1. According to Ong, how does wage labor affect women's status? How does her account compare to Boserup's argument about the impact of economic development on women?

2. What does Ong see as the relationship between work discipline, gender identity, and sexuality? What role do development, agency, and cultural change play in shaping women's experiences of work?

3. How does Ong's interpretation of spirits in Malaysia resemble Taussig's account of the devil in South America? Do you find Ong's argument convincing?

4. Ong claims in the preface that the factory women she studied "articulate an intersubjective mode of apprehending the world" (xv). What does she mean? How does the text illustrate this?

5. How are female factory workers talked about within Malaysian society more broadly? What did they and their work lives mean within the context of Malaysia at the time Ong did her research?

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