Paper short abstract:

This introduction gives two illustrations of moral language as a window to imaginaries about economic success, failure and inequality in two ethnographic contexts characterised by the rise of 'prosperity religions'.

Paper long abstract:

This introduction gives two illustrations of moral language as a window to imaginaries about economic success, failure and inequality in two ethnographic contexts characterised by the rising popularity of 'prosperity religions'. We start by considering moral language through Paul Ricoeur's (1970) characterisation of 'hermeneutics of suspicion'. Drawing on this theory, we suggest that documenting moral languages of economic imagination renders the hermeneutics of suspicion into an ethnographic object that anthropologist can decipher.

The first illustration comes from Ghana, where Charismatic Pentecostalism has transformed into a 'public culture' since the past 25 years of economic and political liberalisation. We zoom into a private media company where young professionals work under enthusiastic Charismatic Pentecostal managers who encourage employees to work hard. The young professionals, on their part, circulate gossip about the managers as witches who use Christian management ethos as a 'bluff' to cover their malevolent intentions, namely the objective of sucking life-force out of the employees. The language of gossip reveals the moral ambiguities generated by the combination of Christianity with management practice.

The second part explores the relationship between religious and economic language in Laos. It outlines how certain vocabularies used in Southeast Asian Buddhist ritual practices are employed for thinking and speaking about the economy. It also asks whether ritual as a mode of influencing economic success or failure can be understood as form of language that is 'good to think with' when making sense of the moral implications of capitalist transformations or behaviour.