Many are Called Rastafari and the 'Rent-A-Dread Problem'

Date of Award

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Vesperi, Maria

Keywords

Rastafarianism, Jamaica, Tourism

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

RastafarI is a livity (spiritual culture) of resistance to Babylon (European American neocolonialism) emerging from an African-Jamaican tradition of resistance to colonial subordination. Through two months of ethnographic research in Jamaica, I observed the routinization of a pattern of romantic/sexual relationships between African-Jamaican hustlers who identify as RastafarI in outward appearance and word (rent-a-dreads or rentas) and tourist women (renters). RastafarI identify rentas as a type of 'wolf in sheep clothing.' In this thesis, I write that renta identity can be understood as a modern, cultural petit marronage, in which rentas behave in a liminal state of professed resistance and lived accommodation of Babylon. This routinization of renta/renter relations is seen by RastafarI as a contribution to the larger problem of misrepresentation. I explore how rentas seek to transcend their subordinate positions in the Babylonian socioeconomic hierarchy through romantic/sexual relationships with renters and how renta/renter relations fail outside of the liminal tourist space, reinforcing the Babylonian positions. The significance of the 'renta problem' to RastafarI is found in the proverb, 'many are called, few are chosen.' RastafarI indicate that the attraction of diverse peoples to the livity is part of the gradual fulfillment of the prophecy: 'Babylon is falling!'

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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