A cargo cult is a Melanesian millenarian movement encompassing a diverse range of practices and occurring in the wake of contact with the commercial networks of colonizing societies. The name derives from the belief that various ritualistic acts will lead to a bestowing of material wealth (“cargo“).^[1][2]

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.^[1][3] This leader may characterize the present state regimes as a dismantling of the old social order, meaning that social hierarchy and ego boundaries have been broken down.^[4]

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 trade networks 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.^[5]

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 Western commodity fetishism.^[2] 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.^[6]

…

Cargoism: The discourse on cargo cults

More recent work has debated the suitability of the term cargo cult arguing that it does not refer to an identifiable empirical reality, and that the emphasis on “cargo” says more about Western ideological bias than it does about the movements concerned.^[19]

Nancy McDowell argues that the focus on cargo cult isolates the phenomena from the wider social and cultural field (such as politics and economics) that gives it meaning. She states that people experience change as dramatic and complete, rather than as gradual and evolutionary. This sense of a dramatic break is expressed through cargo cult ideology.^[11]

Lamont Lindstrom takes this analysis one step farther through his examination of “cargoism”, the discourse of the west about cargo cults. His analysis is concerned with our western fascination with the phenomenon in both academic and popular writing. A serious problem with the name is 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 we should erase the term altogether.^[20]

Metaphorical uses of the term

The term “cargo cult” has been used metaphorically to describe an attempt to recreate successful outcomes by replicating circumstances associated with those outcomes, although those circumstances are either unrelated to the causes of outcomes or insufficient to produce them by themselves. In the former case, this is an instance of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

The metaphorical use of “cargo cult” was popularized by physicist Richard Feynman at a 1974 Caltech commencement speech, which later became a chapter in his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, where he coined the phrase “cargo cult science” to describe activity that had some of the trappings of real science (such as publication in scientific journals) but lacked a basis in honest experimentation.

Later the term cargo cult programming developed to describe computer software containing elements that are included because of successful utilization elsewhere, unnecessary for the task at hand.^[21]

Novelist Chinua Achebe in his 1984 book The Trouble with Nigeria criticized what he called the “cargo cult mentality” of the rulers of many developing countries who issued lofty proclamations about the future of their countries but fail to exert the necessary effort to bring about those improvements.^[22]

Economist Bryan Caplan has referred to Communism as “the largest cargo cult the world has ever seen”, describing the economic strategy of the 20th-century Communist leaders as “mimicking a few random characteristics of advanced economies”, such as the production of steel.^[23]

American rock critic Robert Duncan used cargo cults as an organizing metaphor for the social dislocations in 1960–1970s America in his 1984 book, The Noise.^[24]

The 2013 art theme of the week-long annual Burning Man festival held in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada was titled “Cargo Cult” and directly references the John Frum cult.^[25]

See also

• Culture shock
• First contact (anthropology)
• Island of the Sequined Love Nun
• Johnson cult
• Meet the Natives: USA
• Operation Christmas Drop
• Prosperity theology
• The Gods Must Be Crazy

Notes

1. Burridge, Kenelm (1969). New Heaven, New Earth: A study of Millenarian Activities. London: Basil Blackwell. p. 48.
2. Lindstrom, Lamont (1993). Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of desire from Melanesia and beyond. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
3. Burridge, Kenelm (1993). Lockwood, V. S.; Harding, T. G.; B. J., Wallace, eds. Contemporary Pacific Societies: Studies in Development and Change. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. p. 283.
4. Worley, Peter (1957). The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo Cults’ in Melanesia. New York: Schocken books.
5. Otto, Ton (2009). “What happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West”. Social Analysis 53 (1): 93–4.
6. Otto, Ton (2009). “What happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West”. Social Analysis 53 (1).
7. Otto, Ton (2009). “What happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West”. Social Analysis 53 (1): 90. doi:10.3167/sa.2009.530106.
8. Schwartz, Theodore (1976). “The Cargo Cult: A Melanesian Type-Response to Change”. In DeVos, George A. Responses to Change: Society, Culture, and Personality. New York: Van Nostrand. p. 174. ISBN 0442220944.
9. Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture. New York: Random House, 1974, pg. 133-152
11. Burridge, Kenelm (1969). New Heaven, New Earth: A study of Millenarian Activities. London: Basil Blackwell. pp. 65–72.
12. Otto, Ton (2009). “What happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West”. Social Analysis 53 (1): 87. doi:10.3167/sa.2009.530106.
13. Worsley, Peter (1957). The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo Cults’ in Melanesia. New York: Schocken books. pp. 17–31.
14. Mercer, Phil (17 February 2007). “Cargo cult lives on in South Pacific”. BBC Online.
15. White, Osmar. Parliament of a Thousand Tribes, Heinemann, London, 1965
16. Andrew Lattas, University of Bergen, Norway
17. EOS magazine, January 2011
18. Worsley, Peter (1957). The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo Cults’ in Melanesia. New York: Schocken books. p. 231.
19. Otto, Ton (2009). “What happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West”. Social Analysis 53 (1): 85. doi:10.3167/sa.2009.530106.
20. Otto, Ton (2009). “What happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West”. Social Analysis 53 (1): 86. doi:10.3167/sa.2009.530106.
21. Otto, Ton (2009). “What happened to Cargo Cults? Material Religions in Melanesia and the West”. Social Analysis 53 (1): 88–9. doi:10.3167/sa.2009.530106.
22. McConnell, Steve (2003). “Ch.3: Cargo Cult Software Engineering”. Professional Software Development. Boston: Addison-Wesley. pp. 23–26. ISBN 0321193679. Retrieved 10 June 2012.
23. The Trouble With Nigeria, Chinua Achebe, pg. 9
24. Commie Cargo Cult, Bryan Caplan, Library of Economics and Liberty EconLog blog 24 February 2011
25. Duncan, Robert (1984). The Noise: Notes from a Rock ‘N’ Roll Era. New York: Ticknor & Fields. pp. 8–9. ISBN 0899191681. Retrieved 10 June 2012.
26. “2013 Art Theme: Cargo Cult”. burningman.com.

References

• 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.
• 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.

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. ISBN 0-14-00-64133.
• A Chapter named “The oddest island in Vanuatu” in Paul Theroux’s book The Happy Isles Of Oceania pages 267-277 describes Paul’s visit to a John Frum village and provides answers about the faith and its practices. Penguin books, 1992.

External links

• Skeptoid #199: Cargo Cults at Skeptoid
• Vanuatu cargo cult marks 50 years (BBC News)
• 2006 Smithsonian Magazine article entitled: “In John They Trust”
• Cargo cults includes a bibliography

Source: Cargo cult – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia