Overview

How economic transformation and the spirit world collide in hypermodern Singapore In Singapore, the financial center of Southeast Asia, hyperurbanization and commercial development exist alongside enduring belief in the economic power of ghosts: in their ability to control the flows of money and value and to determine the outcome of investments and wagers. Spectropolis explores the unlikely collusion of these two systems, demonstrating both the productive role of popular beliefs in the modern world and the surprising correlations between ""late"" capitalism and the workings of the spirit realm. Detailing the logic and practices of Singapore's ghost economy-from performing exorcisms on real estate development sites to offering money and commodities to the dead as a hedge against precarious real-world transactions-Joshua Comaroff shows how speculative finance, largely governed by chance and volatility, is understood via its inherently spectral qualities. Through the influence of Chinese Buddhist-Taoist thought, the movement of capital is placed under the sway of cosmology and geomancy, resulting in a built environment that is both technologically advanced and quite literally enchanted. Based on detailed case studies and years of extensive fieldwork, Spectropolis argues for the power of popular belief systems to theorize contemporary socioeconomic conditions and to give form to collective affect as well as shared aspirations and anxieties. As Comaroff demonstrates, the uniquely all-consuming nature of Singapore's tightly compressed urban economy is such that it may subsume even that which lies beyond the threshold of life itself. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

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9781517919344

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Reviews

""Prising open the stereotype of Singapore as a model of hyperrational urbanism, Joshua Comaroff unleashes the spectral work integral to its realization. Combining in-depth qualitative fieldwork with real-world experience as a professional architect, Comaroff renders in compelling detail this uncanny version of the Singapore model. Spectropolis is a must-read for those seeking to understand urbanization in forms both familiar and strange.""--Jane M. Jacobs, Monash University, Indonesia ""A flexible narrative that draws readers into various ethnographic cases, Spectropolis concerns itself with the imaginative interventions into the life of late capital. Joshua Comaroff continues the work done in the anthropology of modernity, unmasking the irrationality inside the structures and edifices of the modern itself.""--C. J. W.-L. Wee, author of A Regional Contemporary: Art Exhibitions, Popular Culture, Asia

""A flexible narrative that draws readers into various ethnographic cases, Spectropolis concerns itself with the imaginative interventions into the life of late capital. Joshua Comaroff continues the work done in the anthropology of modernity, unmarking the irrationality inside the structures and edifices of the modern itself.""--C. J. W.-L. Wee, author of A Regional Contemporary: Art Exhibitions, Popular Culture, Asia

Author Information

Joshua Comaroff is assistant professor of architecture at National University of Singapore. He is coauthor of Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition (Minnesota, 2024).

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