According to social anthropologist Chevannes, understanding the Jamaican-born movement that takes its name after the prince, or ras, named Tafari Makonnen who was crowned in 1930 as Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie requires looking not so much at dreadlocks or reggae but at the worldview of the Jamaican peasantry who replaced rural with urban poverty as they migrated to Kingston in the early 1930s.

Drawing on his 1974 dissertation fieldwork, Chevannes traces Rastafari to forms of cultural reconstruction, including idealization of Africa, and to the belief system and ethics of what he calls Revivalism. Revivalist beliefs, which helped the peasants cope with oppression, turned on a hope of undoing European colonization and domination. Chevannes's writing style is stilted and his view is not comprehensive, yet there is little literature on the subject that would allow placing his work in context. For collections on Jamaica, the African diaspora, or millenarian movements.

1. The Spirit of Resistance
2. The Uprooting
3. The Enlightenment
4. Early Leaders and Organizations
5. Enter the Dreadlocks
6. The Bobo Dread
7. The Era of the Dreadlocks
8. Word, Sound, and Power
9. Repatriation and Divination
10. Rastafari and the Wider World