The Cultural Politics of Obeah
Religion, Colonialism and Modernity in the Caribbean World

A study of the importance of debates about obeah, and state suppression of it, for Caribbean struggles about freedom and citizenship.

Diana Paton (Author)

9781107025653, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 August 2015

373 pages, 9 b/w illus. 9 tables
23.5 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.72 kg

'Diana Paton's recently published book, The Cultural Politics of Obeah: Religion, Colonialism, and Modernity in the Caribbean World, helps us understand how the 1904 Obeah Act is not only still in existence in the Caribbean, but also active … This rich text shows how the crime of obeah emerged as a homogenizing tool used by police, prosecutors, and governments to consolidate a wide range of healing practices deemed subversive and uncivilized … The Cultural Politics of Obeah does an excellent job demonstrating how racial hostilities have been mobilized as obeah for different reasons at different moments. Through a range of historical detail it demonstrates how anti-obeah legislation has defined racial governance where obeah is an artifact of colonial law. Rather than a singular practice or object of knowledge, it shows how obeah must be understood as a hostile term.' Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

An innovative history of the politics and practice of the Caribbean spiritual healing techniques known as obeah and their place in everyday life in the region. Spanning two centuries, the book results from extensive research on the development and implementation of anti-obeah legislation. It includes analysis of hundreds of prosecutions for obeah, and an account of the complex and multiple political meanings of obeah in Caribbean societies. Diana Paton moves beyond attempts to define and describe what obeah was, instead showing the political imperatives that often drove interpretations and discussions of it. She shows that representations of obeah were entangled with key moments in Caribbean history, from eighteenth-century slave rebellions to the formation of new nations after independence. Obeah was at the same time a crucial symbol of the Caribbean's alleged lack of modernity, a site of fear and anxiety, and a thoroughly modern and transnational practice of healing itself.

Introduction
1. The emergence of Caribbean spiritual politics
2. Obeah and the slave-trade debates
3. Creole slave society, obeah, and the law
4. Obeah and its meanings in the post-emancipation era
5. Obeah in the courts, 1890–1939
6. Obeah prosecutions from the inside
7. Protest, development, and the politics of obeah
8. The postcolonial politics of obeah
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], History of other lands [HBJQ], General & world history [HBG]