Fires of Gold

Law, Spirit, and Sacrificial Labor in Ghana
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-0-520-34332-0
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Atelier: Ethnographic Inquiry in the Twenty-First Century

Fires of Gold is a powerful ethnography of the often shrouded cultural, legal, political, and spiritual forces governing the gold mining industry in Ghana, one of Africa’s most celebrated democracies. Lauren Coyle Rosen argues that significant sources of power have arisen outside of the formal legal system to police, adjudicate, and navigate conflict in this theater of violence, destruction, and rebirth. These authorities, or shadow sovereigns, include the transnational mining company, collectivized artisanal miners, civil society advocacy groups, and significant religious figures and spiritual forces from African, Islamic, and Christian traditions. Often more salient than official bodies of government, the shadow sovereigns reveal a reconstitution of sovereign power—one that, in many ways, is generated by hidden dimensions of the legal system. Coyle Rosen also contends that spiritual forces are central in anchoring and animating shadow sovereigns as well as key forms of legal authority, economic value, and political contestation. This innovative book illuminates how the crucible of gold, itself governed by spirits, serves as a critical site for embodied struggles over the realignment of the classical philosophical triad: the city, the soul, and the sacred.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Coyle Rosen, Lauren

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kultursoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Maps

Introduction
1. Artisanal Miners and Sacrificial Laws
2. Spiritual Sovereigns in the Shadows
3. Pray for the Mine
4. Fallen Chiefs and Divine Violence
5. Effigies, Strikes, and Courts
Conclusion: Out of the Golden Twilight?

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Lauren Coyle Rosen is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. She works in legal and political anthropology, comparative spirituality, and critical theory. She is currently writing her second book, Law in Light: Truth, Vision, and Transnational African Spirituality.