Rastafari - by Charles Price (Paperback)

About the Book

"REPI offers a fresh angle on the Rastafari by drawing on underutilized sources such as news stories and colonial records, along with other data such as field notes, interviews and cultural products like screeds and hymns. Charles Price introduces readers to new connections, characters, and events salient to the development of the Rastafari. REPI is a scholarly resource written in a style accessible to a general audience"--

Book Synopsis

Illuminates how the Rastafari movement managed to evolve in the face of severe biases

Misunderstood, misappropriated, belittled: though the Rastafari feature frequently in media and culture, they have most often been misrepresented, their political and religious significance minimized. But they have not been vanquished.

Charles Price's Rastafari: The Evolution of a People and Their Identity reclaims the rich history of this relatively new world religion. Charting its humble and rebellious roots in Jamaica's backcountry in the late nineteenth century to the present day, Price explains how Jamaicans' obsession with the Rastafari wavered from campaigns of violence to appeasement and cooptation. Indeed, he argues that the Rastafari as a political, religious, and cultural movement survived the biases and violence they faced through their race consciousness and uncanny ability to ride the waves of anti-colonialism and Black Power.

This social movement traveled throughout the Caribbean, Africa, Central America, and the United States, capturing the heart and imagination of much of the African diaspora. Rastafari spans the movement's struggle for autonomy, its multiple campaigns for repatriation to Africa, and its leading role in the Black consciousness movements of the twentieth century. Not satisfied with simply narrating the past, Rastafari also takes on the challenges of gender equality and the commodification of Rastafari culture in the twenty-first century without abandoning its message of equality and empowering the downpressed.

Rastafari shows how this cultural and political context helped to shape the development of a Black collective identity, demonstrating how Rastafarians confronted society-wide ridicule and oppression and emerged prouder and more united, steadfast in their conviction that they were a chosen people.

Review Quotes

"An excellent exploration of the foundations and development of Rastafarianism. Digging deep into the roots of the Rastafari movement, Price shows how British colonialism, the popular religious forms of the island, and political and liberation movements like Ethiopianism all contributed to the coming together of a new and distinctly Jamaican religious form in the first half of the twentieth century ... Price's is an excellent text, from which the interested reader will learn much."-- "Religion"

"Meticulous and engaging, Charles Price's fascinating book stands as an exemplar of scholarship not just in Rastafari studies, but also in the complicated culture and history of new religious movements."-- "Novo Religio"

"Price successfully underscores the complex and dynamic nature of Rastafari collective identity formation and ethnogenesis, suggesting that their influence on Jamaican society, and beyond, has been a substantial and enduring one."-- "Religious Studies Review"

"This welcome volume explores the growth and persistence of Rastafarianism in Jamaica. Price . . . provides an exceptionally empathetic account of the faith, and in his sophisticated analysis he successfully integrates the 'small acts' of history with the 'big ideas' they have come to signify."-- "S. D. Glazier, Yale University"

"Fascinating and a pleasure to read. Charles Price makes a distinctive contribution by detailing how a Rastafari cultural gestalt emerges. Price shows how cultural patterns can have multiple origins, influences, and significance. Rastafari is a new and necessary reframing of Rastafari culture."--Richard Salter, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

"In clear prose and with a storyteller's disposition, Charles Price offers a detailed analysis of the emergence of collective identity of the Rastafari in Jamaica, illustrating how that collective identity is an ever-changing phenomenon, with variations across time and space. Will be a lasting contribution to the field."--Anita Waters, Denison University

"Well-written and engaging . . . breaks new ground both in the data it analyzes and the theory it advances. Price deftly demystifies the 'sudden' appearance of Rastafari by showing how it is rooted in notions of black identity and African redemption."--Ennis B. Edmonds, Donald L. Rogan Professor of Religious Studies, Kenyon College

About the Author

Charles Price is Associate Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at Temple University. He is the author of Becoming Rasta: The Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica and co-author of Community Collaborations: Promoting Community Organizing.