Anthropologists have discovered ritual economies that use magical actions and spells in practical activities. These material practices draw on figurative reason that hardly corresponds to our honed rational models. I have explored such modes of economy in the field and learned about them through reports. But why investigate these forms of material life that do not measure up to our standards of rational action? We presume that economy is the site of sensible connections and instrumental practices. One Nobel laureate in economics, Douglass North, has even rejected the idea that ritual actions can be lasting solutions to the economic problem of sustaining life in an uncertain world. For him, economies filled with ritual must disappear in the face of more rational ways of securing a livelihood, because they have high transaction costs. Even before North, theorists of economy, such as the social historian Max Weber (1864–1920), asserted that with the rise of modernity and the spread of rational thought, we have shed our economic rituals.

Such transaction costs in the economies anthropologists study are seemingly apparent to us, but they exist in high market economies as well where they are largely unrecognized. Figurative modes of reason fill gaps in high markets (and economic theory) by building connections. To see how spells and figurative connections work in material life, I turn first to what I mean by ritual and how it works in high relationship economies, where it can make social connections and support mutuality on which material life depends. Then, we will see how magical linkages and the casting of spells have a central place in market life where they connect the house and commercial spheres on which market life depends. I shall argue in later chapters, however, that in the more abstract spheres of finance and meta-finance the connection between ritual and economy evaporates as calculative reason becomes dominant.

Ritual reconnaissance

I use the word ritual to refer to the application of ritual reason in social relationships, but it has many more meanings. Figurative can mean a personal, repeated action or habit as in a ritual performed on arising or going to bed. Habits, such as opening a door in a certain way, knocking on wood, wishing good health when someone sneezes, saying “please,” or chewing with the mouth closed, are “economical” ways of acting.