Barry Chevannes

Alston Barrington "Barry" Chevannes OD OJ (7 January 1940 – 5 November 2010) was a Jamaican social anthropologist, academic and social activist. He was a leading authority on Caribbean socio-religious movements, most notably the Rastafari, and central figure in Jamaican public life.

Biography Chevannes was born in the rural parish of Saint Catherine, a third of nine children. In 1953, he travelled to Kingston where he attended St. George's College and it was here that he graduated valedictorian of his class. After his graduation, he felt convicted to serve as a priest leading him to go to the Shadowbrook Jesuit Seminary in Massachusetts, United States. His research on the Rastafari movement would lead to his receiving a scholarship to do a PhD in Anthropology with Columbia University in the U.S. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.

Selected bibliography Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (1994). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Rastafari and Other African Caribbean Worldviews (1998). London: Palgrave Macmillan.