Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique (review)

The chapters in this volume are revised versions of papers presented at a workshop in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1999. Ethnographically, Melanesia, especially Papua New Guinea, receives the most attention, but chapters also focus on Indonesia, Fiji, and Australia. The critiques advanced or discussed in the volume are of several kinds: critiques of the term "cargo cult"; discussions of the phenomena described as cargo cults as themselves critiques of western or capitalist culture; and the various authors' critiques of each others' positions. If the latter were aired at the Aarhus conference with the same vehemence with which some are stated in these papers, it must have been a lively event. The interest and value of this volume certainly rest on the variety of and tension among the views of the contributors.

For example, regarding the idea ofcargo cults themselves as critique, some contributors accept the thesis that cargo cults as millenarian movements are by definition critical, a view stated most succinctly by Joel Robbins. But Nils Bubant warns strenuously against easy acceptance of interpretations of "cargo cults or other exotic phenomena as critiques of... bourgeois consumerism" (110).

Critique of the notion of cargo cult itself receives the most attention. Lamont Lindstrom is highly skeptical of the ethnographic accuracy of reports of the material goods adherents of cargo cults hope to receive, and Douglas Dalton states that anthropologists have "most thoroughly shown" the desire for money and material wealth attributed to cargo cults "to be erroneous,because the individualistic materialistic motives that are so central to Western bourgeois culture are simply not present in Papua New Guinea" (191). Stephen Leavitt agrees fully with the need to appreciate local meanings but concludes: "the fact remains that cargo is the central and most powerful concept" in the social phenomenon in question (174). Discussing cargo cults in what is now Papua New Guinea's Manus Province, Ton Otto stresses that "notions of cargo played a central role in these original cults" (222), and he cites a memorable dictum from the work of Theodore Schwartz: "I repeat, it's the cargo" ("The Cargo Cult," 1976, 177).

Martha Kaplan argues that "cults and movements" exist, but "not necessarily as Pacific or non-Western phenomena, but rather as a category in Western culture and colonial practice"(65). Both Leavitt and Robbins, however, caution that criticism of the cargo cult concept that goes so far asto discredit the topic can lead to neglecting the deep and genuine concerns of Melanesians. Karl-Heinz Kohl sees cargo cults as projections ofwesterners' own "hopes, desires, and fears" (90),and Elfriede Hermann approvingly cites Pem Buck's contention that "'cargo cults' as objects of analysis exclusively result from Europeans imagining 'cargo' elements" (54). But Leavitt and Robbins argue strongly against the projection thesis, and Holger Jebens, Jaap Timmer, and Robert Tonkinson, among other contributors, use the cargo cult concept in constructive ways without taking on all its potential baggage. Tonkinson's comparison of millenarianism inMelanesia with its comparative absence in indigenous Australia is a particularly strong indication that, asJebens puts it in his introduction, "there might in fact be a correspondence between the term [cargo cult] and the Melanesian ethnographic reality" (8).

Several of the contributors to the volume regard scholarly interest in cargo cults as the fruit of anthropologists' own cultural obsessions (eg, Lindstrom, 34), or their own perceptions phenomena as "bizarre and exotic" (Kohl, 90) or "strange" and "disconcerting" (Dalton, 206). My own experience in Melanesia, however, suggests that Robbins is quite right that "things that resemble cargo cults . . . have clearly continued to be important to Melanesians themselves" (245).I heard plenty about cargo cults before first going to Melanesia, but my deeper interest grew out of listening to what Melanesians had to say for themselves, with unsolicited persistence and passion.

Of course, criticisms of the cargo cult concept must be...