Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique

2004-09-30 Social Science

Author : Holger Jebens
Release : 2004-09-30
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 445/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique by : Holger Jebens

Download or read book Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique written by Holger Jebens. This book was released on 2004-09-30. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cargo cults have long exerted a remarkable attraction on Westerners, and the last decade has seen the publication of much new work on the subject. This collection of original essays is based on fieldwork in Melanesia, Fiji, Australia, and Indonesia by scholars who are influential in the contemporary debate on cargo. Conceived as a reader for undergraduate and graduate courses, the volume offers an up-to-date view of the subject and the debates it arouses among contemporary anthropologists. Some contributors plead for the abolition of "cargo" because of its troublesome implications, but also because, in the authors’ view, cargo cults do not exist as identifiable objects of study. Others argue that it is precisely this troublesome nature that makes the term a useful analytical tool that should be welcomed rather than rejected. By delineating and substantiating key issues and positions in this lively and ongoing debate, this volume underscores and refines the contemporary reevaluation of cargo cults. Scholars of the Pacific region and others interested in new religious movements should find this volume both enlightening and compelling. Contributors: Nils Bubandt, Vincent Crapanzano, Douglas M. Dalton, Elfriede Hermann, Holger Jebens, Martha Kaplan, Karl-Heinz Kohl, Stephen C. Leavitt, Lamont Lindstrom, Ton Otto, Joel Robbins, Jaap Timmer, Robert Tonkinson.

Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique

2004-09-30 Social Science

Author : Holger Jebens
Release : 2004-09-30
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 516/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique by : Holger Jebens

Cargo Cult

2019-03-31 Social Science

Author : Lamont Lindstrom
Release : 2019-03-31
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 957/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Cargo Cult by : Lamont Lindstrom

Download or read book Cargo Cult written by Lamont Lindstrom. This book was released on 2019-03-31. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is not captivated by tales of Islanders earnestly scanning their watery horizons for great fleets of cargo ships bringing rice, radios and refrigerators - ships that will never arrive? Of all the stories spun about the island peoples of Melanesia, tales of cargo cult are among the most fascinating. The term cargo cult, Lamont Lindstrom contends, is one of anthropology's most successful conceptual offspring. Like culture, worldview and ethnicity, its usage has steadily proliferated, migrating into popular culture where today it is used to describe an astonishing roll-call of people. It's history makes for lively and compelling reading. The cargo cult story, Lindstrom shows, is more significant than it at first appears, for it recapitulates in summary form three generations of anthropological theory and Pacific studies. Although anthropologists' enthusiasm for the notion of cargo cult has waned, it now colors outsiders' understanding of Melanesian culture, and even Melanesians' perceptions of themselves. The repercussions for contemporary Islanders are significant: leaders of more than one political movement have felt the need to deny that they are any kind of cargo cultist. Of particular interest to this history is Lindstom's argument that accounts of cargo cult are at heart tragedies of thwarted desire, melancholy anticipation and crazy unrequited love. He makes a convincing case that these stories expose powerful Western scenarios of desire itself—giving cargo cult its combined titillation of the fascinating exotic and the comfortably familiar.

After the Cult

2010 Psychology

Author : Holger Jebens
Release : 2010
Genre : Psychology
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 740/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis After the Cult by : Holger Jebens

Download or read book After the Cult written by Holger Jebens. This book was released on 2010. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many parts of the world the "white man" is perceived to be an instigator of globalization and an embodiment of modernity. However, so far anthropologists have paid little attention to the actual heterogeneity and complexity of "whiteness" in specific ethnographic contexts. This study examines cultural perceptions of other and self as expressed in cargo cults and masked dances in Papua New Guinea. Indigenous terms, images, and concepts are being contrasted with their western counterparts, the latter partly deriving from the publications and field notes of Charles Valentine. After having done his first fieldwork more than fifty years ago, this "anthropological ancestor" has now become part of the local tradition and has thus turned into a kind of mythical figure. Based on anthropological fieldwork as well as on archival studies, this book addresses the relation between western and indigenous perceptions of self and other, between "tradition" and "modernity," and between anthropological "ancestors" and "descendants." In this way the work contributes to the study of "whiteness," "cargo cults" and masked dances in Papua New Guinea.

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