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Spiritual Capital: On the Materiality and Immateriality of Blessings in Puerto Rican Brujería

The Economics of Religion: Anthropological Approaches

ISBN: 978-1-78052-228-9, eISBN: 978-1-78052-229-6

Publication date: 12 December 2011

Abstract

This essay situates the significance of “spiritual capital” within Puerto Rican brujería (witch-healing) in relation to re-enchantment theories of modernity. It argues that the merging of spiritual and economic values has engendered a form of “spiritualized materialism” that has turned sheer economic prosperity into spiritually wrought rewards. Within this moral economy, matter does not simply function as a conduit for the sacred; it actually constitutes the very idea of the sacred. In comparison to recent work on corporate attempts to fuse religious ethics with business, this essay is noteworthy in that it unravels the logic and effect of such fusions at the vernacular religious level.

Citation

Romberg, R. (2011), "Spiritual Capital: On the Materiality and Immateriality of Blessings in Puerto Rican Brujería", Obadia, L. and Wood, D.C. (Ed.) The Economics of Religion: Anthropological Approaches (Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 31), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 123-156. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0190-1281(2011)0000031009

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited