Joshua Comaroff, "Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

About this episode

Joshua Comaroff discusses the intersection of capitalism and belief in ghosts in Singapore's unique economic landscape.

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: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 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. 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…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Joshua Comaroff

Topics covered

• hyperurbanization
• ghost economy
• capitalism
• Singapore
• popular belief systems
• socioeconomic conditions

Keywords

• Singapore
• capitalism
• ghosts
• urban development
• socioeconomic
• exorcisms
• speculative finance

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: U Minnesota Press, National University of Singapore

Books & works: Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore, Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition

More episodes of New Books in Architecture

• Tania Sengupta and Stuart King eds., "Reclaiming Colonial Architecture" (Routledge, 2024) · June 9, 2026 · 56 min
• Sierra Bainbridge and James Kitchin, "Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology and a Flourishing Planet" (Axio, 2026) · May 31, 2026 · 1h 3m
• Charlie Qiuli Xue and Arwen Yingting Chen, "American-Designed Shopping Malls in China" (Hong Kong UP, 2026) · May 30, 2026 · 53 min
• Judith Hill, "Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland" (Four Courts Press, 2026) · May 27, 2026 · 56 min
• Ellen Levitt, "Former Synagogues of the United States: Looking at Buildings That Once Housed Synagogues, Schools, and Other Jewish Institutions" (Resource Publications, 2026) · May 22, 2026 · 1h 0m
• Silvia Danielak, "Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability" (MIT Press, 2026) · May 15, 2026 · 34 min