Cargo cult

Cargo cult is an umbrella term to denote various spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians during the early-mid 20th century. The definition of cargo cult is vague, having been used for "almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations" and "a variety of forms of social unrest that ethnographers elsewhere tagged millenarian, messianic, nativistic, vitalistic, revivalistic, or culture-contact or adjustment movements". The stereotypical "cargo cult" was organised around a central charismatic prophet, who convinced other individuals to engage in ritual acts like dancing, marching and flag raising in order to invoke ancestral spirits to bestow benefits upon the group. Although many accounts focus on the aquisition of Western material goods, the definition of "cargo" was broader than this, with many such movements focused on spiritual salvation, or were political expressions of a desire for autonomy. Many scholars see the movements as a reaction to the disruption to traditional ways of life caused by the colonisation of Melanesia during the late 19th century by Western powers and the resulting oppression and discrimination, as well as the contact between traditional gift giving and colonial capitalist economies.

The term "cargo cult" was introduced to the field of anthropology in 1945 around the end World War II, though similar previous phenomena had been labelled with the term "Vailala Madness". Following the coining of the term, groups under this label were subject to a considerable number of anthropological publications focusing on the phenomenon through the 1960s. Since the 1970s after Melanesian countries gained political independence, few new groups matching the term have emerged, and the term largely fell out of favour among anthropologists, with some describing the term as "embarassing". Recent scholarship on "cargo cults" has challenged the suitability of the term for the movements associated with it, with recent anthropological sources arguing that the term is born of colonialism and prejudice and does not accurately convey the diversity of movements included or the nature of the movements to which it refers.