Article

South East Asia Research

1–17
Dreaming about the neighbours: ª SOAS 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0967828X16672771
sear.sagepub.com
entrepreneurship in the
consumption of Thai
religious goods in Singapore
Andrew Alan Johnson
Princeton University, USA

Abstract
For Marcel Mauss (2001 [1902]), magic involves border-crossing, with powers founded upon the
potentiality presented by the exotic and the unknown. In a similar vein, Webb Keane (2003) points
to the movement of religious objects that, via their very materiality, acquire new meanings as they
move between one ‘‘representational economy’’ and another. Here, I look at the consumption of
Thai necromantic objects by Chinese Singaporean Buddhists. These are, in some cases, Thai body
parts, ritually processed and sold via the international marketplace via Chinese Singaporean
entrepreneurs and used for local business competition. I argue that, through this process, these
objects become fused with Chinese religious notions of potency, Orientalist exoticization, and a
fetishization of the entrepreneur. In doing so, these dreams about the neighbours complicate our
understandings of cosmopolitanism, masculinity, and the vicissitudes of capitalism.

Keywords
Capitalism, cosmopolitanism, magic, masculinity, Singapore, Thailand

Introduction
In 2012, Chow Hok Kuen, a British national, was arrested en route to Taiwan with five
roasted foetuses in his luggage. He had obtained the corpses, covered in gold leaf and Pali
writing, in Thailand and planned to sell them to Taiwanese businessmen for about US$7000
each (Williams, 2012). But Chow’s foetus smuggling run, gruesome as it sounds, is not an
isolated phenomenon.

Corresponding author:
Andrew Alan Johnson, Princeton University, 123 Aaron Burr Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA.
Email: andrewjohnson@princeton.edu
2 South East Asia Research

Figure 1. Kuman (roasted foetus), from hardwarezone.sg: http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/eat-drink-

man-woman-16/official-thai-occult-barang-discussion-thread-4458588.html.

Roasted foetuses in South East Asia are mentioned as the products of a ritual in the Thai epic
Khun Chang Khun Phaen (Pasuk and Baker, 2010), where the necromantic power of the roasted
foetus – the kuman thong – enhances Khun Phaen’s own power. Elsewhere in the Tai-speaking
world, malevolent corpses and violent deaths carry with them the potential for power and wealth, if
cultivated correctly (see Formoso, 1998: 13). Recently, stories of kuman have spread outside of
mainland South East Asia and become popular across the Chinese diaspora, where Thai necro-
mantic objects1 are used as ‘‘secret weapons’’ in small-scale business competition.
In Singapore, Thai magical paraphernalia are visible once one starts to look for them. Amulet
shops specializing in Thai goods are a feature of several shopping malls, and, in many places,
Singaporean devotees of Thai charismatic cults have established outlets where they feature invited
Thai mediums and spiritual practitioners. These largely target ethnic Chinese Buddhists, despite
(and, I argue here, because of) the religious and ethnic gap between Chinese and Thai Buddhism.
In Thailand, Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese tour groups often make pilgrimages to temples
devoted to famous monks, even those known for their (Thai) nationalistic cults (Maud, 2012). The
Singaporean internet and local book market is full of information on how to cultivate one’s own
business acumen via the power of Thai magic, including such repurposed corpses as Chow’s
foetuses. For instance, Singaporean Ricardo Choo, a self-styled expert in Thai magical goods,
advises his readers in The Spirit and Voodoo World of Thailand (Choo, 2009) that, while roasted
foetuses are indeed a way toward business success (see Figure 1), the more practical (and – for me
– slightly less awful) method of roasting a foetal cat instead of a human achieves similar business
results (Choo, 2009: 4).

1. Erik Davis (2016) uses the term ‘‘deathpower’’ to describe Buddhist monks’ confrontation with and
negotiation with dangerous, ‘‘wild’’ sources of power in Cambodia. It is a tremendously useful concept
but I do not use it here as I deal with the Singaporean re-appropriation of death, rather than a Buddhist
confrontation and domestication of death.
Johnson 3

When asked about their efficacy, many Singaporeans with whom I spoke framed Thai Buddhist
objects as ‘‘older’’ and more powerful sources of potency than Chinese objects, even as they also
consumed the latter. But they were objects of a similar order. My interlocutors spoke of both Thai
and Chinese objects in terms of divine potency, and consulted Chinese astrology and Taoist
mediums alongside Thai goods. In addition, they cast themselves as innovators and explorers in
their acquisition of and use of Thai goods, and, of course, their deployment of Thai necromantic
power against their competitors. These objects were termed, on different occasions, ‘‘voodoo,’’
‘‘occult,’’ or, using the Malay-derived Singaporean English term for ‘‘goods,’’ Thai barang.2
As Webb Keane points out, the materiality of religious goods allows them to travel between
very different ‘‘representational economies’’ (Keane, 2003): an amulet can move and acquire new
meanings in ways that an idea cannot. Building upon the problem of religion and materiality,
Patrice Ladwig adds that even within a particular religious rite, monks and laity may have very
different notions about what role material goods play: Ladwig focuses on a comb given to (bald)
Lao monks as a sign that the giver intended the offering to go directly to deceased relatives,
whereas monks saw the gift as a symbolic sign of devotion to the Buddhist sangha (Ladwig, 2013).
Yet as objects circulate, this act of circulation (and the trace of the foreign upon them) adds to
their patina. Certainly this is the case when goods and commodities circulate rapidly: from
Comaroff and Comaroff’s (1999) ‘‘occult economies’’, where occult magic enriches some and
impoverishes others, to Taussig’s (1980) classic work on how capitalism feeds into local religious
understandings of fetishism and alienation in South America, the circulation of capital and
commodities in modern-day capitalism seems to be replete with hidden sources of potency.
But the fetishisation of the foreign to enhance personal power is no stranger to the region.
Benedict Anderson describes how Javanese kings and, later, Indonesian dictators gathered magical
items from heterogeneous sources, drawing in and assimilating the potential inherent across
various spheres (Anderson, 1972: 12), a form of power only made possible through the materiality
of these objects. Margaret Weiner (1995) describes Balinese kingly magic attributed to foreign
sources, and, in the Thai-Lao highlands, Mien carry Chinese-language documents as significant
ritual items justifying their claim to free passage across the hills (see Jonsson, 2005). Here, for-
eignness becomes a source of power, one linked with wealth and virility (as in Anderson’s case of
kingly virility and kingly power, and in the Singaporean examples below).
In Singapore, we see just such a movement between various representational economies, across
boundaries. Body parts – a foetus, bone, fat, etc. – become corpse materials, then are taken up3 via
a ritual specialist in Thailand and processed: a foetus is roasted, chanted over, and covered in gold
leaf; bone chips are inserted into amulets made from grave soil; or a corpse is melted down and its
fat rendered into ‘‘corpse oil’’ (namman phrai). Then, they are sold into an underground Thai
market (as khreuang rang), then bought by Singaporean traders and taken back to Singapore,
where they become known as ‘‘Thai barang,’’ with their already-potent necromantic power
enhanced by the label of being ‘‘Thai.’’ Finally, in the hands of their consumers, they become tools
for small-scale business competition.

2. Here, barang, while Malay, is loaned into Singaporean English creole, ‘‘Singlish.’’ A typical Singlish use
of ‘‘barang’’ simply means ‘‘stuff,’’ e.g. ‘‘why you carry so much barang-barang?,’’ whereas in Malay,
and in the sense used in Singlish here, barang carries a connotation of black magic. I thank Melody
Madhavan, Jack Chia, and Khalid Ajmain for their help in this.
3. I do not comment here on the legality of such acts.
4 South East Asia Research

My research is based upon ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore between 2014 and 2015, and is
supplemented by additional ethnographic work in Bangkok (2011–2015) and Chiang Mai (2006–
2008). My interlocutors were Singaporeans who wore Thai magical amulets, sold Thai religious
paraphernalia, or were mediums of Thai spirits. This study focuses on ‘‘everyday’’ consumers of
Thai religious goods, not necessarily on large-scale buyers and distributors of amulets, nor elite
amulet collectors (some of whom are notable figures who have amassed private museums full of
Thai artefacts). These individuals largely lived in public housing, were all ethnic Chinese men, and
self-identified as Buddhist. They were primarily small business owners (e.g. running a coffee stall
within a hawker centre or a small grocery inside a two-story Chinese shophouse). They sought
amulets in shops at three major shopping malls – the Golden Mile Complex, the Fu Lu Shou
Complex, and the Pearl Centre – as well as online at Singaporean sites such as Hardwarezone,
House of Barang, Siambarang, or Phra Pirab Occult Specialist, among others.
To open, I present a ‘‘typical’’ narrative, the story of Walter,4 whom I met browsing amulets
inside a store in the Fu Lu Shou centre. Walter described how he advised a friend who had been the
victim of a magical attack:

One guy, he came to me because he had a shop that was right next to another one, on the same road,
selling the same thing. This guy couldn’t sell anything; he had to borrow [money] to keep it going and
he thought he would have to close [the shop]. So he came to talk with the achan [expert – Walter means
a Thai religious specialist who occasionally visited Singapore for consultations] and the achan told him
that his neighbour was doing something to steal his business. So he took this kind of barang [a Malay
term that here refers to a magical object, in this case a roasted foetus – see discussion below] and the
backstabber [competitor] suddenly found he couldn’t sell anything!

While competition was the primary theme of these narratives, others occasionally concerned
health (‘‘the doctor did not know the cause, but the achan had the answer’’) and, more often, love
and sex (‘‘my barang was too strong; I had too many girls wanting to sleep with me!’’). Some
described how the victim of a curse could levy a countercurse, for instance by hammering a nail
from a Thai coffin into the lintel of a rival’s shop. Many amulets can do all three. An amulet sales
site, the Phra Pirab Occult Specialist, gives a typical pitch:

Jao Ngo [a kind of amulet: ‘‘Lord Ngo’’5] is a type of ‘‘deva’ or ‘‘thep’’ known for its power of love
attraction and metta maha niyom [lit. loving kindness]. This amulet bless the wearer with compassio-
nate treatment from others, good luck, loving kindness, great wealth fetching and attract riches from
others [sic].
Thep Jao Ngo also helps the wearer get more social standing, promotion at work, money will always
stay in hand and not run out unnecessarily, helps with business and get good sales. On the other hand,
this amulet can greatly help boost gambling / lottery luck.

4. All names here are pseudonyms with the exception of Ricardo Choo, who, as an author, is a public figure.
5. I cannot match the Romanization ‘‘Thep Jao Ngo’’ (‘‘Thep Chao Ngo’’ in the Royal Thai system) used by
Phra Phirab Occult Specialist to its Thai equivalent. One form of chao ngo might be ‘‘Lord Rambutan,’’
which would refer to a historical figure, a non-Thai tribal (chao pa, ‘‘jungle person’’) Southerner cap-
tured by the Thai king Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1910) and raised in the palace (see Thongchai, 2000).
Indeed, the amulet’s image would suggest this link.
Johnson 5

To officially own this amulet and get blessings/help from Thep Jao Ngo, you will have to prepare 5
incense stick [sic], red juice (fanta, syrup etc) and rose flower then offer infront [sic] of the amulet and
chant a katha [Thai – magical spell] that will be taught upon purchase.
2 pc available in stock now. (Cited from Phra Phirab Occult Specialist on Facebook in 2015)

Here, Thai Theravada Buddhism becomes mobilized in a new, hybrid form, as evinced by my
interlocutors’ interchangeable use of ‘‘Thai Buddhist,’’ ‘‘voodoo,’’ and ‘‘occult’’ along with ‘‘Thai
barang.’’ As Thai barang travel between representational economies, they acquire other associa-
tions picked up from popular imaginings of Thailand within the Singaporean press. These in turn
are mobilized to deflect the nastiness of small business competition. It is a strange combination, but
one that is fundamental to the new enchantments of the market in Singapore and the older story of
inter-cultural appropriations of sacred objects.
I argue that this fusion, a creative exploration and exploitation of magical potential, carries a
specific appeal for consumers as it reinforces men’s self-construction as entrepreneurs delving into
an unknown and dangerous realm to emerge with profit. It is a self-fashioning revolving around
these material objects that draws upon an intra-Asian Orientalism and a fetishization not only of
the body (transformed into magical power) but also of the figure of the entrepreneur as a masculine
explorer and conqueror of the exoticized, feminized, and magically-imbued Other.

Hybrid forms
For scholars in Singapore, the category of religion has long been a sensitive political topic, one
often skirting ‘‘OB’’ (out-of-bounds) markers (in other words, subject to censorship) when treated
too critically. In official state characterizations, Singapore’s religious landscape is in a delicate,
almost precarious balance between different ethnic and religious groups, constantly evoking the
spectre of ethnic riots in the 1960s. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recently stated to Sin-
gapore’s Taoist Federation, diversity is ‘‘a very unnatural state of affairs’’ (Yong, 2015), requiring
careful state policy to minimize conflicts. Such a perception of religions as homogenous, irre-
concilable groups poised against each other is reinforced by the impression that, for the state and
many Singaporeans, religious difference is often considered coterminous with ethnic difference
(Goh R, 2009: 2). Thus, Singapore’s ‘‘Chinese, Indian, Malay, and Other’’ ethnic grouping is
quickly transposed onto a religious ‘‘Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian’’ one6 in ways that
erase historical context and intermingling. These racial categorizations had emerged as a key
feature of the state since the British Empire first began to codify races and carry out a census (see
Hirschman, 1987). As a result of this legacy, many Singaporean scholars of religion have
emphasized not blending and syncretism within South East Asia as Thai scholars do (see Holt,
2009; Jackson, 2009; Pattana, 2005), but the coexistence of internally homogenous wholes. In
short, they emphasize a multiculturalist stance in opposition to hybrids (Kong, 2015). In such an
environment, the role of scholars of religion has been to act as engineers to design new possi-
bilities for reconciling religious life with state policies (e.g. public housing, funerals) (cf. Kong,
2002, 2012).

6. Again, R Goh (2009) points out that most Christians are ethnically Chinese. Also, my characterization
lumps together Taoism and Buddhism, officially separate in state censuses but in practice subject to a
great deal of overlap.
6 South East Asia Research

As a result, many early studies of Singaporean religion saw heterogeneity and hybridity within
religious practices as a problem to be solved. For instance, Vivienne Wee casts a critical gaze upon
Singaporean Buddhists, arguing that Singaporeans naı̈vely marked virtually any East Asian reli-
gious practice as ‘‘Buddhist’’ and thus assembled a motley collection of beliefs, rather than fol-
lowing a particular internally homogenous school of thought (Wee, 1997 [1976]). Similarly, John
Clammer (1997 [1990]) argued that Chinese converts to Christianity incorporated Taoist elements
of worship, such as a concern with expelling evil spirits and a desire for bodily healing. These
arguments came with the assumption that such syncretic or hybrid practices as wealth charms (in
Buddhism) or possession (in Christianity) are in some way inauthentic to the religious traditions
themselves, an act of purification that parallels state efforts to have Singaporeans speak ‘‘better
English’’ (British English, as opposed to ‘‘Singlish’’) and ‘‘proper Chinese’’ (Mandarin, as opposed
to Hokkien).
With regards to Theravada Buddhism, previous studies in Singapore fit into this model of
a rationalized, state-approved religion, focused as they are upon officially ordained Thai
monks (phra, bhikkhu) (Pattana, 2010: 270). Monks travelling to Singapore do so under the
approval of the Thai Buddhist administration (sangha) and have their public activities
strictly curtailed in accordance with official Singaporean public secularism. But, as Pattana
and Wee both note, those aspects of religion that are captured and regulated by the state
miss that wide body of religious practice that lies outside the state’s gaze, e.g. the reputation
that Thai monks in Singapore gained for magical practices (Pattana, 2010: 269; see also
Wee, 1997 [1976]: 142–143).
Newer scholars have been more critical of this state-centric stance (Goh D, 2009;
Pattana, 2012: 14–16). Daniel Goh (2009) attributes Wee and Clammer’s (among others’)
criticism of popular religious practices to a resistance to the complicating light that these
practices shed upon the notion of a modernity that is either wholly secular or at most home
to ‘‘rationalized’’ religion. For Goh, the encounter between Singaporean Chinese religious
practices and foreign sources points to a new horizon of possibility, an example of Homi
Bhabha’s ‘‘Third Space of enunciation’’ (Bhabha, 1994: 37). Hybrid practices, then, are not
monsters that modernity seeks to destroy, but natural outcomes. But I argue that Singa-
porean consumption of Thai goods does more. This is not simply a case of a fusion of two
different ideas, but a locating of potential via the domestication of foreignness, the creation
of an intra-Asian Orientalism, and the kind of dreams enabled and encouraged by Singa-
porean small-scale entrepreneurship.
I met amulet expert Ricardo Choo, the author of The Spirit and Voodoo World of Thailand, a
Singaporean Chinese man in his late 40s or early 50s, in a hawker centre in Bishan, in Singapore’s
‘‘heartland’’ region. Over a crowded table in the florescent-lit shopping mall, Choo described his
collection, including necromantic objects such as a woman’s mummified vulva, cat foetuses, and
oil distilled from the rendered fat of an inauspiciously-killed migrant worker (namman phrai).7
I paused in this grisly discussion. ‘‘Why Thailand? Why not Chinese goods, why not Japanese
Shinto objects? Why not some other place?’’

7. With regard to corpse oil and roasted fetuses, Choo speculates that migrant workers provide a source for
unclaimed corpses, as their families cannot track them (Choo, 2009: 37–38). This claim was echoed in
my own fieldwork in Thailand, where fetus ghosts were often described as the illegitimate children of
migrant workers (Johnson, 2012). Whether or not such a claim is owing to the availability of such bodies
or whether the figure of the migrant worker carries a particular emotive weight for Thais is debatable.
Johnson 7

He thought for a moment and replied:

Thai Buddhism is not so pure as Mahayana [East Asian] Buddhism. It has become mixed with a lot of
other things over time. It means that if someone wants to use [Thai religious artefacts] in attracting
women or getting money, they can. This is why it has become so popular in Singapore . . . Something
like [black magic] allows [practitioners] to deal with the stressful [Singaporean] society.

Choo’s claim of the ‘‘purity’’ of Chinese practice versus the ‘‘impurity’’ of Thai practice (and,
therefore, the efficacy of the latter) was initially surprising, given the long history of popular
religious/magical practices contained within Chinese traditional religions (e.g. the practice of tang
ki spirit possession, popular in Singapore – see also Wolf (1990) for a description of the same
practice in Taiwan). Indeed, it is just the opposite argument that advocates for Theravada Bud-
dhism make versus Mahayana (e.g. that Theravada is more ‘‘pure’’ than Mahayana – see Crosby
(2014) for a critique of this view). But bearing in mind the Singaporean emphasis on purity within
state discourses, Choo’s appeal to ‘‘impurity’’ becomes more understandable – Thai religious
practices have other possibilities within them, things that reach beyond the purview of official
religion. Thai Buddhist power, for Choo, is one found both in the temple as well as in stores in
shopping malls or storefronts, or on Choo’s adventures in Thailand, or with experimentation at
home with Thai spirits. It is a narrative of religious practice as exploration and discovery: hardly
the official state model of distinct races, cultures, and religions in their own, neat boxes.
Choo’s gallery of objects is a sampling of the kinds of goods bought and sold in the Singaporean
market for Thai barang, and includes a wide variety of protective and aggressive magic. A general
catalogue would contain: amulets with the image of a monk or Buddha, amulets devoted to a
particular spirit (e.g. a fox-spirit, nang kwak, Jatukham Ramathep), protective talismans with a
Buddhist sutra (takrut), phallus amulets (palat khik), rendered human fat (namman phrai), amulets
made with coffin nails, amulets with sexualized female images (nang phrai), fibre figures meant to
deflect misfortune (hun phayon), and many, many others. While in Thailand, these would con-
stitute a spectrum from everyday religious objects (phra khreuang) to black magic (mont dam), my
Singaporean interlocutors dismissed such heterogeneity, referring to the whole as ‘‘Thai barang.’’
What these men were primarily concerned with was barang’s efficacy in making money or
securing a lover. As Jared, one shop owner in the Fu Lu Shou Complex, told me:

What [customers] want is [for the magic to have an] effect. They come in with a specific problem and I
advise them on what they should buy to fix that problem . . . The reason [for this desire for effective
magic] is that Singapore is a very stressful place to live. If you go to Thailand, you’ll notice that
everything is slower there. But here, people want an effect now . . . that’s why.

Here, Jared presents Singapore as a particularly ferocious marketplace, where businesspeople

need to exploit any advantage in order to succeed. Narratives of magical warfare between busi-
nesses (such as Walter’s, above) were so common that, for some Singaporean business owners,
rather than wait for misfortune or a rival’s curse, it was more expeditious to simply mandate a
company trip to ritual practitioners in Thailand for all of their employees.
D Goh argues that Chinese traditional religion is uniquely suited to incorporate other elements
within its own concept of power, shen, a term practitioners apply to efficacious objects regardless
of their sources. As he puts it, ‘‘Hindus and Chinese religionists may ‘pray’ to the same image, but
they do it differently’’ (D Goh, 2009: 112). Goh argues that shen is a placeholder for an amoral
8 South East Asia Research

notion of supernatural power: a universal, fungible one. The monetary metaphor is apt: as Choo put
it, Thai objects operate ‘‘like a credit card. You take out and use [shen] now and just pay back
later.’’ This effect is, as Jared puts it, necessary owing to Singapore’s ‘‘faster’’ or ‘‘stressful’’
lifestyle, in comparison to Thailand’s ‘‘slower’’ or ‘‘simpler’’ lifestyle.
Via understanding the workings of shen and comparing the efficacy of Thai goods with Chinese
feng shui, Choo posits a universalist way of seeing potency in the world. In Spirit and Voodoo
World, Choo gives a formula for using Thai religions objects for what he terms ‘‘Peach Blossom
Luck,’’ sexual attractiveness. As he pairs different Thai amulets for different Chinese zodiac years,
he engages in free interpretation:

But why would Balakit [here Choo means a palat khik, a phallus amulet] bring about Peach
Blossom Luck for people born in the zodiac year of Tiger; [sic] Horse and Dog?8 The explanation
may be a little bit difficult to understand for some readers. Under the theory of Chinese elements,
rabbit (wood element) can be a representation of the male reproductive organ. The daily element
hour (5 a.m. to 7 a.m.) associated with Rabbit is also the time when the sun rises . . . Hence the
Balakit is closely associated with Rabbit because they both represent the emergence of something
new. (Choo, 2009: 128)

Here, Choo downplays the genealogy of the palat khik in Thai Buddhist practice in favor of
a cosmology that mirrors Chinese astrological practice and one that reinforces a link between
male potency: the phallus, the (promiscuous) rabbit, wood, the rising sun. By rethinking the
object, Choo reinforces the idea of a single magical system underlying surface variation. As
we discussed his interpretations, Choo referred to discovering Thai traditions as akin to a
scientist uncovering natural laws – one enters into the field with a system of knowledge
already in place (e.g. D Goh’s idea of shen) and uses that to interpret what one finds and
explain how it works.
For Choo, Walter, and others, Thai objects here are given new meanings (as astrologically-
significant repositories of shen) and are constructed as new objects of desire, with Choo as our
guide and interpreter. Such hybrids elide codification within mainstream religious discourses, be
they Singaporean or Thai official religions, and become open to the infusion of new desires. They
mark new frontiers, new realms for self-construction.
Thus, collectors mimicked popular narratives of entrepreneurship or explorers in marking
themselves as creative, risk-taking individuals who identified a source of potency and exploited it
in order to have themselves and their business prosper. But here I turn to the question I posed to
Choo: why Thailand?

Intra-Asian Orientalism
Returning to Jared, one of the reasons why Thai magic was so effective was owing to Thailand’s
more relaxed, authentic, ‘‘natural’’ state, thus making it an ideal way to deal with the stressful state
of Singaporean business competition. Such a framing places Thai practices on a lower,

8. Thais generally follow the Chinese zodiac, combining this with another astrological calculation based
upon the day of the week in which one was born. They do not share the Chinese system of elements,
instead using the Indian set of fire, earth, air, and water – a system that India shares with ancient Greece.
Johnson 9

allochronous stage of development – as Jared said, ‘‘we [Singapore] win [defeat] Thailand.’’ But at
the same time, the new, hyper-capitalist era depends upon the past age in order for it to function.
Like the entrepreneur, the magician, for Mauss (2001 [1902]), is one who crosses borders.
Whereas religion occupies the role of collective effervescence and social unity, magic exists on the
sidelines, associated with marginal individuals and foreign influences (Mauss, 2001 [1902]: 105).
Thus, for Mauss, it is this patina of the foreign that causes magic’s appeal, an association that is
reflected in contemporary anthropological literature as well; for instance, Vinay Kamat notes how
Tanzanians seeking magical healing consistently preferred healers from a distant village to healers
from their own precisely because of the imaginary that such distance provided, or, in Kamat’s
terms ‘‘the allure of the culturally distant’’ (Kamat, 2008). One wants not to understand something
in order for it to be effective; to follow Mauss’s line of thought, magic exists where one can dream
about otherness.
The juxtaposition by Singaporean consumers of an allochronous’, magically-enhanced Thai-
land with the modern, rational Singapore forms a civilizational divide in which some groups
appear to possess magical potential in inverse proportion to their civilizational achievements. This
is a pattern that Mauss noted back in 1902: ‘‘[w]hen two cultures come into contact, magic is
usually attributed to the less developed’’ (Mauss, 2001 [1902]: 39). It is an observation that was as
true for his examples of Finns and Lapps in Europe as it is of African-Americans (the ‘magical
Negro’ in Hollywood film – see Glenn, 2009) or indigenous Americans (cf. Castaneda, 1968) in the
white American imaginary. It is true as well in Thailand, where a racial discourse which posits
Cambodians and Burmese as violent and primitive (even separating Cambodians into two groups:
the ancient ‘‘khom’’ and the present-day ‘‘khamen’’) in comparison with civilized Thais (see Pavin,
2005; Vail, 2007), an association that is also linked to aggressive or powerful magic (Baumann,
2014; Denes, 2007; Johnson, 2013).9
In Singapore, none other than the country’s first Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew famously
described a civilizational hierarchy of peoples, with South East Asians on the bottom and East
Asians on the top (Barr, 1999). Singaporean popular media, while studiously avoiding the kinds of
ethno-nationalist chauvinism implicit in Lee’s statements or that emerges elsewhere in the region
(in Thailand itself, for instance), nonetheless is quick to deal in stereotypes and caricatures.10
Thailand, for instance, is often depicted as a more savage place in stories of crime (Azman, 2015;
Straits Times, 2015), Thais in Singapore are often prostitutes (Tai and Toh, 2014), and, of course,
Thai ghosts are depicted as especially malevolent (New Paper, 2015). In many registers, Thailand
in the Singaporean imagination is dangerous but more charming, more feminine, more sexual,
more primitive but also more in touch with nature. It is the past in the present. In other words, we
are discovering the predictable pattern of Orientalism.

9. In Thai, the term khom is used to refer to Cambodian-derived Brahminist or Buddhist practices (such as
the script used to write Pali language) and khamen (Khmer, Cambodian) to refer to modern-day Cam-
bodians, including Cambodian spirits and magicians. Thus, when Thais refer to Cambodian (khamen)
magic, they refer to something darker, more powerful, and more primitive, even while a reference to
khom mantras and practices would evoke something more Buddhist-centric. See Baumann (2014) and
Vail (2007).
10. Comedy show The Noose, for instance, recently came under fire for depictions of Philippina domestic
workers (Lim, 2010). The Chinese Singaporean actress playing the maid replied that no racism was
intended, making the unintentionally ironic statement, ‘‘we impersonate almost every other race and
accent’’ (Lim, 2010).
10 South East Asia Research

But can we talk about Orientalism within Asian contexts? In Thailand at the beginning of the
20th century, Thai scholars constructed an elaborate ladder of peoples, each of different charac-
teristics and capacities, from ‘‘forest people’’ to ‘‘villagers’’ to ‘‘urbanites’’ (Thongchai, 2000).
Buddhist South East Asian kingdoms (Thai, Khmer, Lao, Vietnamese, etc.) as well as Chinese
notions of ‘‘Han’’ likewise involved (and presently involve) a civilizational idea, with upland
people seen as nostalgized but also backwards, ‘‘past’’ remnants of a previous age (Forsyth and
Walker, 2008; Scott, 2009).
Just as Western Orientalism persists in popular imaginaries, so it does in these contexts. In
southern China, Louisa Schein (1997) argues that a fusion of Western Orientalism, global tourism,
Maoist notions of modernity, and older Chinese civilizational discourses led to a particular kind of
‘‘internal Orientalism’’. In Hmong/Miao towns near the Laotian border, Han Chinese men seek a
sense of self-renewal via an engagement with images and bodies of ethnic minorities (Schein,
1997: 73, 83). In a parallel to the idea of Thailand in Singapore, ethnic minorities in Schein’s study
become both eroticized and, at the same time, cast as dangerous (Schein, 1997: 77). For Schein,
this is a new form of eroticized domination, one that parallels Western Orientalism in that it allows
for the construction of minorities as ‘‘ethnic to female to rural to backward’’ (Schein, 1997: 92). In
Singapore, the discourses of amulet vendors and collectors cited here reflect this juxtaposition
between Thailand as a feminized, ‘‘natural,’’ and sexualized space (as evinced by the numerous
references to sexual potency from amulets, or the eroticized reading of ‘‘Sister Sherry,’’ below) as
opposed to ‘‘stressful,’’ work-oriented, and (over)-rationalized Singapore.
Here, I turn to this juxtaposition of natural/magical Thailand with modern/rational Singapore in
the Forest Lersi11 Hut in the Katong neighbourhood of Singapore, where a Chinese-style shop-
house is redone as a Thai shrine in the midst of a forest grove. The Hut is run by Clarence Tan, also
known as Master (or Achan/Ajaan) Sing. Tan was an interior designer in Singapore for many years
until he began to develop health problems. In a narrative that on the surface appears similar to that
of many Thai mediums, Tan fell ill with unspecified health problems (‘‘fits’’) that doctors could not
cure. His search for an end to his illness led him to Chiang Mai (in Northern Thailand), where a
spiritual teacher diagnosed these ‘‘fits’’ as the afflictions of evil spirits. Trained by this teacher, Tan
became Master Sing, and as a result his fortunes improved.

As such, he took on a job as a fortune teller and a master who deals with spirits. He also practices Lersi
hermit practice in a city. Ajaan Sing decided to pick up Fengshui in Hong Kong and blended together
with his magic to bulid [sic] his first company, Ajaan Sing International Consultancy which is well
known for dancing tailsman [sic], power of Lersi blessings to change one’s life under conditions, ghost
hunting in many historical buildings in Singapore and South East Asia. (Ajaan, 2016)

Notable here is how different Tan’s narrative is from that of Thai spiritual devotees in Chiang
Mai. Like Tan, when Northern Thai mediums – generally older or transgendered women – discover
they are mediums, they fall sick. However, unlike Tan, whose illness follows a classic Chinese
model of an attack by evil spirits, amongst Thai mediums, the illnesses that spur personal trans-
formation are generally attributed to beneficial spirits who are being offended by the lack of
recognition and respect that their unwitting hosts provide (Johnson, 2014; Morris, 2000; Rhum,
1994). Unlike Tan, Thai mediums draw a clear distinction between their possessing spirit and their

11. ‘‘Lersi’’ refers to the Thai reusi: a hermit often depicted wearing a leopard’s or tiger’s skin, and a
common image of devotion in wilderness places or forest sites. See McDaniel (2013).
Johnson 11

own identities (often claiming not to know what has happened during their possession). Their role
in the community ranges from providing advice, blessings (as Sing does), and a sort of community-
wide mediation at yearly rituals.
Tan, then, has created a new kind of mediumship. He is still a spiritual expert, but fuses Thai
names (sing, for instance, is Sanskrit for ‘‘lion’’ and in Thai refers to the guardians of temples) and
aesthetics with Chinese ideas such as feng shui, and, further, promotes an image as a successful
self-made entrepreneur as opposed to Thai mediums who emphasise their own personal piety.
Instead of simply working to combat evil spirits that afflict local residents as a Thai medium
would, he seeks out such sources of power via ‘‘ghost hunting,’’ finding sources of future potential
in the detritus of the city’s past.
Finally, he ‘‘practices [forest] hermit practice in a city.’’ Large, wall-size photos of trees
decorate the halls of the shophouse, making the interior appear like a forest. Although he identifies
as a Master and not a monk, Tan traces his religious lineage to the ‘‘Forest Monks of Wat Loy
Sutta’’12 in Chiang Mai. The Lersi image (see McDaniel, 2013) is one that is explicitly ‘‘natural’’ –
as ascetics, reusi live in the jungle, wear tiger skins, and grow long, unkempt hair.
For Tan and those that I detail above, this link between the forest, danger, and Thailand as a
place further down a civilizational ladder creates the promise for self-renewal and adventure,
where powers are at their most ‘‘natural’’ should they be harnessed by the entrepreneur. This
construction of Thailand as existing in a past, more authentic (but less developed) age is one that
reveals a localized, intra-Asian Orientalism, that fuses particular meanings onto Thai objects when
they enter the Singaporean ‘‘representational economy’’. It is an exoticization that reveals the
exotic to be both possessor of power in one realm via its very lack in another.
Here, this notion of intra-Asian Orientalism highlights how religious hybridity concerns far
more than just religion. Instead, the men engaging in the amulet trade present themselves as
achieving a masculine self-renewal and a revitalization of sexual and/or economic potency via
engagement with untapped sources of potential (e.g. magic), feeding into a capitalist re-imagining.
It is to this final point that I now turn.

Entrepreneurs
From the online Singaporean shop ‘‘House of Barang’’ (see Figure 2):

Due to overwhelming responds, feedbacks & request for Ajarn Lek Mae Sherry Amulet, master
decided to have this very special hardcore batch locket for Singapore devotees!!
For this hardcore batch, ajarn uses not only Sherry NMP [namman phrai; corpse oil] & Sherry bones.
But also uses Sherry headbones to make into this hardcore batch . . . boosting up Mae Sherry power to a
different level . . .
This will be the FINAL batch for Mae Sherry as all materials of sherry are fully utilized in each piece of
amulet. DO NOT MISS THIS CHANCE.!!!
Sister Sherry passed away 9 months ago. She was born in Thailand, Bangkok. Young & Pretty at only
25 years old. She used to work in Entertainment Line & very popular among everybody [sic]. Due to

12. I cannot locate a Wat Loy Sutta in Chiang Mai. Perhaps Tan here refers to Wat Loi Khro on Tha Phae
Road in Chiang Mai, or to the Shan and Yunnanese pronunciation of Wat Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai’s most
famous temple. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this insight.
12 South East Asia Research

Figure 2. Sherry amulet, from House of Barang: https://www.facebook.com/198376783688116/photos/

a.364790070380119.1073741887.198376783688116/379532138905912/? type¼3&theater.

her pretty looks, she had alot of admirer [sic] & suitors. Sherry also is a very good elder sister. Working
and saving money for her younger brother education and looking after both her parents. But expect the
unexpected. She met into an accident one night when she was on her way home. Her petite frame
couldn’t take the impact and that fatal night she left the world. Rumour says that night was no ordinary
accident. She was targeted by fellow colleague who were jealous of her beauty & charm. Till today we
do not know the truth on what really caused Sherry death [sic]. But her soul lay unrest [sic].
[It remained] Filled with anger, sorrow & sadness. [Sherry was] Unwilling to leave the earthly world.
Sherry family [sic] came to [amulet maker] Ajarn Lek to seek guidence [sic] and how to help Sherry.
After [a period of] long meditation and chanting, Ajarn Lek took over Sherry remains [sic; i.e. he took
the fragments of ash and bone remaining from her cremation] and told Sherry to stay calm and archieve
Johnson 13

guide [sic] from god above. To help others who are in need so as to gain more merits [sic] so that her
anger and worries will lighten and her soul will be able to rest.
This amulet Mae Sherry consist of Sherry Nam Man Prai, Sherry Panneng (head bone), Sherry Bone
chips & handwritten takrut. Base [of the amulet is made] with the soil around Sherry grave. Chanted for
49 days in total for all individual materials. Blessed and invited Sherry into amulet to bless devotees in
Granting of wishes, Be attractive & Charming, rack good sales & wealth.

Here, a spiritual master, Ajarn (achan in the Royal Thai system) Lek, has appropriated the
cremated remains of a young woman (with particular qualities emphasized here in Lek’s
advertisement, e.g. ‘‘petite frame,’’ ‘‘beauty & charm,’’ filial piety) in order to create an amulet
from them. He renders the fat from her corpse (‘‘Sherry NMP’’), places Sherry’s bone chips into
a clay base made with soil from near Sherry’s gravesite, and, for the ‘‘very special hardcore
batch,’’ uses shards of Sherry’s skull. For its Singaporean consumers, this necromantic amulet
provides the means for capitalist accumulation and sexual adventure via the appropriation of
Sherry’s physical remains.
Here, Sherry is fragmented, both literally and spiritually. Her spirit, appropriated by the ritual
specialist, re-emerges to give ‘‘good sales’’ to those purchasing the amulet. There is a nod to
Buddhism, but it is only brief in comparison with the descriptions of Sherry and the details on the
processing of her corpse, along with the promise that the corpse can belong to the consumer (if
they act now). Above all, there is a focus on entrepreneurship: that of the consumer and that of
Achan Lek.
An entrepreneur is a capitalist crossed with an explorer. He – and here I use the masculine as I
refer to my informants – is the vanguard of the capitalist market for new goods and new sources of
wealth, whose expansion ‘‘chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe’’ (Marx,
1848 [1978]: 476). This is especially salient in Singapore, where the economy has, since the
beginning of the British era, been founded upon international trade networks penetrating into South
East Asia.
Within state imaginings, Singapore presents simultaneously a self-congratulatory narrative of
success alongside a fear of losing out. As Ambassador-at-large Bilahari Kausikan puts it, for
Singapore:

being extraordinarily successful is strategically imperative . . . in economic terms, because a world of

sovereign states is a rat race, and often a vicious one, in which the weak go to the wall. [Therefore,
success is] created by human endeavour, and having been created, preserved by human endeavour.
(Kausikan, 2015)

Such a national narrative resonated with many of my interlocutors (e.g. Walter, above), who
saw their engagement with magic as a part of an effort to avoid ‘‘going to the wall,’’ as Kausikan
puts it, or, to use a popular Hokkien expression, because one is ‘‘afraid to fail’’ (kiasu).
Much as Anderson’s Javanese kings relied upon heterogeneous sources of power to build their
potency, my interlocutors suggest a similar need to accumulate varied sources of magical logic of
potency in order to influence the underlying financial (and sexual) everyday. Foreign body parts
are therefore one such way that one can compete in the ‘‘rat race’’ – as a number of vendors and
collectors emphasized to me, stressed-out Singaporeans need effects now. It is a discourse that, like
the national narrative of success and desperation, both masochistically bemoans Singaporeans’
modern business environment while impressing its economic might upon its neighbours.
14 South East Asia Research

That capitalism and popular religion share links, especially in South East Asia, should be of no
surprise to anthropologists (cf. Comaroff and Comaroff, 1999; Jackson, 1999; Klima, 2006;
Rudnyckyj, 2010). But analysis of this link tends to assume that it is the newness of capitalism that
in turn gives rise to new ways of conceiving the occult (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1999). Here,
taking a page from Weber, I would argue for multiple origins. Singaporean men, steeped in an
ethos of constant competition, seek out and engage with imagined-to-be powerful resources, a
struggle (they imagine) fraught with hidden danger, and financial and sexual potential.

Conclusion
One advertisement for a Singaporean vendor of Thai amulets reads:

Phra Ngan Ta Daeng

Maker: AJ Poon Luedet. Blessed and consecrated for 49 days and final empowering at the cemetery
during full moon.
Material: Charming powder, Soil from 7 different cemetery [sic], Embedded with takruts [rolled
Buddhist sutras] and other occult materials at the back. A sai sin string [thread used in blessing] that
us [sic] used to tie around corpse is also tied around this Phra Ngan.
Magical Properties
Extremely fast at granting wishes, attract riches, wealth, fortune, greatly boost gambling / lottery luck
(can even request), protection against any forms of dangers, hold a strong power of authority and
achieve any desired goals.

Despite Singapore’s self-perception as a state founded upon rational pragmatism, as I show

here, Singaporean capitalist futures are far from disenchanted. The new religious forms that arise
from this fusion of popular imagination, religious hybridity, and capitalist imaginaries are hardly
homogenous expressions of ethnic identity. Instead, capitalism, Chinese popular religion, and
Orientalism fuse. Through Thai religious goods, Singaporean consumers identify something for-
eign with a system of power already known (e.g. shen, barang). Via their movement ‘‘up’’ a
perceived civilizational ladder, Thai goods are thought to contain untouched sources of potency,
resources that can allow the canny entrepreneur to succeed where his competitors fail and to make
(business/sexual/magical) connections where previously none existed.
Such a process is never complete. The horizon continually retreats. New amulet types rise and
fall. The rise of Cambodian-attributed amulets (most of which, in Singapore, still carry Thai-
language names) suggests that the current Thai craze may evolve into a Cambodian craze, or a
Tibetan one. But, I argue, the structure will be the same. Like capitalism itself, the dreams about
the neighbours, already prefigured through our own desires, are both persistent in their nature and
ever-changing in their outward form.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Johnson 15

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