Fires of Gold is a powerful ethnography of the often shrouded cultural, legal, political, and spiritual forces governing the gold mining industry in Ghana, one of Africa's most celebrated democracies. Lauren Coyle Rosen argues that significant sources of power have arisen outside of the formal legal system to police, adjudicate, and navigate conflict in this theater of violence, destruction, and rebirth. These authorities, or shadow sovereigns, include the transnational mining company, collectivized artisanal miners, civil society advocacy groups, and significant religious figures and spiritual forces from African, Islamic, and Christian traditions. Often more salient than official bodies of government, the shadow sovereigns reveal a reconstitution of sovereign power--one that, in many ways, is generated by hidden dimensions of the legal system. Coyle Rosen also contends that spiritual forces are central in anchoring and animating shadow sovereigns as well as key forms of legal authority, economic value, and political contestation. This innovative book illuminates how the crucible of gold, itself governed by spirits, serves as a critical site for embodied struggles over the realignment of the classical philosophical triad: the city, the soul, and the sacred.

Mineral-rich-post-independent African countries rely on their extractive industries for economic growth and development. The extraction of these resources generates more curses than blessings raising questions whether the sector provides an appropriate vehicle for economic growth. To balance the growing gap between the curses and blessings, regional policy makers and international counterparts have engaged in large-scale reforms of the mining sector. This has led to establishment of spaces of exclusion and further marginalization as new actors introduced into the sector interact one with the other to pursue and protect their interests. The gap between the curses and blessings of mining continues to widen, largely as an outcome of institutional and actor interaction within a politicized environment.

Discusses the settlement of West Africa, the spread of Islam, the establishment of the gold trade, and the rise, civilization, and fall of the Soninke states known as Ghana

This stunning volume showcases and explores a rich and varied collection of Asante royal regalia in the broader context of Asante art. The Asante Kingdom, founded around 1701 in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), was renowned for gold, the foundation of its wealth and power. For centuries they mined this metal and traded it with northerners on the Saharan caravan routes and Europeans along the Atlantic coast. The earliest examples of Asante gold were recovered from the wreck of the Whydah, a slave ship that sank off Cape Cod in 1717. The Power of Gold focuses on a dazzling array of adornments and implements used by Asante royals and officials during the 18th century to the present day--providing a deeper understanding of the history, traditions, and visual arts of the Asante people, one of the thriving cultures of West Africa. Distributed for the Dallas Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Dallas Museum of Art (04/15/18-08/12/18)