Cargo cult

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: {{Blockquote|text= 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. 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 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. 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 ==

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