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Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique, edited by Holger Jebens. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. ISBN cloth, 0-8248-2814-3; paper, 0-8248-2851-8; vii + 294 pages, table, figures, map, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, US$55.00; paper, US$20.00.
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 of cargo 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" (no).
Critique of the notion of cargo cult itself receives the most attention. Lament 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...