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What is Obeah (or Obeahman)

Minding the Gap Between Restorative Justice, Therapeutic Jurisprudence, and Global Indigenous Wisdom
An ancestor-based tradition in the Caribbean believed to have been inherited from the Akan of Ghana. This religious practice and system of belief is said to be a set of hybrid or combination of various religious elements. Legally, in Jamaica, the Obeah Act of 1898 defines a person practicing obeah as any person who, to effect any fraudulent or unlawful purpose, or for gain, or for the purpose of frightening any person, uses or pretends to use any occult means, or pretends to possess any supernatural power or knowledge.
Published in Chapter:
Indigenous Conflict Resolution Mechanism as Reconciliatory and Therapeutic: Lessons From Ghana and the Caribbean
Seth Tweneboah (University of Education, Winneba, Ghana) and Anthony Richards (Wild Caribbean, Barbados)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-4112-1.ch001
Abstract
This chapter explores the role of traditional methods of social control that deploy the power of the deities as a missing dimension of justice delivery. The authors present the rituals associated with deploying the traditional mechanism of control as both reconciliatory and therapeutic. Drawing on both historical and contemporaneous instances from Ghana and the Caribbean, the chapter contends that the continuous reliance on African spirit-based justice delivery method betrays not only the insufficiencies in the Western superimposed adversarial legal system but also a tacit and open rejection of this imported system. The chapter interrogates the prospects and pitfalls of indigenous Africa and its diasporan conflict resolution mechanism.
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