A01=J. Brent Crosson
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anthropology
Author_J. Brent Crosson
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caribbean spiritual workers
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HRKP
Category=HRKT
Category=JHMC
Category=QRRT
Category=QRS
Category=VXWS
COP=United States
crime hot spots
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_mind-body-spirit
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnic studies
ethnography
expanded policing powers
government
human rights violations
justice
Language_English
lower class black people
modern nation-states
murder
obeah
PA=Available
paganism
persecution
police violence
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
purification
purifying
racial foundations
religion
rule of law
science
slave rebellions
social issues
sociology
softlaunch
television show
tolerance
tribal religious practices
trinidad
Product details
- ISBN 9780226705484
- Weight: 1080g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 Jul 2020
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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In 2011, Trinidad declared a state of emergency. This massive state intervention lasted for 108 days and led to the rounding up of over 7,000 people in areas the state deemed “crime hot spots.” The government justified this action and subsequent police violence on the grounds that these measures were restoring “the rule of law.” In this milieu of expanded policing powers, protests occasioned by police violence against lower-class black people have often garnered little sympathy. But in an improbable turn of events, six officers involved in the shooting of three young people were charged with murder at the height of the state of emergency. To explain this, the host of Crime Watch, the nation’s most popular television show, alleged that there must be a special power at work: obeah.
From eighteenth-century slave rebellions to contemporary responses to police brutality, Caribbean methods of problem-solving “spiritual work” have been criminalized under the label of “obeah.” Connected to a justice-making force, obeah remains a crime in many parts of the anglophone Caribbean. In Experiments with Power, J. Brent Crosson addresses the complex question of what obeah is. Redescribing obeah as “science” and “experiments,” Caribbean spiritual workers unsettle the moral and racial foundations of Western categories of religion. Based on more than a decade of conversations with spiritual workers during and after the state of emergency, this book shows how the reframing of religious practice as an experiment with power transforms conceptions of religion and law in modern nation-states.
From eighteenth-century slave rebellions to contemporary responses to police brutality, Caribbean methods of problem-solving “spiritual work” have been criminalized under the label of “obeah.” Connected to a justice-making force, obeah remains a crime in many parts of the anglophone Caribbean. In Experiments with Power, J. Brent Crosson addresses the complex question of what obeah is. Redescribing obeah as “science” and “experiments,” Caribbean spiritual workers unsettle the moral and racial foundations of Western categories of religion. Based on more than a decade of conversations with spiritual workers during and after the state of emergency, this book shows how the reframing of religious practice as an experiment with power transforms conceptions of religion and law in modern nation-states.
J. Brent Crosson is assistant professor of religious studies and anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin.
