Mining morals, muck and Akan gold in New York City

Bibliographic Data

ID2186774
AuthorsJane Parish (0000-0001-7932-3571, Keele University, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume38
Issue3-4
Pages290-301
Publication date2015-10-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropology Southern Africa (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2332-3264 • E-ISSN: 2332-3256
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/23323256.2015.1100520
OpenAlexW2279710117
LanguageEN
References cited29

Among Akan spirit preachers at shrines in New York, gold and gold weights are at the centre of the creation of new moral topographies in a fluid and contested context. In a get-rich-quick New York marketplace, the preachers appeal to an understanding of gold that is contained within Akan values and ethical codes surrounding economic responsibility and social obligation. Remaking Manhattan's ethical geographies from the standpoint of a transnational Akan morality, occult narratives offer a different reading that links the moral dirt of the landfill sites of Manhattan with that of the rivers and forests polluted by cyanide, sulphuric acid and other mining chemicals in Obuasi, Ghana, a centre of gold mining. The paper plots a map of muck and morals as shrine discourses about gold provide a critical commentary on the moral conventions of wealth creation, accumulation and desire among a diasporic community

Appeal · Archaeology · Context (archaeology · Dirt · Environmental ethics · Geography · Moral obligation · Morality · Muck · Obligation · Political science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Ecology · History · Law · Mining and Resource Management · Philosophy