Buying Livity: The Commodification of Rastafari

Abstract

As the economic, military, and imperial structures which precipitated African diasporic traditions’ emergences have re-formed and evolved into modern descendent structures, we must pay special attention to how African derived spiritual technologies have equipped each generation with new tools for negotiating their own complex relationship with and against imposed colonial power structures which complicate and contradict religious traditional life-ways. Always operative, how can analysis of African diasporic traditions contend with the complex nexus of enmeshment practitioners and communities of African diasporic traditions inhabit? Living out radical possibilities while still existing in proximity and enmeshment with prevailing oppressive hegemonies characterizes the lived experiences of African diasporic religious actors, as is evidenced by the livity and espoused theologies of the Rastafari. The religious tradition of Rastafari provides an important and understudied site for analysis of this enmeshment due to the explicit anti-capitalist and antiracist goals, practices, and beliefs of its movement and people. Historically and today, Rastas rhetorically reject the commodification of human beings and capitalist exploitation of people and their labor while still negotiating neoliberal realities which demand involvement with commodification through global artistic cultural markets.