Charles Price

Ras Charles Price (1963-), trained in anthropology, is a keen observer of identity, race, social movements, and social change, and a lifelong student of humanity. He is especially interested in how individual and group identities form and evolve and how people collaborate to extend the spheres of justice, equity, and well-being. Ras Charles was born in New York City to parents of the American South and the West Indies. He spent many years in the American South, much of it working on farms in South Carolina and the eastern seaboard of the South. Ras Charles taught in the Department of Anthropology and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for 16 years. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Policy, Organizational, and Leadership Studies in the College of Education and Human Development of Temple University. He authored Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica and Rastafari: The Evolution of a People and Their Identity, and he co-authored Community Collaborations: Promoting Community Organizing. Black racial identity, social movements, community organizing and community development, oral and life history, action research, and the Rastafari of Jamaica are the major nodes of Ras Charles’ research program. He has carried out research projects involving these concerns and others in several U.S. states and in Jamaica. Ras Charles is devoted to social justice and to the people who make it happen. He was active in the movement of welfare recipients for access to postsecondary education in the U.S., served as a member of the Rastafari Centralization Organization in Jamaica, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the venerable Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee. Ras Charles loves people, nature, and his family.