Fires of Gold: Law, Spirit, and Sacrificial Labor in GhanaFires 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. |
Other editions - View all
Fires of Gold: Law, Spirit, and Sacrificial Labor in Ghana Lauren Coyle Rosen No preview available - 2020 |
Common terms and phrases
Accra Adanse African Studies AGA’s Akan American Ethnologist ancestors AngloGold Ashanti Asante Asantehene Ashanti Ashanti Region authorities Berkeley blood California Press Cambridge University Press Capitalism casual laborers Central Chicago Press chiefs Christian Colonial Corporate Cultural Anthropology customary deities Development dispossession divine Duke University Duke University Press Durham edited Essays Ethnography Fetishism force formal forms galamsey operations galamseys Ghana Ghanaian Global gods Gold Coast Gold Mining Homo Sacer Indigenous Ivor Wilks Jean Comaroff Joshua Journal of African Kofi Kumasi Kwabena Kwame land London Michael miners Modernity Neoliberal Obuasi officials Ofosu-Mensah Okomfo Akua Oxford University Press Pentecostal police political Postcolonial Pray Princeton University Press realm Religion rituals rule sacred sacrifices Sansu shadow sovereign Social Society South Sovereignty spiritual stool territory things tion town traditional Translated underground University of California University of Chicago violence Wacam West Africa Witchcraft World York