Cargo cult

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File:JohnFrumCrossTanna1967.jpg

A ceremonial cross of the John Frum cargo cult, Tanna island, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), 1967

Cargo cults were diverse spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians following Western colonisation of the region in the late 19th century. Typically (but not universally) cargo cults included: charismatic prophet figures foretelling an imminent cataclysm and/or a coming utopia for followers—a worldview known as millenarianism;<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /><ref name="Otto-2009" /> predictions by these prophets of the return of dead ancestors bringing an abundance of food and goods (the "cargo"),<ref name="Worsley-1957" />Template:Rp<ref name="Otto-2009" />Template:Rp typically including a bounty of Western goods or money,<ref name="Tabani-2013" /><ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /><ref name="Schwartz-180" /><ref name="Otto-2009" />Template:Rp often under the belief that ancestral spirits were responsible for their creation;<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /> and the instruction by these prophets to followers to appease "ancestral spirits or other powerful beings" to fulfill the prophecy and receive the cargo 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/or drilling.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /> 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.<ref name="Otto-2009" />Template:Rp<ref name="Lindstrom-20182"/>

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.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /> The term has largely fallen out of favour and is now seldom used among anthropologists, though its use as a metaphor (in the sense of engaging in ritual action to obtain material goods) is widespread outside of anthropology in popular commentary and critique,<ref name="Lindstrom-1993-chpt1-successful">Template:Cite book</ref> based on stereotypes of cargo cultists as "primitive and confused people who use irrational means to pursue rational ends".<ref>Template:Citation</ref> Recent scholarship on cargo cults has challenged the suitability of the term for the movements associated with it, with recent anthropological sources arguing that the term is born of colonialism and prejudice and does not accurately convey the diversity or nature of the movements within the label,<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /> though some anthropologists continue to see the term as having some descriptive value,<ref name="Otto-2009" />Template:Rp despite the "heterogeneous, uncertain, and confusing ethnographic reality".<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

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.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" />

Stemming directly from religious teaching of equality, and its resulting sense of injustice, is what is generally known as ‘Vailala Madness’, or ‘Cargo Cult’. . . . A native, infected with the disorder, states that a great number of ships loaded with ‘cargo’ had been sent by the ancestor of the native for the benefit of the natives of a particular village or area. But the white man, being very cunning, knows how to intercept these ships and takes the ‘cargo’ for his own use. . . By his very nature the New Guinea native is peculiarly susceptible to these ‘cults’{{#if:Norris Mervyn BirdPacific Islands Monthly, 1945|{{#if:|}}

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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.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /> Bird took the term from derogatory descriptions used by planters and businessmen in the Australian Territory of Papua.<ref name="Otto-2009"/>Template:Rp 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.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" />

Peter Worsley defined cargo cults as follows in his 1957 book The Trumpet Shall Sound;<ref name="Worsley-1957"/>Template:Rp this description became the standard definition of the term:<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" />

strange religious movements in the South Pacific [that arose] during the last few decades. In these movements, a prophet announces the imminence of the end of the world in a cataclysm which will destroy everything. Then the ancestors will return, or God, or some other liberating power, will appear, bringing all the goods the people desire, and ushering in a reign of eternal bliss. The people therefore prepare themselves for the Day by setting up cult organizations, and by building storehouses, jetties, and so on to receive the goods, known as ‘cargo’ in the local pidgin English. Often, also, they abandon their gardens, kill off their livestock, eat all their food, and throw away their money.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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In 1964, Peter Lawrence described the term as follows: "A cargo belief (myth) 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 [to] the leader [of the cargo cult] by the deity. ... A cargo cult [was] a complex of ritual activity associated with a particular cargo myth".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 2010 Australian anthropologist Martha Macintyre gave the following elements as what she considered characteristic of cargo cults:<ref name="Tabani-2013" />

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".<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" />

Causes, beliefs, and practices

Template:Anthropology of religion 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.<ref name="Otto-2009"/>Template:Rp

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.<ref name="Schwartz-p174"/><ref name="harris"/>Template:Rp 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 (not the foreign) value system.<ref name="Schwartz-p174">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" />

Many cargo cults existed in opposition to colonial rule, often linked to burdens placed on villagers by colonial authorities, such as head taxes.<ref name="Worsley-1957" />Template:Page needed Many cargo cult movements sought to revive ancestral traditions (often in the face of their suppression by missionaries or colonial authorities) such as kava drinking, and/or adopt new rituals such as ecstatic dancing or actions imitative of colonial practices, like flag-raising and marching.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /> Cargo cults often served to unite previously opposing groups.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /><ref name="Worsley-1957" />Template:Rp 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.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" />

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.<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /> 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.<ref name="harris">Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture. New York: Random House, 1974, pg. 133-152</ref> 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.<ref name="harris" /> 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.<ref name="harris" />

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.<ref name="PIM1946-11">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Worsley-1957"/>Template:Rp

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.<ref name="PIM1946-11"/><ref name="White-1965"/>Template:Rp 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

File:John Frum flag raising.jpg

Members of the John Frum cult at a ceremonial flag-raising.

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.<ref name="PIM1946-11"/> Later the Allied forces arrived in the islands and did this as well.<ref name="White-1965"/>Template:Rp

The vast amounts of military equipment and supplies that both sides airdropped (or airlifted to airstrips) to troops on these islands meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen outsiders before.<ref name="White-1965"/>Template:Rp 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 initially before 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 (which had been suppressed by missionaries) 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".<ref name="Lindstrom-20182" /> The John Frum movement has come to be described as the "archetypal" cargo cult.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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.<ref name="White-1965">White, Osmar. Parliament of a Thousand Tribes, Heinemann, London, 1965</ref>

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.<ref name="White-1965"/> The islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.<ref>Template:Cite video</ref>Template:Better source needed

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.<ref name="PIM1950-6">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="PIM1960-9">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> As of 1993, Lamont Lindstrom reports that many Melanesian political movements "must take care to deny explicitly" any connection with cargo cults.<ref name="Lindstrom-1993-chpt1">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Synthesis inline

Theoretical explanations

Anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace conceptualized the "Tuka movement" as a revitalization movement.Template:Full citation needed 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.<ref name="Worsley-1957"/>Template:Rp He observed a general trend away from millenarianism towards secular political organization through political parties and cooperatives.<ref name="Worsley-1957"/>Template:Rp

Theodore Schwartz was the first to emphasize that both Melanesians and Europeans place great value on the demonstration of wealth. "The two cultures, broadly speaking, met on the common ground of materialistic, competitive striving for prestige through entrepreneurial achievement of wealth."<ref name="Schwartz-p174" /> Melanesians felt "relative deprivation" in their standard of living, and thus came to focus on cargo as an essential expression of their personhood and agency.<ref name="Schwartz-p174" />Template:Rp

Peter Lawrence was able to add greater historical depth to the study of cargo cults, and observed the striking continuity in the indigenous value systems from pre-cult times to the time of his study. Kenelm Burridge, in contrast, placed more emphasis on cultural change, and on the use of memories of myths to comprehend new realities, including the "secret" of European material possessions. His emphasis on cultural change follows from Worsley's argument on the effects of capitalism; Burridge points out these movements were more common in coastal areas which faced greater intrusions from European colonizers.<ref name="Otto-2009"/>Template:Rp

Cargo cults often develop during a combination of crises. Under conditions of social stress, such a movement may form under the leadership of a charismatic figure. This leader may have a "vision" (or "myth-dream") of the future, often linked to an ancestral efficacy ("mana") thought to be recoverable by a return to traditional morality.<ref name="Burridge">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Worsley-1957"/>

Contact with colonizing groups brought about a considerable transformation in the way indigenous peoples of Melanesia have thought about other societies. Early theories of cargo cults began from the assumption that practitioners simply failed to understand technology, colonization, or capitalist reform; in this model, cargo cults are a misunderstanding of the systems involved in resource distribution, and an attempt to acquire such goods in the wake of interrupted trade. However, many of these practitioners actually focus on the importance of sustaining and creating new social relationships, with material relations being secondary.<ref name="Otto-2009"/>Template:Rp

Since the late twentieth century, alternative theories have arisen. For example, some scholars, such as Kaplan and Lindstrom, focus on Europeans' characterization of these movements as a fascination with manufactured goods and what such a focus says about consumerism.<ref name="Lindstrom">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Otto-2009"/>Template:Page needed

Discourse on cargo cults

According to Ton Otto, the most forceful criticism of the term cargo cult comes from Nancy McDowell, who argues that cargo cults don't really exist as a distinct phenomenon, but rather reflect a general bias in some observers to view change as sudden and complete rather than gradual and evolutionary. Otto disagrees, arguing that McDowell overly focused on just one aspect of the term (the perception of change), and that the term remains a valuable analytical and comparative tool because it encapsulates a range of features that, when combined, allow for useful comparisons of social movements that frequently shared similar characteristics, even if not all features were present in every case.<ref name="Otto-2009"/>Template:Rp

Otto also summarizes Lamont Lindstrom's analysis and examination of "cargoism", the discourse of Western scholarship about cargo cults. Lindstrom's analysis is concerned with Western fascination with the phenomenon in both academic and popular writing. In his opinion, the term cargo cult is deeply problematic because of its pejorative connotation of backwardness, since it imputes a goal (cargo) obtained through the wrong means (cult); the actual goal is not so much obtaining material goods as creating and renewing social relationships under threat. Martha Kaplan thus argues in favor of erasing the term altogether, though Otto argues the term remains useful.<ref name="Otto-2009"/>Template:Rp The term cargo cult is increasingly avoided in the field of anthropology for failing to represent the complexity of Melanesian beliefs.<ref name="jarvis">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

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,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> though the term has been used as a general pejorative for "almost anything that some critic depreciates".<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

Works

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See also

• Template:Annotated link (cargo cults used as a metaphor)
• Cargo cult science - Phrase coined in 1985 autobiographical book by Richard Feynman
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• Sociological classifications of religious movements

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.

Further reading

• Several pages are devoted to cargo cults in Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion.
• A chapter named "Cargo Cult" is in David Attenborough's travel book Journeys to the Past: Travels in New Guinea, Madagascar, and the Northern Territory of Australia, Penguin Books, 1983. Template:ISBN.
• A chapter named "The oddest island in Vanuatu" in Paul Theroux's book The Happy Isles of Oceania pages 267–277 describes Theroux's visit to a John Frum village and provides answers about the faith and its practices. Penguin Books, 1992.

External links

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