Mining morals, muck and Akan gold in New York City

Abstract

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.