When I first came to Laos for my PhD fieldwork in 2003, I asked the abbot of my monastery in central Vientiane for a copy the recent report of the yearly meeting of the Lao Buddhist Fellowship Organization. He replied that the resolutions and speeches had already been typed up, but that there was no funding to print the 200 page booklet. “This is the most important yearly meeting of the Lao Organization of Buddhists, and we don’t even have the money to print these booklets“. Displaying his usual good humor, he broke out into boisterous laughter. Visiting him and the monastery in February 2019, we discussed what had changed since 2003. Vientiane has become an utterly different city. Renovated temples, oversized billboards of Chinese companies, traffic jams with large SUVs, and endless building sites despite spiraling land prices are only the most visible signs of the economic boom. Laos’ economically much more powerful neighbors Vietnam and China have continuously been investing into infrastructure projects often linked to mining, dam building and large scale rubber plantations in the country. Economic growth rates of about 8 percent per year for the last decade might not reveal the complex reshuffling of the social fabric of, and the growing inequalities in the sprawling capital. From a general perspective, however, they attest to the fact that Laos – defined by the UN as one of the ‘Least Developed countries’ (LDC) in the world -, and especially its urban areas, are undergoing an economic boom.

Talking to old friends and colleagues from the Buddhist College at Vat Ong Toe confirmed that some parts of the growing wealth are also channeled into the Buddhist ritual economy. Achan Kham, who has been a teacher at the college for more than 25 years, greeted me when I drove my motorbike into the temple. After exchanging updates and talking about common friends, he showed me around the temple and the buildings of the Buddhist college. Renovated estates with new roofs and relatively modern classrooms had replaced the ramshackle rooms that were used when I was teaching there in 2005. Asking about what had changed in the last years, he explained: “I remember how things were when you first came here. With you and some other foreigners we tried to apply for some funding for buying books for the Buddhist college. How things have changed now! There is enough money around now, and the donations we receive are plenty.“ He pointed to the new buildings, and the big cars parking on the temple compound.

The projects that the Lao monastic order in Vientiane launched over a decade ago have since grown substantially: Projects that aim at spreading Buddhist morality and meditation for laypeople are very active now, and have extended to more remote and deprived provinces. Monks visit schools, teach Buddhist morality and provide pupils in poorer areas with educational equipment financed by donations from wealthy laypeople in Vientiane. Meditation classes for the emerging middle- and upper-class continue to attract an ever growing crowd of believers, but mainly only on week-ends. Economic growth has also introduced a new regime of time-discipline: Longer working hours, commuting time, and the need for employment of both parents in families to finance increasingly consumer oriented life-styles, leave little time for visiting temples on Buddhist holy days determined by the lunar calendar. Week-ends are now the time when people flock to urban monasteries, and engage in rituals of merit-making. With more cash being available in the rapidly expanding economy, individual and family-based ritual activity has also increased. Besides the festivals of the yearly ritual cycle, commemoration rituals for deceased relatives, and rites for purifying one’s karma, shedding bad luck, and for obtaining blessings have gained in prominence. Most of these prosperity enhancing rites are by no means inventions provoked by the evolving capitalist economy.  They have a long history, but at the moment flourish for very concrete reasons:  Due to the fact that the public and industrial employment sector remains rather small, and jobs are often reserved for those with the right connections, people tend to found small businesses and become self-employed. Competition, however, is fierce, and consequently, the ritual production of Buddhist merit, luck, and auspiciousness that might increase success in life and business are in high demand now. Visiting one temple specialized in karma purification in Vientiane with friends, I also tried to enhance my capacities for upcoming fieldwork tasks (Figure 1).  

Beyond these individual activities, some private companies now also hold large donation ceremonies and sponsor, for example, the renovation of older temples in the countryside around the capital Vientiane. One example for the evolvement of what could be called ‘Buddhist corporate responsibility’ is Mrs. Suchitra’s family business. Located on the outskirts of Vientiane, the company of the mid-40s business women produces and markets plastic pipes and other equipment for sanitary installations. Since its founding 10 years ago, the company has grown tremendously, and now employs about 100 workers. Last year, she already held a donation ceremony at her company (Figures 2 and 3).

Here, propagation for a religious event and advertisement for the company went hand in hand. Suchitra’s parents were from the countryside close to Vientiane, and her deceased mother already donated a larger plot of land to a temple 80 km outside of Vientiane. In February, her family, friends, employees and the villagers held a large donation festival at this temple. Having a cup of tea with her in her office, she explained: “My mother died already two years ago. However, during several nights last year, she appeared in my dreams and asked me if it would be possible to further sponsor the temple”. Consulting the monks and local officials in the village, they explained that a proper road leading to the temple, a new entrance door and several Buddha statues were desperately needed. After some weeks of preparation, the ritual was held in February, and the assembled donor-group collected approximately 40.000 US$. Large banners in and outside the temple displaying the logo of the company, and its Facebook page were used to spread the message. (Figure 4).

Suchitra emphasized several times that she was not the only ‘main donor’, but that this was a collective act of giving benefitting the temple and producing merit for all participants. However, social hierarchies are also clearly mapped out at such occasions: Only the names of the main donors were enshrined in the new door leading into the temple. Talking to the workers in Suchitra’s business also revealed that she has a strong sense of responsibility for her employees. Ethnic minorities from far-away provinces work in her company, and are provided with rooms for living and a canteen.

Although larger companies like Lao Telecom have already sponsored similar activities, Suchitra’s business donation engagement is a rather new trend among small- and mid-scale enterprises in Laos. For Lao new year in April, the company has already invited a master of ceremonies (mo phoon) who will bless its employees and the production facilities for having a good and prosperous start into the new (business) year.

While in the eyes of many Western observers business, money and religion are a rather awkward mix, and subject to discussions on commodification and commercialization, all my Laos friends I asked about these sponsorship-rites found this a completely honest expression of faith and Buddhist values. In neighboring Thailand, in fact, the ritual economy has already reached a level of saturation that provokes critical comments on the mixture of Buddhism and business, and its potentially corrupting impact on monks. The expression phuttha phanit (‘commercialized Buddhism’) that evolved in the early 1990s in Thailand, however, has not yet reached Laos. Although some narratives regarding the apparent affluence of certain specific monks circulate, urban Lao Buddhism seems to be in the middle of a flowering period. Only time will tell if, when and how similar discourses will in the future also reach Laos.

***

At the moment, everyone in Ghana’s capital Accra is a financial analyst. Amidst the country’s on-going financial crisis, which includes the state take-over of nine Ghanaian private banks, finance excites vibrant popular debate (Figure 1). Frequently, I find myself engaging in conversations on the root causes for the crisis with people I meet in public transport, taxis, marketplaces, churches, and other sites of urban daily life. The records published by the Central Bank, Bank of Ghana, showcase liquidity challenges, non-performing loans and investments, as well as inaccuracies related to the process of acquiring licenses that led to the collapse. Attributing moral blame strongly characterises the conversation. Personal greed features high: banking executives are accused of using bank deposits as their personal “piggy banks.” From the ruling government perspective, the banking crisis boils down to lack of good corporate governance and adherence to proper banking regulations, which has led to the establishment of a special department, the “Office of Ethics and Internal Investigation”, at the Bank of Ghana (BoG). Finally, popular debates of political games excite imagination of the banking crisis as a conspiracy to concentrate political power. A taxi-driver gives me his version: “You see, if you are an entrepreneur and you want to start a bank, you first think, who do I know in the government? Is there someone I can approach for a licence? So, you apply for a licence, and promise the bank will support the projects of your party. When your party loses power, the new party that takes over doesn’t continue your projects and comes after you. That’s how banks collapse. It’s all about politics.”

While the Ghanaian public entertains the possibility of the banking crisis as a power game between domestic capitalists and the two dominant political parties, New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC), perhaps counter-intuitively, Ghanaian Charismatic Pentecostal churches have also become part of the conversation. One of the nine collapsed banks, Capital Bank, was known for its strong links to one of Ghana’s largest Charismatic Pentecostal churches, International Central Gospel Church (ICGC). The head pastor, Mensa Otabil, a widely respected Christian voice in Ghana and beyond, was the board chairman of Capital Bank which was started by a member of his church in 2009. From its beginnings as a microfinance enterprise, Capital Bank grew into a savings and loans company, before it acquired a universal banking license in 2013. Due to liquidity challenges, the bank was taken over by the state-owned Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) in August 2017. One year later in August 2018, Bank of Ghana released a document that implied that Otabil had been part of the board that authorised questionable investment decisions when the bank received a 610 million GHS (116 million USD) liquidity support from the Central Bank. This year, Otabil will appear in court to respond to these allegations.

On a broader scale, given the large number of churches in Accra and the consistent amount of liquid cash that churches amass on a weekly basis in the form of offerings and tithes, which they deposit on their own bank accounts, the banking crisis has brought the economic role of churches to the public limelight. At the same time, the role of Otabil in Capital Bank has excited moral debate on the proper role of “men of God” in economic life – “Can a pastor own shares in a bank? Is it right? They are men of God, even the Bible says they should shy away from earthly riches” as a journalist friend of mine reasoned. Also, Otabil’s expertise as a chairman of a bank is called into question. In social media, old Youtube videos circulate in which he admits his lack of skills in mathematics, while he claims banking is just about ensuring “money comes in and money goes out.” My young colleagues working in the call centre of a Ghanaian private bank, where I am doing an internship, clearly disagree; as they watch Otabil’s speech, they repeat his words with sarcasm and conclude that the entire church is in “crisis.” Otabil, meanwhile, urges his church members to tell his critics that “God is good.” (Figure 2)

Closely connected with the banking crisis, the past two years have also seen the proliferation and collapse of diverse Ponzi schemes that, according to some estimates, have diverted customer deposits away from the traditional banking system. The most widely known one is Menzgold, a gold-trading platform that attracted thousands of investors; wildest estimates believe the number to be in hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians, including many in the diaspora. The company promised to pay a monthly 10 percent interest, which they called a dividend, stating that they do gold trading via their own platform. Their spectacular, gold-glittering buildings emerged in Accra’s poshest neighbourhoods from 2016 onwards (Figure 3). They run an ingenious marketing campaign: popular music artists became brand ambassadors, while the CEO, Nana Appiah, posted pictures of himself next to influential political and public figures. When the Ghana Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Menzgold to shut down in

September 2018, ruling that the company was not authorised to deal in gold nor take deposits, stories started circulating of celebrities, churches, politicians, bankers and professionals who have their investments “locked up” in the gold trading firm. “The tithes are gone!”, a friend of mine laughed one evening, telling me a story of a Charismatic church that had invested significant sums of money in Menzgold. Besides capital equity, the media reports on individuals who have taken a bank loan to invest in the scheme, as well as marriage break-ups due to locked-up investments. Another friend of mine, who is starting up a real estate company, laments that potential investors have lost their capital and are unable to do other projects. But no-one seems to be willing to admit they have fallen victim to this scheme; people are afraid of being accused of greed and culpability, while protests around the closed-down gold-glittering buildings intensify.

One evening after a full day visiting the headquarters of ICGC and a Ghanaian media station that broadcasts daily stories of the “aggrieved customers” of Menzgold, I take an Uber-taxi back home. My incisive taxi-driver remarks: “Me, I didn’t go to school, but even me I know you can’t get that kind of interest. Menzgold, they had lawyers, teachers, bankers, the learned people! Oh Ghana, people like money too much. The moment someone says, I give you eight percent, ten percent, people run for it.” Indeed, the “learned people”, or, the “professionals,” are at the heart of public scrutiny: Who didn’t do their job well? Why were the rules and regulations bypassed? For whose benefit? And above all, what kind of knowledge and expertise is required to run a bank and invest successfully?

This first fieldnote is a brief glimpse into Johannes’ study of the international venture capital (VC) industry. Through interviews with different venture fund personnel and his own work in a small fund, Johannes is attempting to document how these investors are creating the next generation of businesses: what drives their decisions to invest in certain start ups? What kind of a future do VCs want to produce? His fieldwork will take Johannes from Cambridge and London to Berlin and Munich and finally to New York and San Francisco.

***

When I first talked to Sam, a relatively young, charismatic partner at one of the big several billion pound funds in London, he wouldn’t stop talking about the role of excitement in the investment process:

“I’m looking for [companies] where, you know, at the end of it, there’s some big payoff, there’s some big reward, some big thing that […] will change things or generate value, or whatever it might be. […] I […] imagine when I’m meeting someone – what if I was going to get to work with this person for the next seven to ten years? […] You know, would that excite me? Or not?”

Yes, there was money to be made, but as Sam explained, there was also something “bigger” at stake that you had to believe in. The analysis – turning numbers, business plans, excel sheets upside down – was never enough to convince Sam. Believing in excitement was quintessential because what is often referred to as the due diligence – doesn’t really suffice to make him want to invest:

“So, you know, the math doesn’t really work. I mean you can’t really sort of accurately plot why your five, six million dollars is going to be worth, you know, a hundred times that in ten years’ time. You just can’t. It’s just complete fantasy. So it’s gotta be something bigger than that, I think.”

Numbers alone aren’t capable of making a decision when it comes to early-stage startups. Not only do they only have shaky calculations of revenue, customer acquisition costs and customer lifetime value, what are important performance indicators initially might also change over the course of the coming months as the business model evolves. Any speculation about the future – how big can the company grow, how are the numbers going to develop – is fantasy anyway. The math doesn’t really work. Numbers have to be plausible – is the market big enough, is your necessary market share realistic – and shouldn’t have blatant red flags in them but they are never enough even if they are good; they won’t ultimately convince a VC of an investment. Excitement will. At least if you believe in it.

***

I get this focus on excitement. It is the feeling I get when it seems like we are on to something new and big. Let me recap the last time I had this feeling. It was August in Berlin. A very hot week was just behind me; temperatures had been so high that even just sitting was too much. I did about one first call every day, having an initial conversation with a new company we were interested in. One day, I spoke to London-based entrepreneurs working towards making banking a service you could easily access via your phone. They were already too big for our small fund. Another day, I spoke to an experienced CEO who was taking on the challenge of educating parents about the best ways of dealing with their new-borns. He was engaging and both the founding story of the company and the business roadmap were not only convincing and realistic but promising. I am still working on a follow-up with them.

The same week, I also had lunch with Thomas, the founder of a car sharing venture in Germany. This was the second time I saw Thomas, who both Max and I met for the first time in Munich before. Max was very excited – both of the general car sharing space and of the venture Thomas was heading specifically.

“There is space in this sector for a new player. The two big ones just went together; there are many more car manufacturers who will want to get into this. Great exit opportunities. And they also have a different business model than the others.”

Before and after the first meeting, we looked at the numbers – how well are the cars used, what are the margins, how many times do people use the cars per week – and were happy. I was sceptical and I didn’t fully understand why Max was so interested and wanted me to meet with Thomas again. In the meantime, I had actually tested the service, driven around in a couple of cars and came to the second meeting with very concrete questions: how do you reduce the amount of time you spend walking to the car? How do you increase your brand awareness? Using the product made all the difference both in terms of understanding the problems and getting very excited about it. Meeting Thomas again, I was finally also able to understand his enthusiasm: “VW is interested in working with us; several other manufacturers have already knocked on our door. With this round [of financing] we will be able to expand to all big German cities.” Having sat in one of ‘his’ cars myself, I understood how proud it must make him feel to see thousands of people engaging with his idea. I felt his excitement. I was willing to believe in Ben’s vision of the company.

Patrice Ladwig is studying the influence of economic modernisation on Buddhist rites of passage in urban Laos.  By focusing on funerals and ordinations into monastic life, he explores how the ritual and moral economy that connects monasteries and laypeople has been affected by economic growth, and how increasing wealth, but also social inequalities are expressed and negotiated in rituals.

Johannes Lenhard is working towards an anthropology of the international venture capital industry with field research in London, Berlin, New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong. The focus of his project will be on the values and ethics behind the investors’ decisions: Why do VCs support certain startups – for instance Uber, AirBnB and Transferwise – and not others? What kind of a (better) future do investors want to create?

Anna-Riikka Kauppinen is studying the emergence of new banks led by Ghanaian capital owners in Accra. With a focus on networks of institutional and personal exchange between banks and Charismatic Pentecostal churches, which have become major focal points of urban life in West Africa, the project will generate novel approaches to the study of African capitalism.

Patrick McKearney is developing a comparative anthropology of cognitive disability through fieldwork on Christian NGOs that support these individuals in situations of economic change and development. He will focus on the strategies these organisations develop as they seek to change the role these individuals play in social life, and the practical consequences their ethical projects have on the lives of some of the most dependent in different social settings.

Samuel Williams will study the social and economic significance of gold in Turkey over recent decades of market-driven development. Working closely with Turkish goldsmiths in Istanbul and London who help intermediate the scrap gold trade through Turkey between Europe and the Middle East, he will investigate the range of families, businesses, and other organisations that draw on this gold and why it is of value to them.

Rachel E. Smith will conduct research in Vanuatu on moral and ritual economies in contexts of social change, particularly in the context of the production of kava (a narcotic beverage) for the domestic and a burgeoning export market. She will focus on how ethical, ritual and spiritual practices and values mediate social and economic change.

For our launch, both the Max Planck Society’s president Professor Martin Stratman and Cambridge University’s Vice Chancellor, Stephen Toope, came to join the directors and all our guests at the magnificent Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. Please feel free to browse some of the photos taken by AlicetheCamera.