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ФИЛОСОФИЯ
РЕЛИГИЯ
МИФ
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Вестник Челябинского государственного университета. 2020. № 5 (439).
Философские науки. Вып. 56. С. 21-24.
УДК 25 DOI: 10.24411/1994-2796-2020-10503
MEETING OF CIVILIZATION WITH ARCHAIC AND CARGO CULTS IN MELANESIA
Garry W. Trompf
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
This article is about cultures in the region of Melanesia, or the "Black Islands of the southwest Pacific. In these islands, from the Indonesian Province of Irian Jaya in the west to Fiji in the east, there is the most complex ethnographic situation on earth. About one fifth of the distinct languages, cultures and religions of the world are found in this area alone, and this complexity is best shown from the large island of New Guinea, the second largest island on the planet. Many of the separate cultures are in landlocked valleys in the mountains, and many in the scattered islands close to the big one. All these cultures were 'Stone Age ones, technologically simple and, without supreme chieftains or kings, tribes or clans within each linguistic and cultural complex have typically fought each other, and also intermarried and made exchanges with each other of pigs, yams and other valued objects.
Keywords: New Guinea, cargo cult, Melanesia, ritual practice, cross-cultural contacts, social transformation.
Contact with the outside world occurred very late in the Melanesian cosmos. There are probably two or three cultures in highland Irian Jaya still not known to ethnographers. In any case, the most populous part of New Guinea main island, the highland part, was only being effectively explored by Europeans from the 1930s. Compare to Africa, the 'first contacts' on the coasts and most small islands were taking place as late as the 1880s. This last decade was an extremely important one in the history of humanity's technology, for it marks the so-called Second Industrial Revolution: the emergence of mass production, great steel-and-concrete industries, steel-bottomed steamships, combustion engines that led to cars and airplanes, the beginnings of electrification, etc. Historiography of this issue is very large [1-18].
The startling fact about Melanesia is that "Stone Age' peoples confronted human beings — newcomers — belonging to societies that had achieved the highest pinnacles of modern technological achievement. These outsiders, mostly whites, could appear
like beings from outer space. The Russian explorer Miklouho-Maclay, for example, was taken by peoples from the Madang district as a "moon man". More commonly, however, whites were taken as returning ancestors — because ghosts were white — and these ancestors were thought to have immense power and to be the makers of the new goods arriving with them. These goods the Cargo, or European-style commodities -were, as we would expect, the objects of wonder and mystery for the indigenous peoples.
We must remember that there were different stages of encounter between locals and newcomers. There were ships bringing explorers to the coast in the late 19th century. Then there were expeditions inland, these often- involved patrol officers with many black coastal carriers trying to get into impenetrable valleys. In the boxes they carried cargo for exchange, perhaps shell money, and the great amount of shell money was as much a marvel as anything to the local people.
Of course, the Melanesians had their own objects of wonder, and these usually had something to do
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with their experiences of supernatural powers. Their ceremonies often entailed acting out the confrontation with the spirits. Papuan coastal high masks -something similar shared in common between the Elema and the Motu cultures, to celebrate their harvesting of fruits.
Even today, if one were travelling on a road in north New Britain, anybody, from whatever culture, would be shocked on meeting the masked man who conducts initiations for the Dukduk secret society of the Tolai people.
Wonder and mystery were already associated with the numinous, and thus goods which we may think of as mundane became associated with the 'spiritual' or 'religious' dimension. No one had seen factories; no one knew the Cargo's mysterious origins. Besides, Melanesians never separated out economics, politics, religion, etc., and when their harvests were good and their pigs plentiful, they accepted these as the blessings of gods and ancestors.
When Christian missionaries came, there was often the temptation for the local people to conclude that the new God spoken about must be more powerful because those who spoke about Him also possessed the Cargo. Turning to Jesus or the newly proclaimed God was sometimes thought to the way to acquire the Cargo. Sometimes events occurred in the changing world, in any case, after which it was decided to abandon the old artefacts of wonder. The masks we looked at just before are no longer worn, but among the Motu this was not because of the missionaries. When they saw Japanese planes bomb the town of Port Moresby, they saw so much extraordinary power that their own resources of traditional power seemed irrelevant, and they did not perform the old-style harvest festival again.
Now we come to the issue of 'cargo cults". It is perhaps useful to distinguish between 'cargoism' and 'cargo cults here. 'Cargoism' is the feeling and the desire about the new commodity items that a sufficient number of them around us — packaged foods, a refrigerator, radio. TV, etc. — will give a sense of well-being that amounts to a kind of 'substitute religious ethos1. Cargoism is world-wide, but it is certainly endemic to Melanesia because of the circumstances I have been discussing. 'Cargo cult(ism)' occurs when a group of people mobilize collectively, worshipping in the hope of securing Cargo, or acting together, as has happened in Melanesia, to build airstrips or wharves to receive the Cargo they expect will soon be brought by their ancestors, or Jesus, or spirit beings. Melanesia us clearly renowned for such cargo cults.
But we must not exaggerate. In the region there have been many processes which show more normal-looking changes. Remarkably quickly, the indigenous peoples have learnt how to 'play the whiteman's games'. Modern business enterprise captivates such a materialist group of cultures — for the Melanesians have been described as the most materialistic people on earth. Also, especially because of international pressure, thousands of tribes have had 'modern democracy thrust upon them.
The Melanesians are always ready for experimentation, and their adjustments to modernity seem extraordinary. One Melanesian politician, former Foreign Minister Albert Maori Kiki, wrote an autobiography under the title Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime — from primal initiation under a kove mask to international political meetings. Already 5 out of the 7 colonized regions of Melanesia, incidentally, have achieved their relatively healthy independence.
What seem to be maladjustments, the cargo cults, occur when the experience of access to the Cargo and the new ways has been bad, or limited, or disruptive, or socially disintegrative, and people do something experimentally, resentfully, urgently and fervently. The new wonders, full of possibilities for the future, become available only in dribs and drabs, and everything turns sour, calling for protest.
Of course, we know how modernity can turn sour. Huge mines can be built and the local villagers do not reap any benefits.
Wars can and have erupted because of over-development and its polluting effects in given areas. The war on Bougainville came about because of local reactions to the huge Panguna copper mine, and what earlier turned out to be a Luddite reaction — with the destruction of mining equipment and electric power poles — escalated into a real war. In Irian Jaya the armed movement for independence could, as it continues, become more concentrated on the huge Freeport copper mine.
Cargo cults have generally not been armed uprisings, but creations of disturbance by more unusual means, by making statements as unarmed, powerless people seeking for redemption and empowerment. They have very high hopes, but unfortunately their expectations can never, in all realism, be achieved by the supernatural outbursts they long for. Failure of prophecy can make people all the more sullen, and perhaps in the course of time they will become ready for more predictions of an extraordinary solution given by some emergent leader. Such leaders have played especially on the resentments of peoples in areas that actually have less
Meeting of Civilization with Archaic and Cargo Cults in Melanesia
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access to new and exciting developments than others, the frustrations and jealousy naturally arising being fertile ground for a cult. Let me finish with a case.
A travelling evangelist for this cargo cult convinced highlanders in some villages of the Bena Bena and Asaro cultural complexes that Yali had the secret of multiplying money by traditionalist fertility techniques. He opposed the missions and the administration as only betraying the natives, and encouraged people to return to their traditions. He did initiate new rituals, however, and the table with its decorations, shown in the photograph, illustrate cultic innovation, because the table is more like a church altar than anything in the traditional cultic life.
On the table in this instance, however, is a meteorite. This was the immediate object of wonder. It had just fallen, and at the time Asaro members of the cult were beginning to express their resentments publicly. The meteorite confirmed for the cultist that they were on to something, because it fell on their ground. They felt this all the more to be the case because white scientists turned up wanting to investigate the stone, in
fact negotiate for it to be cut in half, so that geologists could study it. The suspicion arose that, yet again, some outsider would prevent them from securing what portended to be better access to the Cargo. They thus became all the more serious in their collective concerns, and all the more sullen.
My wife has discussed medical problems in Melanesia. Some people have described cargo cultism as a kind of social pathology. Certainly, strange pathological-looking things have happened in connection with them. Men have offered themselves for human sacrifice in the belief that the Cargo would come add that they would be resurrected after three days. I hope I have shown, however, that in the main cargo cults are very complex, and that, if there is maladjustment or disease, it is quite understandable as a tragic outcome of the complicated processes of social, religious and technological transformation. Certainly, to impute Melanesian cargo cultist with a kind of madness or psychosis, when there is an obvious rationality behind their behavior, would be misguided.
References
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4. Brunton R. (1971) Cargo Cults and Systems of Exchange in Melanesia. Mankind, no. 8, pp. 115-128.
5. Campbell I. C. (1992) Island Kingdom: Tonga, Ancient and Modern. Christchurch, Canterbury University Press.
6. Lawrence P. (1964) Road belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District, New Guinea. Manchester and Melbourne, Manchester University Press and Melbourne University Press.
7. Lawrence P. (1966) Cargo Thinking as a Future Political Force in Papua New Guinea. Journal of the Papua and New Guinea Society, no. 1 (1), pp. 20-25.
8. Lindstrom L. (1993) Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press.
9. Trompf G.W. (1979-2017) The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought. Berkeley, University of California Press. 2 vols.
10. Trompf G.W. (1975) The Religious History of a Melanesian People from the Last Century to the Present. The Middle Wahgi, NewGuinea Highlands.
11. Trompf G.W. (1991) Melanesian Religion. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
12. Trompf G.W. (1994) Payback: Logic Retribution in Melanesian Religions. Cambridge University Press.
13. Trompf G.W. (2020) Religion and Politics: An Introductory Textbook. London, for C. Hurst & Co.
14. Trompf G.W. (2000) On the Edge of Asia: Challenges to the Churches at the Fringes of Southeast Asia and in Australia. The Asian Church in the New Millennium (ed. R. Fernandez-Calienes). Delhi: ISPCK, pp. 30-60.
15. Trompf G.W. (2002) Easter Island: Site of the First Cargo Cult? Ugo Bianchi: Una vita per la Storia delle Religioni (ed. G. Cassadio) (Biblioteca di Storia delle Religioni, no. 3). Rome: "Il Calamo", pp. 441-465.
16. Trompf G.W. (2002) Aboriginal Religion in Australia and New Zealand. In Dictionary of Contemporary Religion in the Western World (ed. N. Partidge), Leicester: IVP Reference Collection, pp. 155-158.
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17. Trompf G.W. (2004) A Survey of New Approaches to the Study of Religion in Australia and the Pacific. In New Approaches to the Study of Religion, vol. 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches (eds. P. Antes, A. W. Geertz, and R. R. Warne). Berlin, Walter De Gruyter, pp. 147-181.
18. Trompf G.W. (2005) In Search of Origins: The Beginnings of Religion in Western Theory and Archaeological Practice (Studies in World Religions, no. 1). Elgin, IL: New Dawn.
Information about author
Garry W. Trompf — Professor, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. acdis@mail.ru
ВСТРЕЧА ЦИВИЛИЗАЦИИ С АРХАИКОЙ И КУЛЬТЫ ВЕЩЕСТВЕННЫХ ДАРОВ В МЕЛАНЕЗИИ
Г. X Тромпф
Университет Сиднея, Сидней, Австралия
В основу данного материала положена лекция в Самарском государственном институте культуры, прочитанная автором в рамках программы сотрудничества с Российским гуманитарным сообществом. Статья повествует об архаических культурах Меланезии, или так называемых Чёрных островов в юго-западной части Тихого океана. В фокусе внимания воздействие цивилизации на традиционные ценности и повседневные практики архаических культур. На этих островах от Индонезийской провинции Ириан Джая на западе и до Фиджи на востоке самая сложная этнографическая ситуация на Земле. Около 1/5 языков, культур и религий мира обнаружены исключительно в этом регионе. И это лучше всего просматривается в Новой Гвинеи, на втором по величине острове на планете. Много изолированных культур рассредоточены на скрытых в горах равнинах и на разбросанных островах недалеко от большого острова. Эти культуры всё ещё пребывают в каменном веке: их образ жизни технологически простой, без политических институций и имущественного расслоения. Однако при встрече с цивилизацией в их архаическом мире происходят весьма интересные и поучительные культурные метаморфозы. Встреча цивилизации с архаикой всегда драматична и сопровождается инновационным вторжением и подрывом устоявшихся ценностей и привычных практик адаптации к вызовам внешней среды. Цивилизация сильно меняет социальный ландшафт архаических обществ и приводит к опасной трансформации мировоззренческих ценностей, общественного уклада и ритуально-культовой деятельности. Одним из результатов этого цивилизационного вторжения стал распространившийся среди традиционных культур Меланезии культ Карго, или так называемый каргоцизм. Этот культ характеризуется обожествлением (сакрализацией) вещественных даров, которые были занесены в архаический мир местных племён западными пришельцами.
Ключевые слова: Новая Гвинея, культ вещественных даров, Меланезия, ритуальная практика, кросс-культурные контакты, социальные изменения.
Сведения об авторе
Тромпф, Гарри Уинстон — австралийский учёный-антрополог, профессор истории идей Университета Сиднея, Сидней, Австралия. acdis@mail.ru
