Projective Framing, Cultural Opportunity Milieu, and the Rastafari

Abstract

Current social movement literature is replete with considerations of the ideational dimensions of collective actions. The roles of collective action frames in the ebb and flow of social movements are rightly accented. However, the trend suffers from the flaw of construing frames as though they are frozen in specific historical spaces and times. The continuity-discontinuity dynamics that exist between “old” and “emergent” collective action frames is given scant attention. This study, accordingly, examines the link that exists between what could be referred to as “cultural opportunity milieu” and the Rastafari, an internationally recognized movement that originated in the 1930s in Jamaica. Because the movement culture of the Rastafari is multi-layered, the study focuses on its projective framing, an interpretative contrivance of articulating an idealized community. Under the themes of religious, cultural, and intellectual sources, the relationships between the projective frames of slaves in resistance, the Ethiopianist movement, and the movement paradigm of Marcus Garvey, on the one hand, and the Rastafarian projective frame, on the other, are examined in some detail. Clearly, the Rastafarian projective frame is closely knit with the “old” frames preceding the movement. Yet, movement participants have shown their ingenuity by pronouncing a projective frame that in many ways has transcended previous ones. Primary and secondary sources that deal with the multi-dimensional facets of the movement culture of the Rastafari are the basis of this study.