Notes on a Rastafari Yard-Space in Urban Ethiopia

Abstract

The significance of the yard or household in social reproduction within the diasporic Caribbean is the focus of this essay. I outline how a Rastafari yard-space is shaped through household production and family formation among diasporic Caribbean peoples within intercultural households and families. This discussion is foregrounded in Rastafari migration or “repatriation” from the Caribbean to the symbolic land grant in Ethiopia. Two intercultural households will be compared: one located in a local Ethiopian neighbourhood in the city of Shashamane and one in the predominantly Rastafari Jamaica Safar or Jamaica neighbourhood of Shashamane. Primarily drawing on my ethnographic observations, this discussion will situate Rastafari positionalities in terms of social, spatial and subjective articulations of inclusion and exclusion, adding to a discussion of the culture concept in the anthropology of the Caribbean.