Just out: The cosmology of economy: West African witchcraft, finance and the futures market

Dr Jane Parish, Senior Lecturer in Sociology has a new article published in Culture and Religion...

The Frankfurt Skyline where fetish priests manipulate the commodity markets (photo by Thomas Wolf "Der Wolf im Wald")

In a world where bitcoin represent the wild west of finance and the manipulating of prices of stocks destroys communities and pension schemes overnight, this article explores the relationship between cosmology and financial transactions via the sacred and deeply secret discourses of West African traditional priests in Europe. If you thought that supernatural spirits have no role in the modern economy next to JP Morgan and Standard Charter, the volatile movement of industrial commodity indexes is distorted by different networks of stakeholders, including Ghanaian fetish priests, such that the  pricing and purchase of unstable commodities, tin, sugar and coffee, are shaped and magnified through a thick Akan cosmology.

Read the article for free here.