Editing Rastafari (section)

== Demographics ==

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|quote=Born in the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica, the Rastafarian movement has captured the imagination of thousands of black youth, and some white youth, throughout Jamaica, the Caribbean, Britain, France, and other countries in Western Europe and North America. It is also to be found in smaller numbers in parts of Africa—for example, in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Senegal—and in Australia and New Zealand, particularly among the Maori.|source=— Sociologist of religion [[Peter B. Clarke]], 1986{{sfn|Clarke|1986|p=17}} }}

As of 2012, there were an estimated 700,000 to 1,000,000 Rastas worldwide.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=71}} They can be found in many different regions, including most of the world's major population centres.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=71}} Rastafari's influence on wider society has been more substantial than its numerical size,{{sfnm|1a1=Clarke|1y=1986|1p=14|2a1=Edmonds|2y=2012|2p=71}} particularly in fostering a racial, political, and cultural consciousness among the African diaspora and Africans themselves.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=71}} Men dominate Rastafari.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=94}} In its early years, most of its followers were men, and the women who did adhere to it tended to remain in the background.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=94}} This picture of Rastafari's demographics has been confirmed by ethnographic studies conducted in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|pp=94–95}}

The Rasta message resonates with many people who feel marginalised and alienated by the values and institutions of their society.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=89}} Internationally, it has proved most popular among the poor and among marginalised youth.{{sfn|Hansing|2006|p=63}} In valorising Africa and blackness, Rastafari provides a positive identity for youth in the African diaspora by allowing them to psychologically reject their social stigmatisation.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=89}} It then provides these disaffected people with the discursive stance from which they can challenge capitalism and consumerism, providing them with symbols of resistance and defiance.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=89}} Cashmore expressed the view that "whenever there are black people who sense an injust disparity between their own material conditions and those of the whites who surround them and tend to control major social institutions, the Rasta messages have relevance."{{sfn|Cashmore|1984|p=3}}

=== Conversion and deconversion ===

Rastafari is a non-missionary religion.{{sfnm|1a1=Fernández Olmos|1a2=Paravisini-Gebert|1y=2011|1p=191|2a1=Edmonds|2y=2012|2p=85}} However, elders from Jamaica often go "trodding" to instruct new converts in the fundamentals of the religion.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=85}} On researching English Rastas during the 1970s, Cashmore noted that they had not [[religious conversion|converted]] instantaneously, but rather had undergone "a process of drift" through which they gradually adopted Rasta beliefs and practices, resulting in their ultimate acceptance of Haile Selassie's central importance.{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|p=55}} Based on his research in West Africa, Neil J. Savishinsky found that many of those who converted to Rastafari came to the religion through their pre-existing use of marijuana as a recreational drug.{{sfn|Savishinsky|1994b|p=28}}

Rastas often claim that—rather than converting to the religion—they were actually always a Rasta and that their embrace of its beliefs was merely the realisation of this.{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|p=6}} There is no formal ritual carried out to mark an individual's entry into the Rastafari movement,{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|p=128}} although once they do join an individual often changes their name, with many including the prefix "Ras".{{sfn|Fernández Olmos|Paravisini-Gebert|2011|p=193}} Rastas regard themselves as an exclusive and elite community, membership of which is restricted to those who have the "insight" to recognise Haile Selassie's importance.{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|p=9}} Practitioners thus often regard themselves as the "enlightened ones" who have "seen the light".{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|p=57}} Many of them see no point in establishing good relations with non-Rastas, believing that the latter will never accept Rastafari doctrine as truth.{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|pp=57–58}}

Some Rastas have left the religion. Clarke noted that among British Rastas, some returned to Pentecostalism and other forms of Christianity, while others embraced [[Islam]] or [[Irreligion|no religion]].{{sfn|Clarke|1986|p=59}} Some English ex-Rastas described disillusionment when the societal transformation promised by Rastafari failed to appear, while others felt that while Rastafari would be appropriate for agrarian communities in Africa and the Caribbean, it was not suited to industrialised British society.{{sfn|Clarke|1986|p=59}} Others experienced disillusionment after developing the view that Haile Selassie had been an oppressive leader of the Ethiopian people.{{sfn|Clarke|1986|p=59}} Cashmore found that some British Rastas who had more militant views left the religion after finding its focus on reasoning and music insufficient for the struggle against white domination and racism.{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|p=97}}

=== Regional spread ===

Although it remains most concentrated in the Caribbean,{{sfn|Loadenthal|2013|p=2}} Rastafari has spread to many areas of the world and adapted into many localised variants.{{sfn|Hansing|2001|p=733}} It has spread primarily in Anglophone regions and countries, largely because reggae music has primarily been produced in the English language.{{sfn|Hansing|2006|p=63}} It is thus most commonly found in the Anglophone Caribbean, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and Anglophone parts of Africa.{{sfn|Hansing|2006|p=64}}

==== Jamaica and the Americas ====
[[File:Jamaican Man.jpg|thumb|upright|A practitioner of Rastafari in Jamaica]]

Barrett described Rastafari as "the largest, most identifiable, indigenous movement in Jamaica."{{sfn|Barrett|1997|p=viii}} In the mid-1980s, there were approximately 70,000 members and sympathisers of Rastafari in Jamaica.{{sfn|Clarke|1986|p=16}} The majority were male, working-class, former Christians aged between 18 and 40.{{sfn|Clarke|1986|p=16}} In the 2011 Jamaican census, 29,026 individuals identified as Rastas.<ref name="state2007">{{cite web|url=https://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90259.htm |title=Jamaica |publisher=[[Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor]] (US State Department)|date=September 14, 2007 |access-date=October 20, 2010}}</ref> Jamaica's Rastas were initially entirely from the Afro-Jamaican majority,{{sfn|Barrett|1997|p=2}} and although Afro-Jamaicans are still the majority, Rastafari has also gained members from the island's [[Chinese Jamaicans|Chinese]], [[Indo-Jamaicans|Indian]], Afro-Chinese, Afro-Jewish, [[mulatto]], and [[White Jamaican|white]] minorities.{{sfn|Barrett|1997|pp=2–3}} Until 1965, the vast majority were from the lower classes, although it has since attracted many middle-class members; by the 1980s, there were Jamaican Rastas working as lawyers and university professors.{{sfn|Barrett|1997|pp=2, 241}} Jamaica is often valorised by Rastas as the fountain-head of their faith, and many Rastas living elsewhere travel to the island on [[pilgrimage]].{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=87}}

Both through travel between the islands,{{sfn|Gjerset|1994|p=67}} and through reggae's popularity,{{sfnm|1a1=Gjerset|1y=1994|1p=67|2a1=Edmonds|2y=2012|2p=81}} Rastafari spread across the eastern Caribbean during the 1970s. Here, its ideas complemented the anti-colonial and Afrocentric views prevalent in countries like Trinidad, Grenada, Dominica, and St Vincent.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=81}} In these countries, the early Rastas often engaged in cultural and political movements to a greater extent than their Jamaican counterparts had.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=82}} Various Rastas were involved in Grenada's 1979 [[New Jewel Movement]] and were given positions in the Grenadine government until it was overthrown and replaced following the [[United States invasion of Grenada|U.S. invasion of 1983]].{{sfnm|1a1=Campbell|1y=1980|1pp=50–51|2a1=Simpson|2y=1985|2p=291|3a1=Edmonds|3y=2012|3p=82}} Although [[Fidel Castro]]'s Marxist–Leninist government generally discouraged foreign influences, Rastafari was introduced to Cuba alongside reggae in the 1970s.{{sfnm|1a1=Hansing|1y=2001|1p=734|2a1=Hansing|2y=2006|2p=65|3a1=Edmonds|3y=2012|3pp=82–83}} Foreign Rastas studying in Cuba during the 1990s connected with its reggae scene and helped to further ground it in Rasta beliefs.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|pp=82–83}} In Cuba, most Rastas have been male and from the [[Afro-Cuban]] population.{{sfnm|1a1=Hansing|1y=2001|1p=736|2a1=Hansing|2y=2006|2p=69}}

Rastafari was introduced to the United States and Canada with the migration of Jamaicans to continental North America in the 1960s and 1970s.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=72}} American police were often suspicious of Rastas and regarded Rastafari as a criminal sub-culture.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=76}} Rastafari also attracted converts from within several [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American communities]]{{sfn|Hansing|2001|p=733}} and picked up some support from white members of the [[hippie]] subculture, which was then in decline.{{sfn|Loadenthal|2013|p=12}} In Latin America, small communities of Rastas have also established in Brazil, Panama, and Nicaragua.{{sfn|Hansing|2006|p=64}}

==== Africa ====

Some Rastas in the African diaspora have followed through with their beliefs about resettlement in Africa, with Ghana and Nigeria being particularly favoured.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=78}} In West Africa, Rastafari has spread largely through the popularity of reggae,{{sfn|Savishinsky|1994b|pp=26–27}} gaining a larger presence in Anglophone areas than their Francophone counterparts.{{sfn|Savishinsky|1994b|p=33}}

Caribbean Rastas arrived in Ghana during the 1960s, encouraged by its first post-independence president, [[Kwame Nkrumah]], while some native Ghanaians also converted to the religion.{{sfn|White|2010|pp=304, 306–307}} The largest congregation of Rastas has been in southern parts of Ghana, around [[Accra]], [[Tema]], and the [[Cape Coast]],{{sfn|White|2010|p=314}} although Rasta communities also exist in the Muslim-majority area of northern Ghana.{{sfn|Middleton|2006|p=152}} Middleton suggests that Rasta migrants' dreadlocks resembled the hairstyles of the native [[fetish priest]]s, which may have assisted the presentation of these Rastas as having authentic African roots in Ghanaian society.{{sfn|Middleton|2006|pp=154–155}} However, Alhassan has noted that prejudice against people wearing dreadlocks was present among at least some Ghanaians in 2008.{{sfn|Alhassan|2020b}} Ghanaian Rastas have also complained of social ostracism and prosecution for cannabis possession, while non-Rastas in Ghana often consider them to be "drop-outs", "too Western", and "not African enough".{{sfn|Middleton|2006|pp=161–162}} Conversely, Alhassan noted an increased acceptance of dreadlocks by 2017, with notable Ghanaians such as Lordina Mahama and Ursula Owusu-Ekuful wearing their hair in this style. This has reportedly coincided with increased interest in Rastafari in Ghana. Alhassan suggests Ghanaians "trod the path" to Rastafari to "affirm their African identity" and engage in Pan-African anti-colonial politics, "despite adverse social consequences".{{sfn|Alhassan|2020b}}

[[File:East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa (20512396425).jpg|thumb|right|A Rasta street vendor in South Africa's [[Eastern Cape]]]]

A smaller number of Rastas are found in Muslim-majority countries of West Africa, such as Gambia and Senegal.{{sfn|Savishinsky|1994b|pp=31–32}} One West African group that wear dreadlocks are the [[Baye Faal]], a [[Mouride]] sect in [[Senegambia]], some of whose practitioners have started calling themselves "Rastas" in reference to their visual similarity to Rastafari.{{sfn|Savishinsky|1994|p=211}} The popularity of dreadlocks and marijuana among the Baye Faal may have been spread in large part through access to Rasta-influenced reggae in the 1970s.{{sfn|Savishinsky|1994|p=214}} A small community of Rastas also appeared in Burkina Faso.{{sfn|Wittmann|2011|pp=158–159}}

In the 1960s, a Rasta settlement was established in Shashamane, Ethiopia, on land made available by Haile Selassie's Ethiopian World Federation.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=79}} The community faced many problems; 500 acres were confiscated by the Marxist government of [[Mengistu Haile Mariam]].{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=79}} There were also conflicts with local Ethiopians, who largely regarded the incoming Rastas, and their Ethiopian-born children, as foreigners.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=79}} The Shashamane community peaked at a population of 2,000, although subsequently declined to around 200.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=79}}

By the early 1990s, a Rasta community existed in [[Nairobi]], Kenya, whose approach to the religion was informed both by reggae and by traditional [[Kikuyu people|Kikuyu]] religion.{{sfn|Turner|1991|p=82}} Rastafari groups have also appeared in Zimbabwe,{{sfn|Sibanda|2016|p=182}} Malawi{{sfn|Ntombana|Maganga|2020|p=1}} and in South Africa;{{sfn|Chawane|2014|p=220}} in 2008, there were at least 12,000 Rastas in the country.{{sfn|Mhango|2008|p=234}} At an [[African Union]]/Caribbean Diaspora conference in South Africa in 2005, a statement was released characterising Rastafari as a force for integration of Africa and the African diaspora.{{sfn|Newland|2013|p=225}}

==== Europe ====

[[File:Benjamin Zephaniah University of Hull.jpg|thumb|right|The English Rasta [[Benjamin Zephaniah]] was a well-known poet.]]

During the 1950s and 1960s, Rastas were among the [[British African-Caribbean people|thousands of Caribbean migrants who settled in the United Kingdom]],{{sfnm|1a1=Cashmore|1y=1983|1p=54|2a1=Edmonds|2y=2012|2p=72}} leading to small groups appearing in areas of London such as [[Brixton]]{{sfnm|1a1=Cashmore|1y=1981|1p=176|2a1=Cashmore|2y=1983|2p=54}} and [[Notting Hill]] in the 1950s.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=72}} By the late 1960s, Rastafari had attracted converts from the second generation of British Caribbean people,{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=72}} spreading beyond London to cities like [[Birmingham]], [[Leicester]], [[Liverpool]], [[Manchester]], and [[Bristol]].{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|p=58}} Its spread was aided by the [[gang]] structures that had been cultivated among black British youth by the [[rudeboy]] subculture,{{sfn|Cashmore|1983|p=56}} and gained increasing attention in the 1970s through reggae's popularity.{{sfnm|1a1=Cashmore|1y=1981|1p=176|2a1=Edmonds|2y=2012|2p=74}} According to the [[2001 United Kingdom Census]] there are about 5000 Rastafari living in [[England and Wales]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/ataglance/glance.shtml |title=Rastafari at a glance |publisher=BBC |date=October 2, 2009 |access-date=February 27, 2012}}</ref> Clarke described Rastafari as a small but "extremely influential" component of black British life.{{sfn|Clarke|1986|p=16}}

Rastafari also established itself in various continental European countries, among them the Netherlands, Germany,{{sfn|Wakengut|2013|p=60}} Portugal, Ukraine,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Helbig |first=Adriana |title=Hip hop Ukraine: music, race, and African migration |date=2014 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-01204-3 |series=Ethnomusicology multimedia |location=Bloomington Indianapolis |pages=62, 90, 127, 153–4, 167}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Rastafarian movement: Ukrainian context (1991- present days) |url=https://globalhistorydialogues.org/projects/rastafarian-movement-ukrainian-context-1991-present-days/# |access-date=2025-01-29 |website=Global History Dialogues |language=uk}}</ref> and France, gaining a particular foothold among black migrant populations but also attracting white converts.{{sfn|Edmonds|2012|p=83}} In France for instance it established a presence in two cities with substantial black populations, [[Paris]] and [[Bordeaux]],{{sfn|Clarke|1986|p=98}} while in the Netherlands, it attracted converts within the [[Surinamese people in the Netherlands|Surinamese migrant community]].{{sfn|Cashmore|1981|p=173}}

==== Australasia and Asia ====
Rastafari attracted membership from within the [[Māori people|Maori]] population of New Zealand,{{sfnm|1a1=Cashmore|1y=1981|1p=173|2a1=Hansing|2y=2001|2p=733|3a1=Benard|3y=2007|3p=90}} and the [[Aboriginal Australians|Aboriginal population]] of Australia.{{sfn|Cashmore|1981|p=173}} Rastafari has also established a presence in Japan,{{sfn|King|2002|p=101}} including a small rural community of Rasta musicians in [[Yoshino, Nara|Yoshino]].{{sfn|Sterling|2010|p=x}} Japanese Rastafari emerged from the 1960s counterculture and focuses on issues such as rural communities, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and the environment.{{sfn|Sterling|2015|p=246}} Rastafari is also established in Israel, primarily among those highlighting similarities between [[Judaism and Rastafari]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Ben-Simhon |first=Coby |url=https://www.haaretz.com/1.4928004 |title=Jamaica in the Desert |newspaper=Haaretz |date=April 8, 2005 |access-date=April 12, 2019}}</ref>