Waiting for the Miracle

Abstract Why do the dreamworlds of the economic miracle persist even when it fails to deliver? What might account for its resilience, its endless capacity to resurrect in ever-new forms in old and new territories? This essay explores the enduring enigma of economic enchantments: the modern belief in the power of capitalist growth to salve the humiliation of defeat in wars and colonial rule, to turn depressed economies torn by ethnic conflicts, external debts, and financial collapse into economic powerhouses. This enduring enchantment of the economic, the authors suggest, lives off an endless replay of the prosperity gospel, especially in postcolonial and postcommunist societies. What sustains the myth of the economic miracle is how each failure is dismissed as a deception, a mirage that awaits the arrival of the true miracle.