This article is based on fieldwork from 2005 onwards among West African antiwitchcraft shrines in New York City amid the growing African diaspora. For many of the priests who have worked at shrines established since the 1980s, the recent economic recession was yet another blow to their love affair with New York high society and a distinct uptown neighbourhood of the city — the Upper East Side. The article dissects the social and economic relations of this very rich Manhattan elite and West African shrine priests and their clients, analysing the different values and ideals prevalent at the shrines regarding the accumulation of wealth and to conspicuous consumption. Increasingly, the type of wealth epitomized by the Upper East Side is no longer seen by shrine clients as a desired symbol of success but as a sign of moral decay.
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