NRMs in nonWestern societies II: cargo cults

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NRMs in non-Western societies II cargo cults

• 11.3.2004

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Readings

• Lindstrom The Birth of Cargo Cult (in Lindstrom
  1992)
• Worsley Cargo Cults (in Lehmann and Myers 2001)

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Discussion topics

• General characteristics
• On terminology
• Ethnographic examples from Melanesia
• Anthropological studies
• Anthropological approaches
• Cargo cults beyond Melanesia

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General context

• NRM - Not cult but cults
• Ethnographic context
• Melanesia
• Cargo cult / importation area (Wallace)
• Several hundred cargo cults described by
  anthropologists
• Historical context
• First described in 1893
• Prophecies of an elder, Tokeriu, at Milne Bay,
  PNG
• During / immediately after World War II
• During war
• Construction of airstrips and harbours
• Western material goods
• manufactured clothing, canned food, tents,
  weapons
• After war
• airbases abandoned

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General characteristics of the cargo cults I

• Prophet (man) with a message
• Cargo
• technologically-wise ancestors produce cargo
• sending or intending to send it to the islands
• by ship or boat
• Westerners explanation about work gt cargo not
  valid
• New era / millenarianism
• Christian influence gt syncretism
• sudden, miraculous transformation
• changes in nature
• the dead would come back to life
• skins of the faithful would turn white
• the whites would disappear

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General characteristics of the cargo cults II

• Reasons for cargo not arriving
• westerners have stolen the industrial knowledge
• westerners have hijack the cargo boats and planes
• locals do not follow necessary rules
• General conditions for the arrival of cargo
• social harmony and consensus
• setting aside disputes and sorcery
• sexual licence or abstinence

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General characteristics of the cargo cults II

• Specific courses of action
• construction of airfields, docks, warehouses and
  new villages
• mockups airplanes out of straw
• sympathetic magic
• raising of flag-poles and shortwave radio masts
• Destruction of wealth
• burial or washing of money
• rituals
• military-style marching and drilling
• dancing

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General characteristics of the cargo cults IV

• Short-lived in general
• Failure of prophecies
• Negative impact by Colonial regimes
• till mid -1950s
• suppression of cults
• detention of cult leaders
• Exceptions
• Institutionalization into local churches
• The Christian Fellowship Church (Solomon Islands)
• Peli Association (Papua New Guinea)
• Institutionalization into political movements or
  parties
• Jon Frum movement (Tanna)
• Paliau Movement (Manus)

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Typology of cargo cults

• Revivalistic-nativistic
• revitalization of traditional practices
• Perpetuative-nativistic
• Emphasis on existing cultural practices
• Messianic
• cargo prophet
• Millenarian
• coming of a new world
• Transformative or reformative (Aberle)
• change of existing world order
• abandonment of tradition
• its replacement with European manners

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On terminology I

• Cargo
• kago in Melanesian Pidgin English
• manufactured goods possessed by Europeans
• money
• metaphorical meaning
• new moral order, assertion of local sovereignty
• Cargo cult
• 1945 Norris Bird in Pacific Islands Monthly
• Is There Danger of a Post-war Flare-up Among New
  Guinea Natives?"
• Vailala Madness - earlier term
• 1920s movement on Vailala, PNG
• Taken over by anthropologists
• Inselmann and Holkter 1946 Lucy Mair 1948
• Popularized in 1950s and 60s
• Peter Lawrence and Peter Worsley

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On terminology II

• Anthropological usage
• In decline
• Various reasons
• Cargo material goods
• other aspirations involved
• Cult
• politically incorrect term
• political abuse of the term
• cargo cultist achieving rational ends with
  irrational means
• Misleading category
• bundles together different phenomena
• Explains it as a diseased reaction to European
  contact
• reductionistic
• Rather than normal Melanesian cultural creativity

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On terminology III

• Contemporary anthropology
• gt Deconstruction of the term
• gt Descriptive alternatives
• nativistic, adjustment, protonationalist,
  micronationalist, local protest, developmental
  self-help, regional separatist or Holy Spirit
  movements
• gt affinities with social movements elsewhere
• Ghost Dance, Boxer Rebellion, Mau Mau
• Common in journalistic usage
• Still common
• Increasing metaphorical usage (Lindstrom)
• Eg. Euro-Disneyland
• Japanese enchantment with Hollywood movie studios
• Eastern European fascination with capitalism
• Third World development efforts

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Ethnographic examples in Melanesia

• Tuka movement (Fiji)
• Vailala Madness (Vailala)
• Mambu movement (north-west New Guinea)
• Jon Frum Cult (Vanuatu)
• Marching Rule Movement (Solomon Islands)
• Paliau Movement (Manus Islands)
• Prince Philip movement (Vanuatu)

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Tuka movement

• Fiji
• towards the end of the 19th century
• traditional Fijian priest, Ndugomoi
• Revivalist/millenarian
• revival of ancient religious practices
• traditional ceremonies
• return of ancestors
• role reversal in which whites would serve blacks.
• Fattening of a white pig
• a symbol of the European
• to be slaughtered when the ancestors return

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Vailala Madness I

• Papuan 'Vailala madness' (of 1919)
• the Evara on Vailala Island (Papua Gulf)
• gifts of money sent to the London Missionary
  Society
• No central prophet but various local leaders
• destruction of native ceremonial items
• return of the ancestors
• arrival of a world of material abundance
• hopes for a cargo ship manned by the ancestors
• foreigners driven away
• Altered states
• dancing into trance
• bodily jerking and glossolalic speech
• temporary hysteria
• Seized by the spirits of ancestors

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Vailala Madness II

• First reported as lead poisoning
• Lead mines in the region
• Studied by F.E. Williams
• Government anthropologist
• The Vailala Madness and the Destruction of Native
  Ceremonies in the Gulf Division (1923)
• gt spontaneous religious cult
• Irrational and childish
• Automaniac" behaviour

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Mambu movement

• north-west New Guinea (1930s)
• founded by Mambu
• "Black King"
• a convert to Roman Catholicism
• Prophesies
• arrival of a new era
• cargo wealth from Europeans to native peoples
• Called for
• Not paying taxes
• not sending children to missionary schools
• baptizing in water
• wearing European dress

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Jon Frum Cult I

• Jon/John - Frum/Frumm
• Tanna (Vanuatu, New Hebrides)
• 1940s
• 300,000 American troops
• 1,000 Tannese recruited to work at military bases
• Impact on locals
• Material wealth and power
• Arriving by planes
• Egalitarianism of the Americans
• Black soldiers
• Americans left in 1946
• gt Cargo scarce

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Jon Frum Cult II

• Jon Frum
• a mythic messianic figure
• Jon "from" America
• conflation of Uncle Sam, Santa Claus and John the
  Baptist
• a god who lives in the crater of a mountain with
  an army
• the 'king of America'
• Jon Frum Day
• 15 February
• Frum arrives by plane with cargo on
• various rituals

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Jon Frum Cult III

• Cultural inventions
• mock radio masts and stations
• landing strips
• warehouses
• khaki uniforms
• US flags
• red cross as symbol (from army ambulances)
• New rituals
• military routines
• drill team marching with bamboo rifles
• flag raising ceremony
• Revitalization of traditional practices
• dance
• the use of kava (Piper Methysticum)
• restoration of pre-colonial residence patterns

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Marching Rule Movement

• Solomon Islands
• end of 1940s
• US army clothing, marching
• to bring back cargo
• similarities with Jon Frum movement

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Paliau Movement

• Manus, Great Admiralty Islands
• 1950s
• founded by Paliau Maloat
• Studied by Margaret Mead
• New Lives for Old (1956)
• Beliefs
• total abandonment of tradition
• its replacement with European manners.
• gt a successful political organization

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Prince Philip movement

• among the Yaohnanen (Vanuatu, New Hebrides)
• Prince Philip
• an ancestral spirit
• originally from Tanna
• British District Agents visit to London
• present to the Prince
• Returned with
• Princes thanks to the village and a signed
  photograph
• Prince's message
• interpreted as his confirmation of their belief

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Anthropological studies of cargo cults I

• major puzzle of post-World War II anthropology
• F. E. Williams
• The Vailala Madness and the Destruction of Native
  Ceremonies in the Gulf Division (1923)
• earliest study
• explanation of cults in terms of
• abnormal psychology, madness, automaniac"
  behaviour
• governmental agenda

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Anthropological studies of cargo cults II

• Jean Guiart
• French anthropologist
• various studies of Jon Frum Cult
• Un Siecle et Demi de Contacts Culturels de Tanna,
  Nouvelles-Hebrides (1956)
• first detailed, ethnographic account
• little impact upon anglophonic anthropology
• Cargo
• not just material objects
• symbol of the desire for development
• Cargo cults
• rational response to the colonial system
• forerunners of Melanesian nationalism
• focus on social cooperation and collective action

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Anthropological studies of cargo cults III

• Margaret Mead
• New Lives for Old (1956)
• early description of Paliau movement
• Kenelm Burridge
• Mambu A Study of Melanesian Cargo Movements and
  Their Social and Ideological Background (1960)
• political / social conditions gt emergence of
  cargo cults
• Peter Lawrence
• Road Belong Cargo (1964)
• Five movements of Madang District in northern New
  Guinea
• translated into Tok Pisin
• gt sacred text in parts of New Guinea
• the Old Testament of the Yali movement
• Peter Worsley
• The Trumpet Shall Sound (1957/1968)
• an influential overview of the cargo literature

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Anthropological studies of cargo cults IV

• Ian Jarvie
• The Revolution in Anthropology (1964)
• cargo cults and rationality
• situational analysis
• differences in information available, not quality
  of reasoning
• "rationality debate" of the 1960s
• "Rationality" edited by Bryan Wilson (1967)
• Garry Trompf
• Cargo Cults and Millenarian Movements
  Transoceanic Comparisons of New Religious
  Movements (1990)
• contemporary Melanesian cults
• Lamont Lindstrom
• Cargo Cult Strange Stories of Desire from
  Melanesia and Beyond (1993)
• concern with discourse and metaphoric usage
• "cargoism"
• beyond Melanesian context

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Anthropological approaches I

• Two general approaches to cargo cults in
  anthropology
• reactions to external forces
• functionalist
• internal process of cultural dynamism
• culturalist / contextualist
• 1) Functionalist approach
• emphasis on psychological and social functions
• gtCargo cults
• Melanesian version of universal millennial
  movements
• erupt in periods of social change and disruption
• response to relative deprivation

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Anthropological approaches II

• Theories of "relative deprivation
• dominant in 1960s 1980s
• Charles Glock
• Perceived discrepancy between
• social rewards entitled to and received
• Several forms of being deprived
• Shared feeling of deprivation
• Manifest vs latent function
• Manifest functions
• re-establish people's sense of dignity
• provide explanations of/for inequality etc
• Latent functions
• create larger unities to resist the colonial or
  postcolonial oppressor
• provide a language of political protest.

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Anthropological approaches III

• 2) Culturalist / contextualist approach
• Cargo cults
• particular Melanesian form of creativity and
  cultural imagination
• Reflection of fundamental patterns of Melanesian
  culture
• I Exchange of goods and wealth objects
• creating and maintaining social relationships
• II Generous gift-giving
• to earn social reputation and political influence
• III Belief in ancestral powers
• fertility of people, gardens, and pigs
• traditional ceremonies that ensure ancestral
  benevolence.

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Anthropological approaches IV

• IV Spiritual communication with ancestors
• in dreams
• hints of the future, and instruction for proper
  living
• V Melanesian structure of time and social
  transformation
• episodic rather than developmental
• sudden transformations as normal
• one cosmic order may replace another at any
  moment
• VI Big Men
• charismatic leaders
• attract followers by managing the exchange of
  goods and information

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Cargo cults beyond Melanesia I

• 1) As a movement
• gt Simplification of the term
• Distinctive core features
• 1) desire for wealth
• 2) collective behavior
• 3) supernatural means to achieve collective ends
• most important feature
• Rosenstiel (1953)
• Mau Mau movement in Kenya
• Glowczewski (1983)
• Australian Aborigines
• Ellwood (1984)
• seventh century Japanese

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Cargo cults beyond Melanesia II

• 2) In metaphorical sense
• more common
• Lindstrom (1993)
• "supernatural" irrational
• Cargo cult
• Any desire for wealth or goods
• pursued with apparently irrational means
• attempt to reach rational goals by irrational
  means

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Cargo cults beyond Melanesia III

• Third world
• Development projects in the Third World economies
• Weberian bureaucracy
• Eastern Europe
• attempts to cultivate a capitalist economy
• cargo in Soviet times
• Intourist shops
• Western Europe
• Euro Disney
• Other
• Japanese cargo-cult mentality about Western pop
  culture
• Cargo cult programming
• inclusion of code that serves no real purpose
• Cargo cult science pseudoscience