Anthropology of religion : cargo cults

Résumé du document

This essay is based on Peter M.Worsley's work "Cargo Cults? and Andrew Lattas's "one Telephones, Cameras and Technology in West New Britain Cargo Cults?. Peter M. Worsley and Andrew Lattas both study a specific religious phenomenon which is cargo cults in Melanesia and in New Britain. This phenomenon is a cult that began in societies confronted brutally with Western technology. On the basis of these works I will try to show the consequences of this confrontation and how this confrontation reveals some underlying characteristics of the religious organization of natives. Andrew Lattas's work focuses on a specific example of a cargo cult in the Kaliai bush of West New Britain. The natives of that region have integrated some western customs in their religious cults. The explicit aim is to show how western technologies have changed the perception of the world and even the social values of the rural villagers of that region. To stress this impact he uses objects that are usually symbols of western societies such as telephones and cameras and he underlines how those objects are integrated by the Bush Kaliai cult by using their customary past and ancestral homelands.

Extraits

[...] This relationship is clearly sum up by Peter M. Worsley Melanesians themsleves rework the doctrine the missionaries teach them, selecting from the Bible what they themselves find particularly congenial in it . ] The cult reflects quite logical and rational attemptes to make sense out of a social order that appears senseless ans chaotic´´. I think that Peter M.Worsley´s study on Cargo Cults is much useful on that sense that he tries to show they act as revitalization movements. That means that cargo cults are used to give hope for potential changes and to fight against dissatisfaction. [...]

[...] In Western societies technology means the crossing of time and spaces and reduces the distance between the seen and the unseen. Those characteristics have been translated by the cargo cults as a way to reduce the distance between the death and the living and between the past and the present. This change comes from the feeling that whites controlled the ways to communicate with the death thanks to technologies. For example in some precise points (telephone holes) people can talk with the dead and try to describe to them the contemporary way of life. [...]

[...] It also offers the promise of an alternative second existence: thanks to the Camera some cargo cults expect to obtain the white's way of live. So we can describe a large number of modifications of Kaliai's society after the discovery of the Western technology. However, I won't agree with the approach of the text given the fact that it gives the feeling that the clash between the two cultures lead to a mechanical acquisition of the Western culture by the natives. [...]

[...] Worsley and Andrew Lattas both study a specific religious phenomenon which is cargo cults in Melanesia and in New Britain. This phenomenon is a cult that began in societies confronted brutally with Western technology. Thanks to those works I will try to show the consequences of this confrontation and how this confrontation reveals some underlying characteristics of the religious organization of natives. Andrew Lattas's work focuses on a specific example of a cargo cult in the Kaliai bush of West New Britain. [...]

[...] But their disillusion is the evidence that their culture remained really strong. After a while they stated that the Whites were not responsible for the Cargo but the dead ancestors were. The Whites would stole and keep the secrets of the Cargo''. From that modification we see that there is a come back of the culture, people can't erase their myths and culture if their social situation doesn´t change. This common stability of the cult and the social change makes Worsley´s statement that .The cult rarely disappears, so long as the social situation which brings it into being persits´´. [...]