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Society for Cultural Anthropology
Oral Presentation Session
Girish Daswani
University of Toronto
Ghana is often considered a “development darling” for its successful adoption of
major development policies. Yet in a recent speech in 2018, Ghana’s President Nana
Akufo-Addo said that “corruption” is holding back the “development” of the nation.
While “corruption” is not a phenomenon limited to Ghana or the African continent,
and while it involves rich nations, multinational institutions and the unequal
structures of the global economic system, corruption discourses have become a
legitimate way for Ghanaians to respond to and engage with politics, to evaluate
state practices and to formulate political critiques of the post-colonial and neoliberal
state. In my research, I view “corruption” as productive in that it literally does things
(Pierce 2016). This certainly applies to Ghanaians, many of whom have
appropriated the word “corruption” for their own ends. In this paper, I focus on
Pentecostal Christianity and ask what it is doing for Ghanaians in this conversation
around corruption. If Pentecostal-charismatic pastors play an important role in
criticizing corruption, they are also criticized for participating in corruption. This
paper takes a closer look at how such corruption discourses allow Ghanaians to
make moral evaluations and publicly talk about their disappointment with the
nation-state and its political élite. By examining different examples of “corruption”
associated with Pentecostal-charismatic Christian leaders, I take corruption as a
historically specific and moving target that has become an emic way of framing
different moral positions and specific ethical positions.