Session 8: Work, Inequality and Otherness

1st Global Conference

Tuesday 22nd September – Thursday 24th September 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford

Black Magic Women: On the Purported Use of Sorcery by Female Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore
Audrey Verma
National University of Singapore, Department of Sociology

This paper examines the purported use of sorcery, or black magic, by female foreign domestic workers, using Singapore as its context. Beneath the veneer of a technocratic, rational scientific and economically progressive society that should be wont to rejecting such archaic beliefs, accusations of the use of sorcery and rumours of the employment of witchcraft by foreign domestic workers swirl rampantly, albeit in hushed undertones. Even employers who are skeptical express wariness on these grounds. There are three main types of sorcery that foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in Singapore are accused of using in an effort to covertly manipulate local employers in various ways – a) the harbouring of demons, b) the use of binding spells or charms, and c) the use of substances imbued with dark mystical power. There has been little academic literature critically examining such accusations of sorcery and the use of witchcraft in the region, and far less with regard to FDWs even though such accusations have been known to have drastic legal consequences. The lack of attention may be a reflection of how these accusations and concomitantly, beliefs are written off, particularly by local academics, as being irrational and inconsequential. However, it is necessary to deconstruct the rumours in order to shed light on the nature and consequence of the social tension and conflicts of power between employers and FDWs, who may be best understood as the most threatening type of alien, the stranger in the home. The paper does not concern itself with the truth and validity of sorcery accusations, nor does it pursue the problematic distinction between what constitutes archaic or modern belief. Instead, it adopts a functionalist perspective to understanding accusations of sorcery within the specified context, and posits that these accusations are a) a double inversion of aggression by the accuser (the employer) toward maintaining the status quo (im)balance of power b) a reflection of socio-culturally and historically specific concerns of both employers and employees, being a form of risk and fear management, and c) to a lesser degree, the affirmation of local social and moral boundaries.

Notes on Historicizing the Present: The Sindhi Merchants in Japan as a Case Study
Mamta Sachan Kumar
National University of Singapore

The Sindhis – an ethnic “Indian” group – first began migrating to Japan for commercial purposes in the early Meiji period (i.e. in the late 1860s). Most were young male merchants known as Sindhworkies – members of an expanding textile trade network that had its roots in their native hometown of Hyderabad, once the capital of provincial Sindh in present-day Pakistan. The contemporary Sindhi merchant diaspora and its labyrinthine international trade network is an established global phenomenon that has come to be understood as a timelessly endowed marvel, just as it is, and without much consideration of the combination of historical factors that must have led to its birth. The case of the Sindhi merchants in Japan today, is an opportune moment to magnify a lens of retrospective analysis into their historic passage. Their story bequeaths us with a chance to deconstruct the timelessness of the present with due respect to the past. With a primary focus on Kobe – currently the most prominent area of settlement – and parallel considerations of Yokohama and Osaka, this paper is an appraisal of the past as a potent ingredient in currency, to appreciate the position of the Sindhi merchants through an illumination of their historical relationship with Japan.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Purity and Danger – The Poor in the Urban Space
Ada Ingrid Engebrigtsen