Cargo cult

The term cargo cult describes any new religious movement that owes its intial impetus to the encounter between tribal societies and Western civilization (broadly interpreted), though it is most frequently used in the context of New Guinea and Melanesia. In this context, "cargo" refers to Western manufactured goods, which seem (from the perspective of some hunter-gatherer people) to be constructed, ordered, and delivered via various magical processes. The adherents of cargo cults sometimes maintain that these articles have been created by divine spirits and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that Westerners have unfairly gained control of these objects. In other instances, such as on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, cult members actively worship the Americans who first brought the cargo. In both cases, many of the beliefs and practices particular to these cults focus on the ritualistic performance of "white behaviors," with the assumption that they will cause the gods or ancestors to at last recognize their own and send them cargo. In this way, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, bless the believers with material prosperity (which, in turn, will usher in an era of peace and harmony)—a standpoint that gives them a profoundly millenarian flavor.

Based on the above definition, cargo cult is also used in business and science to refer to a particular type of fallacy whereby ill-considered effort and ceremony takes place but goes unrewarded due to a flawed model of causation. For example, Maoism has been referred to as "cargo cult Leninism" and New Zealand's optimistic adoption of liberal economic policies in the 1980s as "cargo cult capitalism".

Overview

An isolated society's first contact with the outside world can be a shock — often the natives will first assume that the newcomers are spiritual beings of some kind who possess divine powers. With time, however, it will inevitably become apparent that the outsiders are mortal and that their power comes from their equipment (or cargo). Cargo cults tend to appear among people that covet this 'magical' equipment, but are unable to obtain it easily through trade. Given their relative isolation, the cult participants generally have little knowledge of modern manufacturing and are liable to be skeptical of Western explanations. Instead, symbols they associate with Christianity and modern Western society tend to be incorporated into their rituals as magical artifacts. Across cultural differences and large geographic areas, there have been instances of the movements independently organizing.

Famous examples of cargo cult activity include the setting up of mock airstrips, airports, offices and the fetishization and attempted construction of western goods, such as radios made of coconuts and straw. Believers may stage "drills" and "marches" with twigs for rifles and military-style insignia and "USA" painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers, treating the activities of western military personnel as rituals to be performed for the purpose of attracting cargo. The cult members built these items and 'facilities' in the belief that the structures would attract cargo. This perception has reportedly been reinforced by the occasional success of an 'airport' to attract military transport aircraft full of cargo^{[citation needed]}.

Today, many historians and anthropologists argue that the term "cargo cult" is a misnomer that describes a variety of phenomena^{[citation needed]}. However, the idea has captured the imagination of many people in developed nations, and the term continues to be used today. For this reason, and possibly many others, the cults have been labelled millenarian, in the sense that they hold that a utopian future is imminent or will come about if they perform certain rituals.

History

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 cargo cult was the Tuka Movement that began in Fiji in 1885. 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 in 1919 and was documented by F.E. 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.

The classic period of cargo cult activity, however, was in the years during and after World War II. The vast amounts of war matériel that were airdropped into these islands during the Pacific campaign against the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen Westerners or Japanese before. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers — and also the islanders who were their guides and hosts. With the end of the war the airbases were abandoned, and "cargo" was no longer being dropped.

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 soldiers, sailors and airmen use. They 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. The cultists thought that the foreigners had some special connection to their own ancestors, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches.

In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size mockups of airplanes out of straw, and created new military style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes. Ultimately, though these practices did not bring about the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war, they did have the effect of eradicating the religious practices that had existed prior to the war.

Over the last seventy-five years most cargo cults have petered out. Yet, the John Frum cult is still active on the island of Tanna, Vanuatu. And from time to time, the term "cargo cult" is invoked as an English language idiom, to mean any group of people who imitate the superficial exterior of a process or system without having any understanding of the underlying substance.

The term is perhaps best known because of a speech by physicist Richard Feynman at a Caltech commencement, wherein he referred to "cargo cult science", and which became a chapter in the book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!. In the speech, Feynman pointed out that cargo cultists create all the appearance of an airport right down to headsets with bamboo "antennas", yet the airplanes don't come. Feynman argued that some scientists often produce studies with all the trappings of real science, but which are nonetheless pseudoscience and unworthy of either respect or support.

Other instances of cargo cults

A similar cult, the dance of the spirits, arose from contact between Native Americans and the Anglo-American civilization in late 19th century. The Paiute prophet Wovoka preached that by dancing in a certain fashion, the ancestors would come back on railways and a new earth would cover the white people. Some Amazonian Indians have carved wood mockups of cassette players (gabarora from Portuguese gravadora or Spanish grabadora) that they use to communicate with spirits.^{[citation needed]}

Cargo cults have also been compared to the modern UFO religions.

Analogies in Western culture

The cargo cult has been used as an analogy to describe certain phenomena in the developed world, particularly in the area of business. After any substantial commercial success - whether it is a new model of car, a vacuum cleaner, a toy or a motion picture - there typically arise imitators who produce superficial copies of the original, but with none of the substance of the original.

The term is also used in the world of computer programming as "cargo cult programming", which describes the ritual inclusion of code which may serve no purpose in the program, but is believed to be a workaround for some software bug, or to be otherwise required for reasons unknown to the programmer [3].

The term cargo cult software engineering has been coined in the field of software engineering to describe a characteristic of unsuccessful software development organisations that slavishly imitate the working methods of more successful development organisations [4].

The John Frum Movement

John Frum (or Jon Frum; John From) is a figure associated with cargo cults on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu. He is depicted as an American World War II serviceman, who will bring wealth and prosperity to the people if they follow him. He is sometimes portrayed as black, sometimes as white; from David Attenborough's report of an encounter: "'E look like you. 'E got white face. 'E tall man. 'E live 'long South America."

It is not known whether the religion arose spontaneously or was deliberately created; nor is it clear whether an individual named "John Frum" existed in the first place; the name is sometimes considered a corruption of "John from (America)", which the natives heard from US GIs during World War II. Frum is an extremely rare name in the English-speaking world, appearing only four times in USA telephone directories and not at all in either the 1851 or 1901 censuses of the United Kingdom. There are no records of the John Frum religion before 1940.

Some people living around Sulphur Bay on Tanna revere a god named Kerapenmun associated with the extinct volcano Mount Tukosmeru; the attributes of this god influenced the development of the John Frum movement. A native named Manehivi, under the alias of Jon Frum, began the cult by appearing among people and making promises of houses, clothes, food, and transport. He promised the dawn of a new age, in which all white people, including missionaries, would leave the New Hebrides (as they were then known), and that the native Melanesians would gain access to the material wealth which white people enjoyed. For this to happen, the people of Tanna should reject all aspects of European society (money, Western education, Christianity, work on copra plantations) and return to traditional kastom (a word for native Tannese customs.)

In 1941, followers of John Frum rid themselves of their money in a frenzy of spending, left the missionary churches, schools, villages and plantations, and moved further inland to celebrate traditional custom through feasts, dances and rituals. The movement gained traction in the 1940s when some 300,000 American troops established themselves in Vanuatu. The islanders were impressed both by the egalitarianism of the Americans and their obvious wealth and power. This led them to conflate perceived benefactors such as Uncle Sam, Santa Claus and John the Baptist into a mythic figure who would empower the island peoples by giving them cargo wealth. Followers of John Frum built symbolic landing strips to encourage American aeroplanes to land and bring them "cargo". In 1957, a leader of the John Frum movement, Nakomaha, created the "Tanna Army", a non-violent, ritualistic organisation which organised military-style parades, their faces painted in ritual colours, and wearing white t-shirts with the letters "T-A USA" (Tanna Army USA). This parade still takes place every year on February 15.

The power of John Frum appeared to be confirmed by the post-war influx of tourists to the region, who brought with them a degree of material prosperity to the islands. The cult is still active today. The followers believe that John Frum will come back on a February 15 (the year of his return is not known), a date which is observed as "John Frum Day" in Vanuatu.

In the late 1970s, John Frum followers opposed the imminent creation of an independent, united nation of Vanuatu. They objected to a centralised government which they feared would favour Western "modernity" and Christianity, felt to be detrimental to local customs.

The John Frum movement has its own political party, led by Song Keaspai. On John Frum Day in February 2007, the John Frum Movement celebrated its 50th anniversary. Chief Isaac Wan, its leader, remains strong in his belief in John Frum. He was quoted by the BBC as saying that John Frum was "our God, our Jesus," and would eventually return.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is also worshipped in Vanuatu by cargo cult followers, the Prince Philip Movement, following a royal visit to the area in 1974. He is now regarded as the head of the cargo suppliers. His wife, the Queen, was perhaps not deified because she is female.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Attenborough, D. Quest in Paradise. Lutterworth Press, 1960.
• Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. ISBN 0618680004.
• Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture. New York: Random House, 1974. ISBN 0679724680.
• Huffer, Elise. Grands Hommes et Petites Îles: La Politique Extérieure de Fidji, de Tonga et du Vanuatu. Paris: Orstom, 1993. ISBN 2-7099-1125-6
• Inglis, Judy. "Cargo Cults: The Problem of Explanation." Oceania Vol. XXVII no. 4, 1957.
• Jarvie, I. C. The Revolution in Anthropology London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964.
• Jebens, Holger (ed.). Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. ISBN 0824828143.
• Kaplan, Martha. Neither cargo nor cult: ritual politics and the colonial imagination in Fiji. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. ISBN 0822315939.
• Lawrence, Peter. "Cargo Cults" in Mircea Eliade's Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: MacMillan, 1987. 74-81. ISBN 0029094801.
• Lawrence, Peter. Road belong cargo: a study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District, New Guinea. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1989. ISBN 0881334588.
• Lindstrom, Lamont. Cargo cult: strange stories of desire from Melanesia and beyond. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993. ISBN 0824815637.
• Read, K. E. "A Cargo Situation in the Markham Valley, New Guinea". Southwestern Journal of Anthropology Vol. 14, No. 3, 1958.
• Rice, Edward (1974). John Frum He Come : Cargo Cults & Cargo Messiahs in the South Pacific. Garden City: Dorrance & Co. ISBN 0-385-00523-7. 
• Worsley, Peter. The trumpet shall sound : a study of "cargo" cults in Melanesia. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957. ISBN 0805201564.

External links

• Vanuatu cargo cult marks 50 years (BBC News)
• Information on the Jon Frum Cargo Cult (still active)
• Contemporary Cargo Cults by John FitzGerald
• Western Oceanian Religions
• [5] 2006 Smithsonian Magazine article entitled: "In John They Trust."
• Cargo cults includes a bibliography
• Account of a Visit to a Jon Frum Village in 2005
• Air Force Magazine, January 1991, Vol. 74, No. 1. Summary from the guys who fly those Cargoes.
• Purported John From Movement Inc. Home page
• Jon Frum Movement
• The last cargo cult
• In John They Trust
• The Cargo Cults of Tanna Island
• Account of a Visit to a John Frum Village in 2005
• BBC Report on the 50th Anniversary of the John Frum cult
• Damn Interesting

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