Cargo cult
Cargo cults were 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 food and goods brought by their ancestors. Cargo cults have a wide diversity of beliefs and practices, but typically include: charismatic prophet figures foretelling a coming cataclysm or utopia for followers ; predictions by these prophets of the return of dead ancestors or other powerful beings bringing the cargo; the belief that ancestral spirits were responsible for the creation of the cargo; and the instruction by these prophets to followers to fulfill the prophecy by either reviving ancestral traditions or adopting new rituals, such as ecstatic dancing or imitating the actions of colonists and military personnel, like flag-raising, marching and drilling. Use of the term has declined in anthropological scholarship on the basis that it bundles together too wide a diversity of movements and is too pejorative.
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. Groups labeled as cargo cults were subject to a considerable number of anthropological publications from the late 1940s to the 1960s. After Melanesian countries gained political independence, few new groups matching the term have emerged since the 1970s, with some surviving cargo cult groups transitioning into indigenous churches and political movements. The term has largely fallen out of favour and is now seldom used among anthropologists, though its use as a metaphor is widespread outside of anthropology in popular commentary and critique, 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.Previous similar phenomena, first documented in the late 19th century, had been labelled with the term "Vailala Madness", to which the term "cargo cult" was then retroactively applied. Bird took the term from derogatory descriptions used by planters and businessmen in the Australian Territory of Papua. From this issue, the term became used in anthropology following the publications of Australian anthropologists Lucy Mair and H. Ian Hogbin in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Peter Worsley defined cargo cults as follows in his 1957 book The Trumpet Shall Sound; this description became the standard definition of the term:
In 1964, Peter Lawrence described the term as follows: "A cargo belief described how European goods were invented by a cargo deity and indicated how men could get them from him via their ancestors by following a cargo prophet or leader. Cargo ritual was any religious activity designed to produce goods in this way and assumed to have been taught the leader by the deity.... A cargo cult a complex of ritual activity associated with a particular cargo myth".
In 2010 Australian anthropologist Martha Macintyre gave the following elements as what she considered characteristic of cargo cults:
Anthropologist Lamont Lindstrom has written that some anthropologists consider the term to be a "false category" because it "bundles together diverse and particular uprisings, disturbances, and movements that may have little in common". Lindstrom also writes that "anthropologists and journalists borrowed the term to label almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations", and that their usage of the term "could encompass a variety of forms of social unrest that ethnographers elsewhere tagged millenarian, messianic, nativistic, vitalistic, revivalistic, or culture-contact or adjustment movements". Lindstrom writes that while many anthropologists suggest that "cargo" often signified literal material goods, it could also reflect desires for "moral salvation, existential respect, or proto-nationalistic, anti-colonial desire for political autonomy".
Causes, beliefs, and practices
Characteristic elements of most cargo cults include the synthesis of indigenous and foreign elements in the belief system, the expectation of help from ancestors, the presence of charismatic leaders, and strong belief in the appearance of an abundance of goods.The indigenous societies of Melanesia were typically characterized by a "big man" political system in which individuals gained prestige through gift exchanges. The more wealth a man could distribute, the more people who were in his debt, and the greater his renown. Faced, through colonialism, with foreigners with a seemingly unending supply of goods for exchange, indigenous Melanesians experienced "value dominance". That is, they were dominated by others in terms of their own value system. 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.
Many cargo cults existed in opposition to colonial rule, often linked to burdens placed on villagers by colonial authorities, such as head taxes. Many cargo cult movements sought to revive ancestral traditions such as kava drinking, or adopt new rituals such as ecstatic dancing or actions imitative of colonial practices, like flag-raising and marching. Cargo cults often served to unite previously opposing groups. In some movements, the leaders engaged in authoritarian behaviour in order to uphold the new social order, with a particular focus on the issues of sorcery and sexual activity. In some movements sexual morality was relaxed, ignoring the pre-existing customs regarding exogamy and incest, while in other movements, strict celibacy policies were implemented.
Since the modern manufacturing process was largely unknown to them, members, leaders, and prophets of the cults often maintained that the manufactured goods of the non-native culture had been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, or that an ancestor had learned how to manufacture the goods. These leaders claimed that the goods were intended for the local indigenous people, but the foreigners had unfairly gained control of these objects through malice or mistake. 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 goods promised by prophets and the means by which they would arrive both changed with the times, across eras of Western colonization. The earliest known cults foretold their ancestors with the goods would arrive on a canoe, then by sail, then by steamship, and the goods could be matches, steel, or calico fabric. After World War II, the goods could be shoes, canned meat, knives, rifles, or ammunition, and they would arrive by armored ship or plane.
Examples
First occurrences
Discussions of cargo cults usually begin with a series of movements that occurred in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. 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.Cargo cults occurred periodically in many parts of the island of New Guinea, including the Taro Cult in northern Papua New Guinea and the Vailala Madness that arose from 1919 to 1922. The last was documented by Francis Edgar Williams, one of the first anthropologists to conduct fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Less dramatic cargo cults have appeared in western New Guinea as well, including the Asmat and Dani areas.
Pacific cults of World War II
The most widely known period of cargo cult activity occurred among the Melanesian islanders in the years during and after World War II. A small population of indigenous peoples observed, often directly in front of their dwellings, the largest war ever fought by technologically advanced nations. Japanese forces used their foreknowledge of local cargo cult beliefs, intentionally misrepresenting themselves as the ancestors of the Melanesians and distributing goods freely in order to acquire compliance and labor. Later the Allied forces arrived in the islands and did this as well.The vast amounts of military equipment and supplies that both sides airdropped to troops on these islands meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen outsiders before. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons and other goods arrived in vast quantities for the soldiers, who often shared some of it with the islanders who were their guides and hosts. This was true of the Japanese Army as well, at least until relations deteriorated in most regions.
In the late 1930s, the John Frum movement emerged on Tanna in Vanuatu. This tradition urged islanders to resume dancing and kava drinking and to maintain historic traditions. The movement predicted American assistance, which as foretold arrived in 1942. The movement's rituals were influenced by Christianity, and also included similar elements to other cargo cults like "marching and drilling, flags and poles, and flowers". The John Frum movement has come to be described as the "archetypal" cargo cult.