Cargo Cults

Doug Dalton

Doug Dalton

Longwood University, United States

Search for more papers by this author

Abstract

The term “cargo cult” originally embodied a colonial stereotype of irrational native behavior which anthropologists endeavored to explain in non-ethnocentric ways, producing several classical accounts before anthropologists then sought to distance themselves from and to eliminate the phrase as derogatory and distorting of indigenous understandings and cultural means of innovation. Yet “cargo cult” continues to be widely employed as an analytical or critical term in relation to cultural changes observed in the islands of Inner Oceania and anthropological understandings of them, making it both a very productive and a problematic concept that has yet to be resolved or replaced.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.