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Naming chaos: Accident, precariousness, and the spirits of wildness in urban Thai spirit cults
Author(s) -
JOHNSON ANDREW ALAN
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01394.x
Subject(s) - wildness , wilderness , accident (philosophy) , sociology , precarity , precarious work , work (physics) , history , environmental ethics , aesthetics , gender studies , political science , law , art , philosophy , ecology , mechanical engineering , epistemology , biology , engineering
Conceptions of wildness (theuan) and accident pervade the Thai informal economy and infuse certain forms of popular religious practice. I look at the propitiation of wilderness spirits in urban Bangkok at shrines that migrant and marginal workers see as sites of hope and danger. I argue that, by naming the potential for accident and death as a spirit with which they can communicate, informal‐economy workers attempt to change the potential for misfortune into its opposite. My study draws on recent work on neoliberal and precarious labor in Europe as well as connections between the occult and the economy.