Counter-Narratives of Belonging: Rastafari in the Promised Land

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Jamaica Safar or Jamaica neighborhood of urban Shashamane in Ethiopia, this essay explores Rastafari assertions of belonging to Ethiopia. Through the spiritually-motivated migration or "repatriation" of Rastafari from the Caribbean to Ethiopia, this claim of belonging is explored in terms of the everyday and institutional challenges that first- and second-generation Rastafari confront in Shashamane. Situated in the historical conditions of Caribbean modernity and postcolonial identity change, expressions of belonging are examined in terms of Rastafari efforts to achieve freedom and live with dignity or to enact "citizenness" on the land granted by Emperor Haile Selassie I in the late twentieth century. Rastafari demands for societal, political, and cultural recognition in this migration locale are presented within narratives of self and group belonging, of claims to land and territory, and to equal rights in the contemporary Ethiopian nation and state.