J. Pouwer Cargo as countervailing ideology

In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 144 (1988), no: 4, Leiden, 523-539

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CARGO CULT AS COUNTERVAILING IDEOLOGY

With reference to: Patrick F. Gesch1, Initiative and ; A cargo cult-type movement in the Sepik against its background in traditional village religion, Studia Instituti Anthropos No. 33, St. Augustin: Anthropos-Institut, 1985,347 pp., Maps, Figures, Tables, Plates.

In the obscure, misty light of dawn on the 7th July, 1971, a long line of three hundred men, including two white reporters and an observer team of the University of , climbed the path to Mount Rurun (1178 m), the most prominent peak in the Prince Alexander Range, west of Wewak in the East Sepik Province of PapuaNew Guinea. The participants worked under the bidding of two leaders to see that two bulky, 80 kg cement blocks, which had been dug out previously, were securely fastened to long carrying poles. In the tense, expectant air, muffled by the fog, some brief speeches were made, but it was not long before the first set of carriers seized the poles and set off down the

1. Father Gesch (S.V.D.), born in Townsville, Australia, in 1944, spent five years (1973- 1978) as a parish priest in the area, residing at Negrie Mission Station, 5 km. west of Yangoru Patrol Post. Within a pastoral context he 'followed a pattern of cultural discussion with village groups two or three times a week' (p. 8). He attended and enquired into festivals, marriages, births, deaths and initiation ceremonies. After some time of library research, he returned to the field for a year of intensive field research and a minimum of pastoral duties from July 1980 to July 1981. He then stayed in and joined households of three villages which had special cult centres for the movement. These centres remain to the present time in two of them. His conversational ability in the vernacular was not extensive. Accordingly, most of his research was conducted through the medium of Tok Pisin, in which all Yangoru villagers, apart from a few old women, are fluent. Transcriptions of ten interviews or meetings — with a nun, a Patrol Officer, four missionaries and 11 Papua New Guineans closely involved in the movement, including Daniel - have been added to the book in appendices. It is evident that Father Gesch has an intimate knowledge of the movement as a process, covering at least 15' years. Het is also well aware of the ethics of his research. In my synopsis of the movement, I have followed Gesch' 'text' very closely, so that the wording of the summary owes much to the author.

. DR. J. POUWER retired from his position in the Department of Cultural and Social , Nijmegen University, in 1987. Previously he was Foundation Professor of Anthropology, Victoria University, Wellington. His address is Zwanenveld 38-09, 6538 XR, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. x.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access 524 J. Pouwer mountain at the brisk pace of men used to carrying pigs in this manner. Coming down into a village below the fog and into the full light of day, they passed before the eyes of a great many silent groups of people counting rosary beads, who occasionally and reverently touched the cement markers and made efforts to scrape a memento of clay off the swaying blocks. At some stage an old man headed the solemn procession with an opened copy of the New Testament. A phalanx of six thousand men from all over the place in the East and West Sepik Provinces proceeded to the headquarters of the Patrol Post at Yangoru, and laid .{heir two burdens down at the feet of two government officials. The officers received the blocks with extreme casualness, and bid the people to disperse. The latter did so, but then in line with earlier requests from their own leaders. This event had been prepared for by years of discussion and preceding events. It took place under the scrutiny of many thousands of observers. It was widely publicized by the press and radio. The Post Courier had announced already on 17th May 1971 that 15,000 people would watch cargo cult rites involving human sacrifice. The massive interest, cross- cutting local and provincial boundaries with an amazing speed, made it abundantly clear that the event, or rather the 'happening', articulated some of the most deeply-held desires and hopes of the people: to participate publicly, fully, and as equal partners in the acquisitions of modern times, undisclosed by the white men, who kept the secret to themselves. Removal of the cement blocks, the foundations of a marker put there by a surveyor in 1932 and further developed for radio distance measuring purposes by the Australian and U.S. Air Forces in 1952, meant the lifting of a curse. The curse had prevented Mt. Rurun, the 'mother' of many peoples, who gives 'milk' (susu, Tok Pisin for 'suste- nance') to them (Camp 1983:79), from supporting them. The impov- erished state of gardens, of fish and of game was considered to be the direct result of an unauthorized intrusion by the foreigners into the sacred abode of ancestral spirits. Removing the blocks/the curse, however, also meant ushering in the new era of material and spiritual abundance, the return of the dead. Hundreds of American planes would arrive with cargo. Black men would gain superiority over the whites by a change of skin colour (Camp 1983:80). Birds would fly upside down - a reversal of the present state of affairs. All men would sit down together and all the would be at peace. The expectation of peace between Papua New Guineans was felt to have been fulfilled during the events of July 1971, when people came from Madang, the West and the East Sepik, and even from Papua south of the Central Range to be 'in it' (Camp 1983:81). Mt. Rurun was considered the centre of the world. It was now a place where one could talk to any distant person in the world by radio and telephone, just sitting under the frame marker (p. 33).

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The removal of the cement blocks in 1971 was not the first one: a block was lifted on the night after Christmas (!) 1969. At this initial stage only the locals, in particular seven villages, were involved. There was a big festival that night. The local traditional and modern elites were invited to attend a marvellous rite of access to the abundance of modern times (p. 35). They were led inside a house and made to stand facing a lamp. They then called out for money to appear as instructed, and coins began to rain on them from the roof. (One of the guests, a MoBr of one of the leaders, defied instructions and looked behind him. He thought he saw a man from outside the district, convicted earlier for cargo cult 'fraud', throwing the coins to the roof.) There was an all-night dance, to finish at dawn, when the ancestors would return with the cargo. After some delay because of rain brought about by adversaries of the move- ment, a cement block with the inscription 'Prince Alexander' was re- moved from the peak and carried to the hamlet of one of the leaders. The police moved in quickly on Boxing Day. Daniel, one of the two 'pro- phets', saw himself as Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. He and Matias, the prime leader, together with seven followers were sentenced to from two to six months' jail for assaulting an officer and obstructing the police (there was a scuffle). In prison, Matias, the 'ideologist' of the movement and a classificatory MoBr of Daniel, claimed to have had visions of cargo placed under the marker, and that he,like Christ, would spill his own biood. After two days he would rise again (p. 28). Obviously the imprisonment turned the two leaders into martyrs. After being released, they stepped up the campaign and established a wide interlpcal and intertribal network of representatives (komiti). The movement mushroomed and reached its peak on 7th July 1971, as described. On Sunday (!) 1 lth July Matias had a third marker removed. He wished this to be an action demonstrating the unity of Papua and New Guinea. The country was given a new name: Papina (77). So the movement widened its scope from local to national in three steps. Significantly, the U.S. order of night and day was then adopted, night being called 'day', local day featuring the greeting 'good night to you' (cp. 78).

This description of an ordinary cargo cult, one of the many reported widely from the Sepik area and.from , quoted from and paraphrased after Gesch, conforms with the descriptive features of cargo listed earlier by Jarvie (1964:65-66). Gesch mentions Jarvie but does not refer to his 'checklist': ( 1) cargo cults are usually founded by a single with a charis- matic personality who had no special standing in the society prior to the cult; ( 2) most of the , like everyone else in their society, are hardly educated and seriously misinformed about the working of western society outside Melanesia;

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( 3) all cults borrow European of one sort or another, both secular and religious; ( 4) new beliefs are grafted on to older local ones; ( 5) all cults predict the coming of a millennium in the very near future and in a material form; these beliefs are accompanied by some sort of other belief in, e.g., the end of the world, and/or the ejection of the Europeans, or some cataclysm followed by a colour exchange; ( 6) the cults are always characterized by some form of organized activity; also associated are various kinds of collective hysteria; ( 7) cults are always found in colonized areas which are economically . underdeveloped, highly isolated, politically acephalous, and, on the whole, not given to violent resistance to white rule; ( 8) there have nearly always been attempts by missionaries to Christianize the natives. To these features I would add: ( 9) often, but not always, there is a rapid growth cross-cutting tradi- tional boundaries and the emergence of an interlocal and inter- tribal organization modelled after western examples; (10) a recurrence and differentiation of cults and movements are found. Features (9) and (10) are borne out by Gesch' extensive description. His data on differentiation of the movement even constitute, in my opinion, the distinctive and distinguishing features of his study. He discerns 16 forms, which in my opinion may be seen as transformations, in a diagram covering five dimensions of the movement: (a) traditional religious — millennialism, cargo cult, syncretistic cult of the dead, fertility ; (b) political - civil disobedience, grass roots nationalism, national political participation, local administration, army patterns; (c) economic - lucky chain letters, commercial enterprise, co-operative society; (d) social development - women's clubs and schools; (e) Christian: bible usages and church practice. There is some overlap of forms. In order not to lose sight of the unfolding process, the syntagmatic chain of the movement, I shall follow the author by first of all discussing these forms in terms of sequences, and then move to its paradigm. When the adherents of the movement went home after attending the climax on the mountain, they were told through their komiti that the secret of power was now available, if only they would build power houses (haus kantri). These houses were built in many places (p. 78). The entrance was said to be guarded by the dead, and inside a powerful charm, consisting of bespelled vines arid ginger, lay in a bark bucket of water. The spectators staying outside for a night of celebration saw at various times that the house began to shake violently. Volunteers were invited into the house by a small itinerant party of insiders. These volunteers,

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access Cargo Cult as Countervailing Ideology 527 both men and women, were shaken away to the country of wonderful cargo, referred to as Sydney.2 Some money was produced as proof. It is presumed that there was intercourse win girl volunteers during the shaking: an association of wealth with fertility and sex. A power house or factory (faktori) was equipped with an office (ofis) and employed male workers (woka) and Flower girls or Flowers (plaua). The latter institu- tion was probably borrowed from the Yali movements in Madang, described by the late Peter Lawrence in his classical study Road belong Cargo (1964). Gesch was told that the workers and the Flowers had to stand naked at their work, on pain of a fine of $ 10. Citing Stem (1977:192), who visited a faktori without being admitted to it, he points out that the Workers and the Flowers took turns over four night-time shifts at tipping coins from one dish to another, using seven dishes. By keeping the money running it was believed to be multiplied. In one particular power house this activity was said to result in an increase from one dollar to $ 995.60 (p. 98). There is some evidence of Daniel sleeping with five Flowers (p. 99). Money was also produced in mini-graveyards or memorials modelled after war memorials such as the Canberra one. The 'graves' were situ- ated alongside the office (ofis). Also, each village had its own memorial. About midnight executives, accompanied by Flowers, entered the graveyard. They placed a two-dollar note into a Bible and prayed that God would bjess their work'. Flowers were then asked to search the graveyard for money. Flowers were said to sleep with the executives. Spirits would rise from the earth. Flowers would attack them causing money to fall from their pockets (p. 99). Memorial gardens (12 ft x 6 ft) were sold for $ 10 a plot (Camp 1983:82). The roving parties, who organized sessions in the power houses, collected membership fees and fines for violating taboos (tambu). They would then move on to the next village. In this way the embers of the movement were kept glowing and considerable capital was built up, only partially dependent on miracles.

Daniel, the organization man of the movement, then proclaimed his so- called Peli association, established earlier by him and another man to oppose multi-racial local government councils. Peli became the body of the movement. Members expected their fees to multiply. Shortly after the climax on the mountain $ 21,572 were collected. The members, paying $ 2 to $ 12, were given receipts written out by pupils of the schools. The Peli hoped for a special bank of its own. Customers would obtain 70c immediately and $ 7,000 by the end of the year (p. 136). A

2. Sydney had sometimes become a synonym for heaven; Gesch had a letter given to him by a close relative of Yaliwan, dated 19th December 1977, and addressed to Jesus at Sydney (p. 78-79). The participants in the Yali movements at Madang, described by Lawrence (1964), also believed that Jesus and God had their residence in Sydney.

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more substantial return for the fees was the purchase of two trucks, -which transported subscribing members around the district for business -or for pleasure against payment of a small fee for the petrol. Also, a ^permanent materials office was built at a strategic site. The association was said to have 200,000 subscribers. Peli is a vernacular word for a kind of hawk. It occurs as a for a number of clans. It was said to have rescued a man stranded in a tree. The hawk picks up all kinds of fish, snakes, and chicken. In a similar vein the Association wants to pick up a wide variety of people, including Europeans (but excluding Japanese!), and carry their burden. The symbol stresses the idea of brotherhood (see ;fieldnotes Janssen, Gesch 1985:316). After a few months, the money collected reverted to an earlier, political organization, the Christian Democratic Party (CDP). Matias declared that 70 cents of the fees was meant for his so-called Seven Association, whereas his SiSo Daniel, explicitly connected with Peli, could stick to the notion that $ 10 or $ 12, signifying the commandments and the apostles of Jesus respectively, were fees for Peli (p. 80). In February 1972 national elections were due. The House of Assembly was to decide on the terms of self-government and eventual independence. For Matias self-government was a traditional right, not a current issue. 'Santu Independens' was. It would come if people prayed together (p. 92). It meant the millennium. The mountain was for all the world (p. 59). >God made Adam and Eve at Mathias' place (p. 40). With their network of komiti and the massive interest throughout the East and West Sepik provinces, Matias, supported by his campaign leader Daniel, secured an overwhelming majority: 82 % of the vote. He rallied support far beyond .his own province. Obviously the dividing-line between the political party, the Seven Association and the Peli Association was very thin, in spite of Matias' denying that he was preaching the Peli Gospel. In the -House of Assembly in Port Moresby he proclaimed his millennial dream and himself as leader of the country. He delegated the Chair to the Prime Minister, Michael Somare. Matias was studiously ignored and closely circumscribed by the rulings of the House. Challenged by the representative of the Maprik .constituency to give evidence of his money factory, the 'Yaliwan mint', so called after Matias' native name, he claimed to have stepped down as leader of Peli in favour of Daniel. Let down by the House and by the local councillors, he resigned in June 1973 (p. 85). He then turned to the hermit's vocation which he had professed .earlier, and retired in splendid isolation on the upper floor of his new tdouble-storey house, constructed by his followers on a commanding site ..and surrounded by barbed wire. There he prayed, read the Bible and had -discussions or religious services with his followers. The latter established a holy community and did not leave the settlement, 'so that our thoughts iwould not wander' (p. 86). They came from all directions. The move-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access Cargo Cult as Countervailing Ideology 529 ment proceeded frotn politics to meditation awaiting the proclamation of independence on 16th September 1975. Matias found the animal representations on the new Papua New Guinea currency wanting, given the fact that he should be acknowledged as the head and gavman (government) of the new nation. In line with the Australian currency, his head should appear on the money. There are reports that the idea of his depiction on the money was connected with his beheading by way of sacrifice. The money would then acquire the religious power of sum- moning things forth (p. 90): money as the supreme economic dimension of a religious ideology. Again the millennium did not eventuate. The next move was to lead a drive against sorcery, the other side of the coin of unity among men. Sorcery was increasing alarmingly in proportion with the individualizing effects of western civilization. Animosities between Papuans in urban centres were growing. The urban Papuans could rely less on the bonds of kinship and on territorial ties. Peli was to expose the female witches in the villages who'worked poison'(p. 91). Meanwhile, the reality of exclusion from the power of the modern world led Matias as gavman of the country on to a few more political paths. He was successfully elected to the Provincial Assembly at the end of '79, but as successfully barred from it (p. 93). He resigned. It is telling that his place was taken by a Papua New Guinean businessman after a by-election. Again he returned to contemplation: he explained Revela- tions 22 to his followers, who referred to his village as 'Israel'. This was the situation in 1983 (p. 95). In 1981 Matias already said that he was dreaming of the arrival of the Canadian New Apostolic Church (NAC). The elders of the villages attended meetings of the NAC. Matias himself kept aloof. The youths were up in arms against the movement at this stage. They charged Matias with having madea number of Flower'girls pregnant and threatened to chop down his houses. The youths turned to the development work of the local government council and to the Roman , equally involved in modern development.

The last and most enduring phase of the Mt. Rurun movement has been its connection with the NAC. This church is a German offshoot of an earlier NAC, which had its origins in England in about 1830. The German connection enjoyed a vigorous growth in many countries, in- cluding Canada. In 1974 it had 856,000 members (p. 109). The church has a strong millennial emphasis. It aims to 'seal' 144,000 servants of God before the end of the world (cf. Revelations 14:1-5). The NAC has an hierarchical organization, consisting of a Chief Apostle, district apostles, evangelists, priests, and deacons. Their missionaries arrived in Wewak and adjoining districts in 1977. They occupy the strategic rank of apostles, but are proud to be lay workers, making a living in secular employment (p. 107). Daniel visited them in Wewak in 1977and invited

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access 530 J.Pouwer them to come to his place. The missionaries arrived in May 1978. Although they did not spend the night in the village and were not even able to speak Tok Pisin, the response was overwhelming: some hundreds of villagers were said to have received baptism and trousers, watches and cigarettes. A considerable entry fee was demanded, by Daniel, that is, not by the apostles. Daniel was made a priest. There is quite a high degree of compatibility between the Mt. Rurun movement and NAC. Daniel and Matias each had twelve 'apostles' to accompany them to Mt. Rurun on 7-7-71 (see p. 107). Daniel manipulated the NAC missio- naries and exploited the situation. There was ample opportunity to do so because the missionaries entered the country under tourist visas, so they could spend maximally three weeks there every three months (p. 107). The NAC affair was strangely complicated by the arrival - equally from Wewak - of some Irian Jaya freedom fighters. They even made their way to the top of Mt. Rurun (p. 108). The village people were asked to support their cause by giving money. From the description of Gesch it is clear that the flag of West Papua circulated in the Mt. Rurun area. A truckload of young fellows set out along the coastal road to Irian Jaya (Jayapura) to help the freedom fighters. They returned. Reports of renewed interest in cargo cults in West Sepik point to an association of such cults with freedom fighters and the Indonesian army, comparable with earlier associations with the American and Australian armies. Though the NAC apostles denounced the cargo cult, and the Peli association never accepted its association with such a cult, Daniel and his Peli association continued their regular services in the name of NAC. Government authorities initially banned the NAC missionaries because they were held responsible for reactivating cargo cult. This ban was lifted at the end of 1981 (p. 114). At the time of the national elections in June 1982, the Melanesian Alliance Party attempted to make a wide-ranging alliance with Peli and NAC.

Schools, though not related directly to the movement, are considered to give access to the good things of the world, such as white-collar jobs, pushing around mysterious bits of paper that summon up goods.from places unknown, jobs that have no labour attached and yet produce liberal returns (p. 138). Even when Gesch tried to straighten his weary back after a day's shovelling, he was told: 'You white men don't work. Where do you get your food from?' School should be a passage leading away from the inexorable grind of subsistence agriculture (p. 138). Students and pupils saw the movement as an opportunity, something for which they had been schooled, and in which they should invest their hopes (p. 138). Some of them wrote out the receipts for Peli and kept books during the sessions of the movement. There was also an indirect link with women's clubs, established by a nun of the Roman Catholic Church. Literacy and sewing classes were

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access Cargo Cult as Countervailing Ideology 531 being offered. The former, after an initially enthusiastic reception, collapsed after July 1971, when the movement made its impact. The sewing classes, however, developed into a network encompassing the entire district (p. 137). Apparently women went about their clubs in their own pedestrian way, securing money to buy sewing machines for community use and to install ovens in the hope of selling bread (p. 137). It is very interesting to note that, according to the nun concerned, the women laughed about the movement and at the men (p. 138). The men, on the other hand, expected a good deal from the women's clubs. In marked contrast to grudging arrangements prior to the movement, they went out of their way to accommodate women's meetings and to free them from garden work. They even independently appointed a man to supervise the clubs in many places. He was to guarantee attendance, and supervise activities such as pooling money for the clubs. The women benefited from this change of attitude. However, the men could not sustain their interest: there was no way of controlling women's pedes- trian affairs (p. 137). It is a pity that Gesch does not elaborate on the attitude of women towards the male-dominated movement.

The synopsis of the movement as an ever-changing, yet continuous, on-going concern clearly illustrates its many faces. When we move from its syntagmatic chain to its paradigmatic structure, we are more explicitly confronted with the problem of interpretation: what makes it tick? How to account for its versatility? Why did it arise and how and why will it eventually disappear? Whence and why the variations? Is there any unity in its diversity? The movement has been studied from various angles by various people. Two geographers (Lea and Allen) have considered it as a popular movement, one of them addressing the question of its impact on agricultural enterprise. An economist (Stent) looked at the economic principles involved. Its role in the broad political scene has been dealt with by a political scientist (May). An historian of ideas (Trompf) has placed the cult in a broad popular religious context. A philosopher (Narakobi) has approached it as a philosophical challenge, and an anthropologist (Roscoe) has been studying its influence on health services. Father Gesch has focused on the religious experience of the participants. His research resulted in a doctorate from the Religious Studies Department of the University of Sydney. Trompf was his super- visor. His angle of observation and interpretation is apparent from the way he presents the material. Part One (p. 27-140) deals with the movement as a process. Part Two (p. 143-292) discusses the social context of the movement: territorial organization, kinship, descent, marriage, politics and warfare, , male and female initiation, ances- tors and spirits. An anthropologist would have reversed the order: starting with the social context he would then have zoomed in on the

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'text', the movement itself. Although the second approach is not necess- arily superior to the former, my guess is that the fit between the 'text' and context would have.been more specific and pertinent in an anthro- pological presentation. The social organization of the movement and the nature of the amazing interlocal network of komiti is hardly dealt with: Also, the emphasis placed by. the author on village religion is not very helpful when an accurate description of a village is missing. In Gesch' presentation the chapters on the movement on the one hand and on the social, economic and religious context on the other, though extremely interesting, if not intriguing, tend to be juxtaposed rather than clearly integrated. Looking at the movement from a religious angle is begging the question of the conceptualization of religion. The author conceives religion as something different from set beliefs, rituals, and morality codes. He wants to understand religion not as a separate institution but as a dimension which may permeate all areas of life. He is interested in religious experience, particularly the experience of novelty and change. 'A matter is religious for someone when he acknowledges a develop- ment taking place in his life or world, which causes personally engrossing wonder or concern, but which the person professes not to have come from his own power or those powers conceived as proportional, to himself (pp. 4-5). The author stresses the criterion of discontinuity in attributed power (p. 4). For the believer, religion reaches beyond human existence, experience and control. Religion is about 'A rumor of angels' (see the sociologist Berger, 1969, not quoted by Gesch). Those who believed in the movement considered the acquisitions of modern western culture they were confronted with as discontinuous with their existence and experience. The key to these extraordinary phenomena was to them a religious one. (Matias did find a religious key in the literal sense of the word: while burning off long grass he found an old key to a Catholic eucharistic tabernacle. He perceived it as the key to heaven. He entrusted the key to a priest, who would not hand it back. (p. 28)) The whites, including Father Gesch, were believed to see the unseen in a most literal sense. They saw the ancestors around them and the cargo literally replenished the earth. However, these whites kept these sight- ings to themselves. Hence the necessity of the cult: it would reveal the sightings of the whites and lead to insight. The criterion of discontinuity with ordinary life could explain why the movement is replete with probing, enquiry, testing and even tricking, with groping for the unseen. If one way turns out to be a blind alley, let's try another one, and yet another one. 'In a ranging variety, one after another, the aspects of Western life are picked up and experimented with as the desired secret and programme' (p. 126). I find this approach towards religion quite valuable. Also, I notice a striking parallel with the way the brain works: it proceeds from doubting to gaining certainty, to

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access Cargo Cult as Countervailing Ideology 533 renewed doubting and new certainty in a ceaseless comparison of new information with information already stored in the brain (see the-biolo- gist Young, 1960). Observing is comparing in a ceaseless dialectic of doubting and gaining certainty. It is this - socially conditioned - process which accounts for the discontinuity and continuity of the movement.

Throughout the book the author stresses the point that 'the Mt. Rurun movement was a response formed out of the normative operations of the traditional religion as the villagers encountered the encroaching Western world' (p. 3). Presenting the sixteen forms of the 'traditional village religion' in a circular diagram of the movement (p. 128), he states that the diagram is 'neither meant to denote cyclical recurrence nor temporal sequence. It is meant rather to indicate that the'tradition did not substantially alter relative to any of the sixteen forms, and that there was overlapping.. .'(p. 128). Yet, in the concluding chapter of his book, where he evaluates Lawrence's cosmology and epistemology as too static, he writes: 'In this regard my owii use of the term "traditional village religion", referring to something which I have found re-appear- ing largely unchanged in many forms throughout the years, is probably a flawed concept. It is useful over only a very short term' (p. 306). A flawed concept indeed. I find it difficult to reconcile his own valuable description of the movement as a multifaced creative process in a dynamic interaction of trial and error with a rapidly changing social and historical context, with the notion of a 'village religion' said to remain largely unchanged. How, then, to account for change from non-change? Here a dialectical approach is in order: religion as social praxis including action and belief, as a social activity which transforms the physical and cultural environment. By so doing, it transforms the human selves, who further transform the environment, and so on, in a spiralling movement. Praxis is the continuous activity, whereas the subject (human selves) and the object (religious institutions) keep changing. This activity is basically an activity of doubting and gaining certainty in close interaction with (the perception of) an historical era and a particular area. Within the framework of the traditional village religion, Gesch offers a more specific interpretation by suggesting a close analogy between initiation, 'a major theme of the religious culture' (p. 3), and the move- ment. '. . . given the great number of novel initiatives taken by the Mt. Rurun movement to deal with the new times, we need to consider how village religion traditionally approached novelty and change' (p. 3). Gesch's answer is: by means of initiation. Hence the title of his book: initiative and initiation - predominantly male initiation, that is. The initiation of women from girls to mature persons on the occasion of their first menstruation is a fairly simple affair. It does mobilize the commun- ity as a whole, however, and involves massive food exchanges and giving money to the MoBr group of the novices (p. 257-62). The initiation of

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access 534 /. Pouwer males is far more differentiated. It involves six steps (p. 225-57). Moving from one step to the next is marked by a gradual disclosure of predomi- nantly male religious and ritual knowledge, represented by flutes and masks, which impersonate culture heroes, male and female guardian spirits, connected with crucial events such as marriage and hunting and with major natural phenomena. Also, there is a progression in bleeding and circumcision. This harsh operation, testing the strength and endur- ance of the novices, has a variety of meanings: removal of the womanly blood of the mother, imitation of menstruation, and reinforcement of energy, drained by, for instance, the death of a leader. Also, and most interesting, the head of the penis is sliced up and divided like a garden: "This is for your mother, this is for your sister, this is for your in-law.... This is a mark which gives instruction that now the man cares for others in return for what they did for him in his childhood' (p. 252). Any revelation at any particular step in the initiation is followed by the information that the novice does not really possess the truth yet (p. 185). So, there is a progression in and a hierarchy of the secret knowledge revealed. Gesch makes the important point that the progression in revealing this secret knowledge has a social function. It is a social fiction. Males and females are often already in the know. They pretend not to know. The pretension is what counts socially (p. 244). In a similar vein, I suggest, one may interpret the evident tricks, such as throwing money at a roof in order to draw potential followers into the movement. The sucking of pebbles from a wound by a healer, who must have consciously put the pebbles in his mouth prior to the operation, may equally be considered as a social fiction. Knowledge, or the absence of it, secrecy, is not something existing in its own right: it is a socially imparted, relational affair. It is a social relatum rather than a social thing.

Although the suggestion of an analogy between initiation and the movement is enticing, it is not, in my opinion, substantiated by empirical evidence. There is no evidence that the participants see it this way. Also, there is hardly any step-by-step progression in the movement. The metaphor may be Gesch' own invention, which may serve as a pastoral device: 'Pastorally, I feel the initiation perspective indicates the useful- ness of building up a series of steps for entering into marriage, baptism and ministry'(Gesch 1983:102). In my opinion, a cargo cult could be viewed as a religious ideological practice. As to 'religion' or 'religious', I concur with Gesch' emphasis on the criterion of discontinuity with human experience: religion connotes the rumours of angels. It implies certainty and doubt, trust and suspicion, confidence and bewilderment. Here is the connection with the experi- ence of modern phenomena as mysteries, miracles. Here also is the connection with social incongruity: non-acceptance by the whites on equal terms, being left out in sharing. There is one important detail in a

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access Cargo Cult as Countervailing Ideology 535 report by an inhabitant of the hamlet closest to Mt. Rurun about placing the first marker in 1932: 'When the first whites arrived they spoke with me and said: "You people give us the OK that we can cut down the bush and clear the trees. Then all of us, white and black, can sit down together. We can live united". The first arrival was Kiap Tomsen [District officer Townsend] from Wewak. He arrived, spoke to us; they approved and cut down and cleared these trees. Thus they made the first fire on the mountain... When the clearing was finished, they didn't sit down with us . . .' (p. 32, my italics). As to 'ideology', I conceive of it as a dominant, totalizing, explicit or implicit practice (including ideas and action). A society, or rather a social formation, because a society is always in the making, could be thought of in terms of autonomous but not independent areas of life or dimensions. Ideology as a practice articulates, that is, both discerns and unites these dimensions. 'Ideology' taken in this sense has a close affinity with Mauss' well-known 'total social fact', which I personally take to mean 'a relation between social facts rather than a plain fact, totalizing rather than a totality' (Pouwer 1979:13). Ideology in this sense totalizes relations between multitudes of social facts which operate in various, auton- omous, dimensions of a social formation, such as the social, economic, political and religious dimensions. Since a symbol is by definition a multivocal, multivalent sign, it serves as a perfect vehicle of ideology, seen as a totalizer. The cement block is a perfect example of an ideological symbol. So is the Peli (Hawk). Gesch correctly describes the events of 7-7-71 as a 'marvellously compressed symbol of the whole Mt. Rurun movement' (p. 61). One should bear in mind that literally illiterate people depend heavily on oral traditions and by that token on the use of concrete symbols, very often derived from surrounding nature. Theirs is a 'science of the concrete' (Levi-Strauss 1966: Ch. 1). In a recent essay about traditional cosmologies in the making of the Mt. Ok peoples in western inner Papua New Guinea, Barth writes: '. . . the use of concrete symbols in metaphor leads to an ordered and elaborated multivocality of symbols which tend to join multiple significances in unique clusters and make them seem immanent in objects. Combined with the pervasive practice of secrecy, this means that statements, and the Nature which the statements are about, take on some of the aspects of a cryptogram. Things are never merely or really, what they appear to be ... something one thought was dirt is really clean, what one felt to be abhorrent is really valued and sacred, what was thought insignifi- cant is pregnant with meanings [which applies to the cement blocks, J.P.]. Thus the sacred symbols of the Mountain Ok are not only multivocal, but also deeply multivalent; and reality is best

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apprehended by a cultivation of mystery, not by a search for definitive truth. It follows that deep knowledge in such a tradition is conceived as necessarily inexplicit - what we might idiomatically • refer to as "intuitive" or "gut feeling" - and key concepts are usually characterized by their wordlessness . . .' (Barth 1987:77). Pondering on the wealth and diversity of concrete happenings, actions, symbols and meanings, reflected by Gesch in a valiant attempt to de- scribe a heterogeneous movement which cannot simply be denoted flatly by the gloss 'cargo cult', one feels that Barth's statement applies equally to Mt. Rurun religious ideology. Every dimension of the social forma- tion and of the culture is permeated by it. It follows from this that, for instance, the economic aspect, like all other dimensions, has strong religious and symbolic overtones. It also follows that Mt. Ruruh economics and western economics, though designated with the same term and empirically related, are yet miles apart. The followers of the movement avidly seek to participate in western economic and social life, yet experience it quite differently. A number of salient examples may illustrate this point. When a Patrol Officer, in a heated public discussion on 15th May 1971, tried to dissuade Matias and his followers from removing the marker by assuring everyone that the government had no interest in taking land, that the placement of the marker was subject to legal sanctions, that an increase in property might best be served by considering the services of the Development Bank and the assistance of government agencies and by an emphasis on 'hard work', not meant as a metaphor, Matias vigorously interrupted him. 'Let things remain undeveloped'. . . 'Take it but! I called this gathering to take the cement out' (p. 59). The movement's equivalent of 'work' in the western economic sense is apparent from the term for arid the activities of the woka in the power houses, the movement's equivalent of factories, who produce money by keeping it running from one dish into another. Wok independens of the white people, as opposed to Santu independens of the movement, would mean that 'factories will come inside the Sepik Districts and people will have to work hard in factories' (statement by Daniel, see p. 92) - hence the movement's need for a power house of its own, the Yaliwan Mint. Daniel rejected the Catholic Church because of its emphasis on busi- ness, which to him resembled the playing of dice on Jesus' clothes (p. 29). 'The various government departments and business are superficial, as you all know. They are a lot of hard work. You can do the work until you die. Then your children can work till they die... . The mission and government. . . trick us with lots of talks. They trick us with the business of coffee and copra, cattle and any kind of business - teaching too, that is a business' (statement by Daniel, see p. 60). Gesch rightly comments that Daniel is saying that the mystical element, which is the essential element for an increase in prosperity, must be applied under a new type

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access Cargo Cult as Countervailing Ideology 537 of gavman, so that wealth will abound (p. 60). One should note that Matias identified himself with gavman. There are two Bibles: 'one for honouring God' and 'one for business'. The latter was kept secret from the 'black-man' (statement by an execu- tive of the movement, cited on p. 136). Another 'official' said 'that a man only reads a certain passage from this (second) Bible and a case of fish will appear; if he reads another passage, some rice will kamap noting (appear)'. The rice-growing industry, introduced into the District, merely serves to conceal the true source of the cargo (Knight 1975:9, cited on p. 136). In a western-oriented Mt. Rurun society or movement, not religion but economics would be the dominant ideological totalizer, permeating all areas of life. This is sensed by government councillors and other development-oriented men. These men sometimes make a fuss at public meetings, saying: 'Put aside the traditions without value! Do not invest your money in buying pigs' (p. 266). Pigs are the capital items of social and ceremonial exchange in Mt. Rurun society. Social exchange in multifarious forms is, from an observer's point of view, the major total social fact, the dominant mechanism of this society. It makes it tick. In a fascinating chapter (ch. 11, pp. 150-180), Gesch shows that clans are linked through an asymmetric exchange of women, based on a pre- scribed marriage of male ego with FaMoBrSoDa (that is, between second cousins). Symmetric exchange of women was practised after interlocal warfare, when women where sent to the villages of enemies in order to cement friendships (p. 166). There are also exchanges of titles to land (p. 173), and between allies in warfare. Last but not least, there is a striking asymmetrical form of exchange in the performance of ritual acts prescribed for the six steps of initiation (pp. 225-230). Pigs circulate in one direction in exchange for ritual services, such as circumcision, circulating in the opposite direction. Clans do not initiate their own members.

It will be clear that the Mt. Rurun religious ideology, like any ideology, including an economic one, not only signifies and illuminates the inter- connections between the various areas of life; it also, and even by so doing, distorts and disguises them. Any totalization implies (oversim- plification and even mystification of the rich variety and diversity of social reality. This is the price paid for order and intelligibility by and for the sake of the participants. Also, ideology expresses and legitimizes social and ritual exchange: women are gifts rather than givers in this particular context. It is a strongly held doctrine that a man must be boss of his wife (p. 263). Young men occasionally express violent sentiments about women: 'Women are of no account; they are rubbish' (p. 257). Yet, the mature men are very firm that this is a wrong thing to say: 'Men and women strive in parellel: men have their tasks, and women have

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access 538 . J. Pouwer theirs' (p. 257). Also, marriage appears usually to be an arduous mutual adjustment to certain realities (p. 263). Women's initiation requires the vigorous participation of both men and women (p. 258-262). The circumcision of young men is seen as an imitation of menstruation and as a removal of mother's blood. It testifies to the ambiguous and ambi- valent relation between the male and female gender. The rituals during the six steps of initiation also bear witness to both fierce aggression against and care for the younger men by the elder men. Considered from the viewpoint of dominant religious ideology, it is quite logical that its adherents should experience western enterprise and economic development as a cover-up. Conversely, the Western and Papuan subscribers to ah economic ideology are bound to experience the initiatives and undertakings of the Mt. Rurun movement as a mystifica- tion. Any subscriber to any ideology mistakes his own ideology for a natural and self-evident one. In my opinion, science equally has an ideological component, which the scientist should try to uncover and overcome. A change in ideology will come about by a growing externally and/or internally induced disparity between the various dimensions of a social formation. Sooner or later this disparity is bound to be noticed by more and more members of a society. The fuss made by councillors and other persons interested in socio-economic development about investing money in pigs might be a case in-point. One may anticipate that in the long run various modalities of social exchange will give way, or rather - and more likely - will be subordinated to commercial-economic exchange when the economy shifts to the production and distribution of commodities, articulated in a process of growing monetization and dependence on world markets. A Melanesian-style economic ideology will then emerge, with a totalizing signification and mystification of its own. Cargo cult-type movements and their various transformations, induced by external events and organizations, will gradually give way to cults of management and progress. The latter require'a prevalence of the written tradition and abstract concepts, including those of state and nation. Although .the oral tradition, la pensee sauvage and concrete symbols are perfectly capable of connoting abstract ideas and messages, they are less capable of denoting them. They will therefore inexorably recede into an implicit background, will be less on instant call, less

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 01:21:01AM via free access Cargo Cult as Countervailing Ideology 539 functional, and therefore more easily forgotten. But their wordless connotations will linger on.3

OTHER WORKS REFERRED TO

Barth, Frederik, 1987, Cosmologies in the making: A generative approach to cultural variation in inner New Guinea, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berger, Peter L., 1969, A rumor of angels; Modem society and the rediscovery of the ,,New York: Doubleday. • Camp, Cheryl (R.S.M.), 1983, "The Peli Association and the New Apostolic Church', in:' W. Flannery and G. W. Bays (eds), 'Religious movements in Melanesia today (1)', Point, series no. 2:78-94, Goroka, Papua New Guinea: The Melanesian Institute. Counts, David, and Dorothy Counts, 1976, 'Apprehension in the backwaters', Oceania 46:283-305. Gellner, Ernest, 1964, Thought and change, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . 'Gesch, Patrick F., 1983, 'Initiation and cargo cults: The Peli case', Point, series no. 2:94-104. Jarvie, I. C, 1964, The Revolution in Anthropology, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Knight, Michael, 1975, 'The Pelf Ideal', Catalyst 5(4):3-22. Lawrence, Peter, 1964, Road Belong Cargo, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1966, The Savage Mind, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. McDowell, Nancy, 1988, 'A note on Cargo and cultural constructions of change', Pacific Studies 11-2:121-134. Pouwer, Jan, 1979, Syllabus stromingen in de culturele antropologie: Structurele antro- pologie, Nijmegen: KUN reprografie (Code: 4.20.64). Stent, W. R., 1977, 'An Interpretation of a Cargo Cult', Oceania 47(3): 187-219. Young, J. Z:, 1960, Doubt and certainty in science; A biologist's reflections on the brain, New York: Oxford University Press. 3. After completing this paper, my attention was drawn, by Anton Ploeg. to whom I am also indebted for some useful corrections, to a recent note on cargo cults and cultural constructions of change by Nancy McDowell (1988), who herself admits 'a partial reinvention of the Counts' 1976 wheel' (1988:132, note 8). Making the original observation that cargo cults, like totemism before Levi-Strauss, are, in his words, 'archaic illusions' of the anthropologists, she focuses on a single factor in the analysis of so-called cargo cults. She refers to 'a segment of ideology that underlies these so-called cargo cults as well as economic development, political activity, religious conversation, myth and cosmos, and ritual activity. That factor is how people conceptualize the nature of change and ways in which change can be effected as well as affected' (McDowell 1988:123). She agrees in this respect with David and Dorothy Counts, who argue that the Kaliai of New Britain 'foresee change, not as a process occurring by degree but rather as a sudden qualitative transformation that alters fundamental relations (and) . . . they believe that they can foresee such transformation and can, by appropriately changing their activities, prepare themselves to take advantage of, or at least survive them' (Counts and Counts 1976:304, as quoted by McDowell 1988:127/128). •McDowell follows Gellner (1964) in labelling such a conceptualization of time, change and history 'episodic', as opposed to an evolutionary, gradual view of the process of , time (McDowell 1988:124). She further argues that such a view of time underlies seemingly different categories such as cargo activities, economics, politics, and concepts of history and of . . • In my opinion, the concept of religious ideology as a totalizing practice, as explained in my paper, elegantly covers and integrates the valid points made by McDowell and the Counts. One should, however, keep in mind Gesch' emphasis on the criterion for religion as being discontinuous with human experience. Hence the drastic, radical cataclysm of the so-called cargo cults.

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