Foreword / Erna Brodber  ix

Acknowledgments  xiii

Introduction / Maarit Forde and Diana Paton  1

Part I. Powers of Representation  

1. An (Un)natural Mystic in the Air: Images of Obeah in Caribbean Song / Kenneth Bilby  45

2. "Eh! eh! Bomba, hen! hen!": Making Sense of a Vodou Chant / Alasdair Pettinger  80

3. On Swelling: Slavery, Social Science, and Medicine in the Nineteenth Century / Alejandra Bronfman  103

4. Atis Rezistans: Gede and the Art of Vagabondaj / Katherine Smith  121

Part II. Modernity and Tradition in the Making  

5. Slave Poison / Slave Medicine: The Persistence of Obeah in Early Nineteenth-Century Martinique / John Savage  149

6. The Trials of Inspector Thomas: Policing and Ethnography in Jamaica / Diana Paton  172

7. The Moral Economy of Spiritual Work: Money and Rituals in Trinidad and Tobago / Maarit Forde  198

8. The Open Secrets of Solares / Elizabeth Cooper  220

Part III. Powers on the Move  

9. Rites of Power and Rumors of Race: The Circulation of Supernatural Knowledge in the Greater Caribbean, 1890–1940 / Lara Putnam  243

10. The Vodou State and the Protestant Nation: Haiti in the Long Twentieth Century / Karen Richman  268

11. The Moral Economy of Brujería under the Modern Colony: A Pirated Modernity? / Raquel Romberg  288

Afterword. Other Powers: Tylor's Principle, Father Williams's Temptations, and the Power of Banality / Stephan Palmíe  316

Contributors  341

Index  345

Erna Brodber

Maarit Forde

Diana Paton

Kenneth Bilby

Alasdair Pettinger

Alejandra Bronfman

Katherine Smith

John Savage

Elizabeth Cooper

Lara Putnam

Karen Richman

Raquel Romberg

Stephan Palmié

“[This] book ... should give anthropologists and other scholars of religion considerable pause and motivation.”—Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

“A clear introduction and the well-developed, carefully composed chapters redeem the book…. [T]he book offers a great deal. Smith’s chapter would be a welcome addition to a gender and women’s studies classroom. Likewise, Savage’s contribution would work well in a history of medicine course. Putnam’s essay is required reading for students interested in Atlantic history. Finally, Richman’s chapter would fit well in a religious studies course.”—Karol K. Weaver, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

“[This] book ... should give anthropologists and other scholars of religion considerable pause and motivation.”—Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

“A clear introduction and the well-developed, carefully composed chapters redeem the book…. [T]he book offers a great deal. Smith’s chapter would be a welcome addition to a gender and women’s studies classroom. Likewise, Savage’s contribution would work well in a history of medicine course. Putnam’s essay is required reading for students interested in Atlantic history. Finally, Richman’s chapter would fit well in a religious studies course.”—Karol K. Weaver, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"The contributors to this outstanding collection share the refreshing ambition to historicize local knowledge and to embrace the opacity and persisting mystique of Caribbean spiritual realities—from the colonial occult to enchanted modernities."—Richard Price, author of Travels with Tooy and Rainforest Warriors

“Obeah and Other Powers is an excellent and welcome contribution to scholarship on Caribbean religions. Too few works explicitly address the three themes taken up in this collection, the significance of state power in shaping the environment in which Caribbean religions were practiced, the role of practitioners in shaping their religious traditions, and the role of mobility and the permeability of borders in shaping the definition and interpretation of obeah, Vodou, Santería, and Candomblé. This last premise enables the contributors to analyze these religions in conjunction with one another and as overlapping, rather than separate, phenomena.”—Aisha Khan, author of Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad

"Obeah and Other Powers is an excellent and welcome contribution to scholarship on Caribbean religions. Too few works explicitly address the three themes taken up in this collection: the significance of state power in shaping the environment in which Caribbean religions were practiced, the role of practitioners in shaping their religious traditions, and the role of mobility and the permeability of borders in shaping the definitions and interpretations of obeah, Vodou, Santería, and Candomblé. This last premise enables the contributors to analyze these religions in conjunction with one another and as overlapping, rather than separate, phenomena."—Aisha Khan, author of Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad

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