Cargo cult

thumb|A ceremonial cross of the [[John Frum cargo cult, Tanna island, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), 1967|upright=1.2]]

Cargo cults are spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region in the early 20th century. The first documented cargo cults were religious movements that foretold followers would imminently receive an abundance of (often Western) food and goods (the "cargo") brought by their ancestors.

Anthropologists have described cargo cults as rooted in pre-existing aspects of Melanesian society, as a reaction to colonial oppression and inequality disrupting traditional village life, or both. based on stereotypes of cargo cultists as "primitive and confused people who use irrational means to pursue rational ends".

Origin of the term and definitions

The term "cargo cult" first appeared in print in the November 1945 issue of Pacific Islands Monthly, in an entry written by Norris Mervyn Bird, an 'old Territories resident', who expressed concern regarding the effects of World War II, the teachings of Christian missionaries and the increasing liberalisation of colonial authorities in Melanesia would have on local islanders.

In 2010 Australian anthropologist Martha Macintyre gave the following elements as what she considered characteristic of cargo cults: Many Melanesians found the concept of money incomprehensible, and many cargo cult movements ordered followers to abandon colonial money by either dumping it into the sea or spending it rapidly, with the prophets promising that it would be replaced by new money and they would be freed from their debts. Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults was the belief that spiritual agents would, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members. The earliest recorded movement that has been described as a "cargo cult" was the Tuka Movement that began in Fiji in 1885 at the height of the colonial era's plantation-style economy. The movement began with a promised return to a golden age of ancestral potency. Minor alterations to priestly practices were undertaken to update them and attempt to recover some kind of ancestral efficacy. Colonial authorities saw the leader of the movement, Tuka, as a troublemaker, and he was exiled, although their attempts to stop him returning proved fruitless.

Postwar developments

With the end of the war, the military abandoned the airbases and stopped dropping cargo. In response, charismatic individuals developed cults among remote Melanesian populations that promised to bestow on their followers deliveries of food, arms, Jeeps, etc. The cult leaders explained that the cargo would be gifts from their own ancestors, or other sources, as had occurred with the outsider armies.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the military personnel use. Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles.

In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and cut new military-style landing strips out of the jungle, hoping to attract more airplanes. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches.

Cargo cults were typically created by individual leaders, or big men in the Melanesian culture. The leaders typically held cult rituals well away from established towns and colonial authorities, thus making reliable information about these practices very difficult to acquire.

Current status

Some cargo cults are still active. These include:

The John Frum cult on Tanna Island (Vanuatu)
The Tom Navy cult on Tanna Island (Vanuatu)
The Prince Philip Movement on the island of Tanna, which worships Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
The Turaga movement based on Pentecost island (Vanuatu)
Yali's cargo cult on Papua New Guinea (Madang region)
The Paliau movement on Papua New Guinea (Manus Island)
The Peli association on Papua New Guinea
The Pomio Kivung on Papua New Guinea

Classification of groups as cargo cults was sometimes controversial. For example, in 1962 the separatist Hahalis Welfare Society on Buka Island was classed by Australian authorities as a cargo cult, but this was denied by its leaders Francis Hagai and John Teosin. As of 1993, Lamont Lindstrom reports that many Melanesian political movements "must take care to deny explicitly" any connection with cargo cults.

Theoretical explanations

Anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace conceptualized the "Tuka movement" as a revitalization movement. Peter Worsley's analysis of cargo cults placed the emphasis on the economic and political causes of these popular movements. He viewed them as "proto-national" movements by indigenous peoples seeking to resist colonial interventions. This leader may characterize the present state as a dismantling of the old social order, meaning that social hierarchy and ego boundaries have been broken down. Others point to the need to see each movement as reflecting a particularized historical context, even eschewing the term "cargo cult" for them unless there is an attempt to elicit an exchange relationship from Europeans.

In the late 1990s, religious scholar Andreas Grünschloß applied the term "cargoism" to adherents of UFO religions regarding their millenarian beliefs about the arrival of intelligent aliens on technologically advanced spacecrafts on planet Earth, in comparison to the Melanesian islanders's faith in the return of John Frum carrying the cargo with him on the islands.

As a metaphor

The term "cargo cult" is widely used negatively as a metaphor outside anthropology. Usage often relates to the ideas of desire (particularly for wealth and material goods) and relatedly consumerism and capitalism, ritual action and the expectation of rational results from irrational means. Richard Feynman used the term to describe situations where people focus on superficial aspects of a process without understanding the underlying principles – he specifically cautioned against "cargo cult science", warning that adopting the appearances of scientific investigation without a self-critical attitude will fail to produce reliable results. "Cargo cult programming" was popularized as computing slang to describe the inclusion of code that serves no purpose in a program, indicating a lack of understanding of the program structure by the programmer. Lindstrom noted in 2013 that users of the term have stretched the definition to such a degree that it has become a general pejorative for "almost anything that some critic depreciates".

Works

Notes

References

Butcher, Benjamin T. My Friends, The New Guinea Headhunters. Doubleday & Co., 1964.
Frerichs, Albert C. Anutu Conquers in New Guinea. Wartburg Press, 1957.
Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture. New York: Random House, 1974.
Inglis, Judy. "Cargo Cults: The Problem of Explanation", Oceania vol. xxvii no. 4, 1957.
Jebens, Holger (ed.). Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004.
Kaplan, Martha. Neither cargo nor cult: ritual politics and the colonial imagination in Fiji. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
Lawrence, Peter. Road belong cargo: a study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District, New Guinea. Manchester University Press, 1964.
Lindstrom, Lamont. Cargo cult: strange stories of desire from Melanesia and beyond. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.
Read, K. E. A Cargo Situation in the Markham Valley, New Guinea. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 14 no. 3, 1958.
Schwartz, Theodore & Smith, Michael French. Like Fire – The Paliau Movement and Millenarianism in Melanesia. ANU Press, 2021
Tabani, Marc. Une pirogue pour le paradis: le culte de John Frum à Tanna. Paris: Editions de la MSH, 2008.
Tabani, Marc & Abong, Marcelin. Kago, Kastom, Kalja: the study of indigenous movements in Melanesia today. Marseilles: Pacific-Credo Publications, 2013.
Trenkenschuh, F. Cargo cult in Asmat: Examples and prospects, in: F. Trenkenschuh (ed.), An Asmat Sketchbook, vol. 2, Hastings, NE: Crosier Missions, 1974.
Wagner, Roy. The invention of culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Worsley, Peter. The trumpet shall sound: a study of "cargo" cults in Melanesia, London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957.
Worsley, Peter. "Cargo Cults", Scientific American, 1 May 1959.

Filmography

God is American, feature documentary (2007, 52 min), by Richard Martin-Jordan, on John Frum's cult at Tanna.

External links

Vanuatu cargo cult marks 50 years (BBC News)
2006 Smithsonian Magazine article entitled: "In John They Trust"