GOH Beng-Lan: Ethno-religious nationalism, Muslims spirits, and Malaysian Capitalist Modernity: A study of Keramat Cult Amongst Property Developers in Penang

This paper explores a peculiar capitalist sacralisation in contemporary Malaysia – the propitiation of a Malay-Muslim spirit known interchangeably as keramat or Datuk Kong by property developers. It argues that keramat propitiation amongst property developers can only be better grasped by understanding how this spirit cult is engendered and acted on by deep historical structures of cultural hybridity of a maritime past as well as economic and ethno-nationalist transformations in modern Malaysia. It is with this background that the keramat cult brings together Malay-Muslim and Chinese supernatural beliefs and becomes a potent idiom that expresses and negotiates contradictions inherent in a highly speculative accumulative activity and nationalistically charged political economy in Malaysian capitalist modernity. This conjunction between the keramat cult and property development activities not only implicates a powerful group of capitalist actors but also brings to light the centrality of the problematic of ethno-religious nationalism in characterising capitalist transformations in Malaysia, hence unsettling much of the arguments on commoditization, exploitation, and marginalisation in anthropological interpretations of capitalist sacralisation.