religious beliefs work to co‐constitute labour (im)mobility in the country’s brick kilns, it makes a case for linking the geographies of labour, mobilities, and spirituality. More broadly, by highlighting the role of locally articulated spirituality in immobilising workers, our paper provides a counterpoint to predominant narratives of spiritual and animist agency as resistance, demonstrating instead how such agency may serve in the workplace as a means of coercion, restriction and control

Agency (philosophy · Archaeology · Blessing · Debt · Destiny (ISS module · Economics · Environmental ethics · Social science · Sociology · Spirituality · Cambodian History and Society · Engineering · History · Philosophy · Religious Tourism and Spaces · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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Open DOIOpen Access