6. The Trials of Inspector Thomas: Policing and Ethnography in Jamaica

Recent studies of Afro-Atlantic culture have used the metaphor of the dialogue both to emphasize the complex processes at work in the cultural history of people of African descent in the Americas, and to move beyond a polarized debate between proponents of ‘‘African continuities’’ and ‘‘cultural creativity’’ in interpreting these processes.∞ My own previous work on the legal and cultural history of obeah has invoked this metaphor, arguing that obeah was produced ‘‘through a process of unequal dialogue,’’ and identifying ‘‘ritual specialists, poor and struggling people, members of many churches, colonial officials, missionaries, and members of the Caribbean resident elite’’ as participants in this exchange.≤ In this chapter, I investigate more precisely the working of the ‘‘unequal dialogue’’ through which obeah was produced and reproduced as crime, as object of anthropological inquiry, and as a framework for understanding spiritual danger. Colonial knowledge of obeah, the chapter demonstrates, depended on local knowledge and strategies regarding spiritual danger and how to respond to it. This chapter examines the day-to-day enforcement of the law against obeah, attending especially to the circumstances that led to particular individuals being arrested and prosecuted, rather than to the type of ritual practice that was subject to policing.≥ It focuses on Jamaica, because obeah law was often vigorously enforced there, and because of the relative accessibility of newspaper reports about Jamaican arrests and trials for obeah.∂ While the evidence through which we can learn about the circumstances leading to arrests is marked by important absences, it is sufficient to demonstrate that the police did not act alone in their efforts to enforce the law against obeah. Instead, they frequently relied on the cooperation of working-class and peasant Jamaicans, as well as on detective work and entrapment, to make arrests. This cooperation suggests that ordinary people made fine-grained judgments