Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica

by Charles Price

Overview

So much has been written about the Rastafari, yet we know so little about why and how people join the Rastafari movement. Although popular understandings evoke images of dreadlocks, reggae, and marijuana, Rastafarians were persecuted in their country, becoming a people seeking social justice. Yet new adherents continued to convert to Rastafari despite facing adverse reactions from their fellow citizens and from their British rulers.

Charles Price draws on in-depth interviews to reveal the personal experiences of those who adopted the religion in the 1950s to 1970s, one generation past the movement's emergence . By talking with these Rastafari elders, he seeks to understand why and how Jamaicans became Rastafari in spite of rampant discrimination, and what sustains them in their faith and identity.

Utilizing new conceptual frameworks, Price explores the identity development of Rastafari, demonstrating how shifts in the movement’s identity—from social pariah to exemplar of Blackness—have led some of the elder Rastafari to adopt, embrace, and internalize Rastafari and blackness as central to their concept of self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814767689
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Charles Price is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction  1 Race Formation and Morally Configured Black Identities  2 Ethnogenesis, Surprise, and Collective Identity Formation  3 The Positive Power of Stigma and Black Identity  4 Encounters  5 Acts of Identity Work  6 Rastafari Nation on the Move: Identity and Change  Conclusion: Toward a More Comprehensive Understanding of Racial Identity Formation Acronyms  Notes References  Index About the Author 

Editorial Reviews

"Price's work is a significant addition to scholarly work on Rastifari, offering a unique initial foray into discussion of why Rastafari remains such a powerful identity while also presenting an important illustration of the process of transformation of Rastafari identity."-Erin Macleod, Social Anthropology

"One can recommend this accessible book for undergraduate and graduate surveys in twentieth-century Caribbean history as well as for similar classes dealing with the formation of racial identities."-Charles H. Ford, Historian

“In an otherwise voluminous literature on Rastafaria, Price fills a void by presenting and critically analyzing the testimonies of Rastafarian men and women that narrate how they discovered, why they entered, and how they sustained membership in the culture, resistance, and theater that is Rastafaria. This book is one of the most important additions to the discourse on the Rastafarian movement to appear in years. Price reveals himself to be both a skilled cultural anthropologist and superb storyteller; the volume reads as much like a piece of literature as social scientific treatise.”

-William E. Cross, Jr.,author of Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity

From the Publisher