Ramsey, Kate — The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (2011) Source Information
Author: Kate Ramsey
Full Title: The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Year: 2011
Type: Secondary Source — legal history, religious history, and cultural politics
Location in Vault: research/secondary-sources/
Extracted Text: ramsey spirits law.txt Status
Text extracted: Yes — ramsey spirits law.txt
Review pass: Completed (2026-03-28) — Ramsey legal-history/folklore pass focused on criminalization, folklorization, anti-superstition campaigns, and post-occupation performance culture
Chapter notes: ramsey ch notes
Graph review in this pass: Created anti superstition campaigns, katherine dunham, and jean léon destiné; strengthened folklore movement, moc sources, moc society culture, moc historiography, and moc people Overview The Spirits and the Law is one of the vault's strongest long-view books on Vodou because it refuses the usual split between religion, law, and politics. Ramsey tracks how colonial and Haitian authorities named, prohibited, reclassified, and periodically attacked popular ritual from Saint-Domingue through the twentieth century, while also showing that those same authorities could never fully control what they were trying to suppress. The book's central argument is the double movement: Vodou is repeatedly criminalized as superstition, sorcery, or disorder, and at the same time selectively nationalized as folklore, patrimony, or authentic Haitian culture.