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.

中文翻译：

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机器中的精神：走向柬埔寨砖窑中债务奴役和劳动力流动的精神地理

本文利用柬埔寨债务债券制砖工人的证据，探讨了万物有灵论和形式宗教如何使工人处于危险和困难的境地。本文首先展示了工厂劳动者，所有者和当地宗教人物如何通过道德诉诸佛教功德，品格和命运的法律来合法化对窑炉的限制，从而积极表达精神信仰。其次，它表明非正式的泛神论者信仰如何在塑造对窑炉极端物理条件的解释和响应中起关键作用。因此，通过探索迷信和宗教信仰如何共同构成该国砖窑中的劳动力流动性，为将劳动力，流动性和灵性的地理联系起来提供了理由。更广泛地，