cargo cult

a form of MILLENARIAN or MILLENNIAL MOVEMENT widespread in Melanesia in the modern colonial era, in which followers of the CULT seek to achieve the delivery of cargoes of Western consumer goods by means of MAGIC and RITUAL, e.g. the building of‘airstrips’ and models of planes. Such cults involve the combination of Western and native beliefs in a context of ANOMIE and disruption of the local culture, sometimes by successive waves of colonialism. Based on assumptions in the native religion about the supernatural origins of material resources as well as on an inadequate knowledge of the Western culture, when more adequate knowledge became available, these movements have tended to transform into politico-religious movements (see Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound, 1968).

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

McDowell (this volume), however, includes my position with those of Leavitt and Lattas in that we all try to explain rather than critique 'cargo cult.'

Introduction

Just why Burridge settled on the cargo cult as his theme, personalized as Mambu, is not made explicit within his text.

Cargo Cult Horror

The sense of romance underlying the story of the cargo cult is an idea that Lindstrom describes thoroughly and persuasively, but this is only one side of the cargo story.

The Apotheosis of White Men?: A Reexamination of Beliefs about Europeans as Ancestral Spirits

Cargo cult beliefs and rituals seek to create and introduce an alternative space or moment within the present; and they do so by seeking to alter the relationship between what is near and what is far-off, what is present and what is missing, what is current and what occupies the alternative times of the past and future.

Telephones, Cameras and Technology in West New Britain Cargo Cults

Because of the recurrence of cargo cult type behavior, a certain 'madness' therefore continues to inhabit cargo cult discourse.

Cargo Cults and Discursive Madness

We second-guess the 'natives,' and wind up second-guessing ourselves; I know of no theory of cargo cult or millenarian activity that does not conform to this practice.

Our Very Own Cargo Cult

In cargo cult writings, the term can refer to a variety of themselves as diverse entities: the entire West, German missionaries, British colonialists, American anthropologists, some combination of these, or none of the above.

A Brief Comment on Difference and Rationality

This perception of beneficent ancestors is evident in the current cargo cult for whom helpful whites are lineal ancestors or deceased close kin.

The spirit and the gifts: Dako, Benjamin Morrell and cargo in the Vitiaz trading area, New Guinea

The following wear I started performing The Least Cargo Cult, which details the international financial crisis and my time on an island in the South Pacific where the people do not universally accept the value of money.

The sin of activism

In my view at the time, anthropology was too often a marriage of the fixation on "understanding the native" with what Eric Wolf once called "the frisson effect" of exoticism that led to an interest in just one kind of rebellion: the pathological conduct of the cargo cult. The text titles of this period were revealing: The Trumpet Shall Sound (9); Road Belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Mandong District, New Guinea; and New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities, and so on.

From Primitive Rebels to How to Change the World: reflections on two periods in anthropology and history: Gavin Smith

Mr Cuffe told the Irish Planning Institute there had been a "cargo cult" of re-zoning where controls on land were changed for all the wrong reasons.

'BULLDOZE GHOST ESTATES'