Cargo cult

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A cargo cult (also cargo cult ) is a millenarian , political, religious movement from Melanesia . The believers live from the expectation of the return of the ancestors brought about by symbolic substitute acts , who are supposed to bring western goods with them. There were and are various cargo cults .

Emergence

The cult has its roots in the encounter between Melanesians and Europeans, the new and supposedly wonderful cargo ( English cargo ) in formerly isolated Melanesian cultures brought, and is in response to the partial radical social change through missionary and colonial rule to consider. The occurrence was observed and documented for the first time at the end of the 19th century. This phenomenon was particularly widespread in New Guinea during and after the Second World War . After the Europeans were initially mistaken for the ancestors themselves, the indigenous population quickly realized that they were normal people, but who were much richer than they were. They concluded that this wealth (the cargo ) came from the Europeans from the land of the ancestors was stolen, but would come back for revenge and hand over the cargo (firearms, cars, planes, etc.) to the indigenous people. In preparation for this event, they built replicas of port facilities, airfields or radio masts and partially destroyed their houses and plantations.

The variety of movements and manifestations prevented a uniform picture. Often it is a mixture of Christian and non-Christian ideas. The term cargo cult is therefore a generalizing term in retrospect and not an independent movement. It has long been considered a typical Melanesian phenomenon, but according to recent research, cargo cults appeared in earlier times and also in Africa, Europe, North and South America, China and Japan.

19th and early 20th centuries

Early forms of millenarianism in Melanesia are:

  • Mansren-Koreri movement was the first cargo cult in the Melanesian region and was based on the creation story of the Mansren cult
  • Tuka cult , formed at the end of the 19th century under the leadership of Ndugumoi.
  • Luveniwai movement (Luve-ni-vai, English Water Babies ), also at the end of the 19th century, mainly attracted young men who organized themselves to take action against European rule.
  • Baigona cult , around 1912 there are first reports of the movement under the leadership of Maine. The Bagonai cult mainly focused on magical and medical aspects.
  • Taro cult , described from 1919
  • Vailala cult , described from 1919
  • Yali movement , which started in 1939, led by Yali Singina

Millenarianism is only understood here as the coming of an epoch of supernatural bliss. The restriction that this epoch should last exactly 1000 years was more of a Christian missionary entry into existing cults and ideas and was hardly adopted.

What the cults have in common is the belief in the imminent or distant end of the world . After that, the ancestors should return and bring with them all the goods that man longs for. In addition to preparations for this moment, e.g. B. the creation of storehouses, this can also lead to reactions such as the consumption of all food. The cults provided an opportunity for intellectual and social self-determination in relation to Christian proselytizing, which took place from the middle of the 19th century, and British colonial rule . In addition to mythical, Christian and apocalyptic cults, they also had rebellious features, which people organized under the protection of “religion” in order to revolt against foreign rule.

When the colonial exploitation of the land and the inhabitants by European companies began, many indigenous people could not do anything with the technologies and tools they brought with them, e.g. B. for processing tons of copra . They could not explain where the new things came from and ascribed a divine origin to them.

American occupation

The war material that was dropped en masse by the US Army on these islands during the Second World War (ready-made clothing, canned food, tents, weapons and other goods) brought about drastic changes in the lifestyle of the islanders: both the soldiers and the locals, they housed were literally showered with material. Often their own homes and food supplies were destroyed and airstrips and airfields in the jungle cleared for the expected cargo planes. For example, Hollandia (now Jayapura ) was expanded into a large naval base, where around 400,000 US soldiers were stationed in 1944. The aftermath of this invasion on the indigenous population was reflected in the post-war period in the construction of numerous “cargo houses”.

When the war ended, the airports were abandoned and no new cargo was dropped. Trying to get cargo by parachute or landing on water, cult followers imitated the practice they had seen among soldiers, sailors and airmen. They carved headphones out of wood and wore them as if they were sitting in the airport tower. They positioned themselves on the runways and imitated the wave-like landing signals. They lit beacons and flares on the runways and lighthouses .

The worshipers assumed that the foreigners had a special contact with their ancestors, who seemed to them to be the only beings with the power to pour out such riches. The imitation of foreigners was combined with the hope that the locals might also succeed in building such a bridge. In a kind of sympathetic magic they built, for example, full-size models of aircraft out of straw or created systems that were modeled on military runways in the hope of attracting new aircraft.

The confrontation with European goods, which are so different from traditional life, often led to a collapse of the entire value system of the indigenous peoples and to a reshaping of social structures in the hope of achieving paradise and salvation in this world.

Westerners argued that wealth comes from work and comes to the islands if the people work hard enough. However, the cultists observed that the islanders had to do the hardest work in the missions and camps, but received the least part of the goods. Western attempts to undermine the cargo cult by demonstrating the production of goods in factories to leaders failed for the same reasons, as here, too, it was clearly evident that the upper class of society was by no means identical to the hard-working people in the factories.

Todays situation

Today, cargo cults in Melanesia are more of a phenomenon that can be observed at certain intervals than a permanent religious cult. When cargo cults appear, they often have many followers in a short period of time, but ebb away after a while.

On the other hand, the John Frum movement on Tanna (Vanuatu) , which was formally constituted as a religious community in 1957, has proven to be a long-lived variant . It has a stable community of followers (approx. 20% of the local population) and shows strong parallels to Christianity . This is expressed, among other things, in the veneration of a red cross in a church building based on Christian models. In addition, there are messianic ideas about "John Frum", who will one day come out of a crater and lead his followers into a happy future, and whose holiday, John Frum Day , is celebrated every year on February 15th.

Derived from the John Frum Movement , the Prince Philip Movement , which Prince Philip , Prince Consort of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain , worships as a deity.

Related cults

A similar cult, the ghost dance , arose from contact between Indians and Europeans in North America in the late 19th century. The Paiut prophet Wovoka announced that through a certain type of dance the ancestors would return on the rails and then a new earth would devour the "whites".

Some Amazonian Indians carved wooden models of cassette recorders ( gabarora from Portuguese: gravadora) which they used to communicate with the spirits . The ethnologist Marvin Harris drew the connection between the social mechanisms of the cargo cult and messianism .

Metaphorical use of terms

Occasionally, in the English-speaking world, the expression "cargo cult" is used for superficial imitation of the external actions of successful people in expectation of wealth and prestige.

The physicist Richard Feynman called cargo cult science a formally correct but otherwise pointless way of working in science or in software development . The equivalent in hierarchical systems is called cargo cult management . Here, too, the formally correct procedure and displayed activity stand in a (sometimes bizarre) opposition to the real ineffectiveness of action.

Cinematic representations

literature

  • Kenelm Burridge : New Heaven, New Earth. A Study of Millenarian Activities. Oxford 1969
  • Marvin Harris : Lazy Charm. Our longing for the other world. Stuttgart 1993 a. ö.
  • Holger Jebens: Kago and kastom. On the relationship between cultural perception of others and of self in West New Britain (Papua New Guinea) . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007
  • Holger Jebens and Karl-Heinz Kohl : Constructions by “Cargo”. On the dialectic of perception of others and of self in the interpretation of Melanesian cult movements. In: Anthropos , Vol. 94, No. 1-3 (1999), pp. 3-20
  • Christian Kracht , Ingo Niermann : The spirit of America, meat as a metaphor and the return of John Frum: The emergence of the cargo religion on Tanna Island, Vanuatu. In: New Wave. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2006
  • Friedrich Steinbauer : Melanesian cargo cults. New religious salvation movements in the South Seas. Delp'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1971
  • Roy Wagner: The Invention of Culture. University of Chicago Press, 1981
  • Peter Worsley : The trumpet will sound. Cargo cults in Melanesia. Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkampverlag 1973

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Schlatter: South Seas / Australia . In: Metzler Lexikon Religion. Present - everyday life - media. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, vol. 3, p. 406.
  2. ^ Worsley, p. 307
  3. ^ Illustration based on Worsley, 1973
  4. ↑ Worsley, p. 20
  5. ^ Worsley, p. 19
  6. ↑ Worsey, p 46
  7. ^ Worsley, p. 51
  8. ↑ Peter Worsley : The trumpet will sound. Cargo cults in Melanesia. Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkampverlag 1973, p. 203.
  9. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/science/25diam.html
  10. ^ Phil Mercer: Cargo cult lives on in South Pacific. In: news.bbc.co.uk. February 17, 2007, accessed August 6, 2017 .