Cosmopolitanism from the Global South: Caribbean Spiritual Repatriation to Ethiopia (Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology)

This is a book about the power of the imagination to move persons from the Global South as they reinvent themselves. This ethnography focuses on Caribbean Rastafari who have undertaken a spiritual repatriation to Ethiopia over several decades particularly, though not exclusively, from Jamaica. Shelene Gomes traces the formation of a Rastafari community located in the multicultural Jamaica Safar or Jamaica neighbourhood in the Ethiopian city of Shashamane following a twentieth century grant of land from the former Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie I. In presenting narratives of spiritual repatriation, everyday behaviours and ritualised events, Gomes provides an ethnographic account of Caribbean cosmopolitan sensibilities. Situated in the historical conditions of colonial West Indian plantations and the asymmetries of freedom and bondage within modernity, a recognition of global positionalities and local situatedness characterises this case of cosmopolitanism from the Global South. Shifting the centre of worldviews from Europe to Africa, Rastafari both challenge global disparities as well as reproduce hierarchies in the local space of the Jamaica Safar. In positioning Ethiopia as the spiritual birthplace of humanity, Rastafari also engage in ontological and epistemological reinvention. This spiritual repatriation, in its emic sense, foregrounds the Caribbeanist contribution to anthropology. Ethnographies of the Caribbean have been at the forefront of anthropological enquiries into global interconnections. This discussion of spiritual repatriation is both specific to the diasporic Caribbean and relevant to wider world-making processes and representations. Acknowledgements About the Book Contents About the Author Chapter 1: Cosmopolitan Sensibilities and Outernational Imaginaries 1.1 Spiritual Repatriation 1.2 Shashamane 1.3 Rastafari Symbolism 1.4 The Plantation and Creole Subjectivities 1.5 Cosmopolitan Theory 1.6 Migration 1.7 Organisation of the Book References Chapter 2: “Word-Sound-Power” 2.1 Everyday Performativity 2.2 Itiopia/Ethiopia in Rastafari Worldview 2.3 Haile Selassie I 2.4 Sighting Rastafari and “Knowing Your Bible” 2.5 Testing Strangers: To Suss Out a Person 2.6 Chanting: Dread Talk, Morality and the Commodification of the Word (Music) References Chapter 3: Ambiguities of Belonging 3.1 A Lineage of Ethiopian Royalty, an Abyssinian Pedigree 3.2 The West Indian God of Rastafari 3.3 An Everyday Micro-conflict 3.4 Reclaiming Blackness References Chapter 4: Narratives of Community: His Majesty’s People 4.1 Origin Stories 4.2 Narrative Self-Making 4.3 Everyday Practices of Relatedness 4.4 Being Ethiopian 4.5 Being Heartical References Chapter 5: Making a Living 5.1 Outernational Livelihoods 5.2 Household Earnings 5.3 Routine Precarity 5.4 The Western Union Run 5.5 The Neighbourhood Shop 5.6 Translocal Reciprocity 5.7 Material Betterment, Status and In-Kind Remittances References Chapter 6: Family and Kinship: Rastafari Yards 6.1 Creole Kinship 6.2 My Yard: Family and Household 6.3 A Rastafari Yard and an Ethiopian Beit 6.4 Making Place, Reproducing Culture 6.5 Gender, Class and the Sexual Division of Labour 6.6 Being Rooted: Locating Identities in Time and Space References Chapter 7: Rastafari Citizen-Subjectivities 7.1 Modes of Belonging 7.2 The Legal Face of Citizenship 7.3 The Generation Born on the Land Grant 7.4 The Passport: Inclusion and Exclusion 7.5 Local Development 7.6 Babylon Is Everywhere References Appendices Appendix A: Note on Methodology Appendix B: Note on Transliteration and the Use of Italics Glossary References Further Reading Index