Also known as: Kate Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti
Last updated: April 16, 2026
A long-view legal and cultural history of how colonial and Haitian authorities named, prohibited, reclassified, and periodically attacked popular ritual from Saint-Domingue through the twentieth century, while those same authorities could never fully control what they suppressed. Ramsey's central argument is a double movement: Vodou is repeatedly criminalized as superstition or disorder and at the same time selectively nationalized as folklore, patrimony, or authentic Haitian culture — a paradox that explains how the state could sponsor staged dance and ethnology while still backing police raids and church-driven anti-superstition campaigns against living practice.
Ramsey's The Spirits and the Law draws extensively on Destiné's oral testimony, gathered over seventeen years, making him a co-author of the book's folklore chapter.
Ramsey's The Spirits and the Law is the primary source placing Dunham in the post-occupation folklore chapter alongside the anti-superstition campaigns.
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Kate Ramsey. "The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti." University of Chicago Press, 2011. Rasin.ai, https://rasin.ai/connections/sources/ramsey-spirits-law. Accessed 2026-05-05.