102) when writing about
cargo cults.
Cargo cults, or whatever one chooses to call these movements, are important to the subject of the book.
This was probably seen most notably in the numerous studies of Pacific Islander "
cargo cults," a problematic name, (9) that began in the late 1950s.
Strangely enough, I was reminded of the
cargo cults I learned about in an anthropology class in college.
The brave national museum should be always ready to confront institutionalized religion for every anecdote about conversion of the natives; there should be the luxuriously trenchant narratives about millenarian movements and
cargo cults. For every trumpet that shall sound for the second coming of the Messiah, if we may paraphrase Peter Worsley, are the bountiful harvest of rebels and heroes who become anointed as saints and divinities.
Among the topics are Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the apocalypse of Enoch, Aum Shinrikyo (Shoko Asahara),
cargo cults, feminist eschatology, four horsemen of the apocalypse, Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven, the apocalypse in popular culture, and zombies.
Debates about
cargo cults have been informed by differing historical interpretations (e.g.
There would be no commodity fetish without the secrets of circumnavigation; the shoreline is simultaneously the origin and the destination of
cargo cults. Likewise, to resist under these conditions requires a sailor's aptitude for solidarity: Better a ship of fools than no ship at all.
Although these "
Cargo Cults" have largely died out, a few still exist to this day.
A journalist follows
cargo cults in New Guinea, Pygmies in Africa and other groups to trace industrialization's effects.
He covers sorcery, dreams, and death in a modern world; towards a history of travel in Melanesia: shamanism, dreams, and overseas journeys; technology, death and
cargo cults in the Kaliai bush and in Bali and Pomio; madness, transgression, and hope in the Kaliai bush; and Melanesian fairy tales about whites.
Rapidly running through an enormous amount of content, the experienced author discusses the phenomena of the '
cargo cults', movements which appeared in Melanesia some time after the intrusion of the Europeans.