[1] This chapter brings together material from the introduction and conclusion to Micronationalist Movements in Papua New Guinea, published as Political and Social Change Monograph 1 in 1982.
[2] For some cautionary comments on the use of this term see various papers in van den Berghe (1965), especially that by Mercier; Connor (1973); Cohen (1978). Also see Heeger (1974:88-94).
[3] And by at least two authors (Premdas 1977 and Griffin 1975) in reference to movements described in May (1982).
[4] Cf. Wolfers (1970) and Stephen (1972) both of whom included the Mataungan Association and Napidakoe Navitu in their surveys of political parties.
[5] For a comment on the definition of political parties, with reference to Papua New Guinea, see Wolfers (1970).
[6] ‘Cargo cults’ might be broadly described as movements which seek to achieve a substantial increase in material welfare (‘cargo’) through mystical or quasi-mystical means (cf. Jarvie [1963:1]:‘Cargo cults are apocalyptic millenarian movements, primarily of Melanesia, which promise a millenium in the form of material and spiritual cargo’). Outside the more precise anthropological literature, however, the term has been attached loosely, and often pejoratively, to a variety of spontaneous local movements, many of which have had little to do with cargo expectations narrowly defined (cf. Walter 1981). The extent of a link between cargo cult and micronationalist movement is a subject to which we will return.
[7] Gerritsen, also writing in 1975, used the term ‘dynamic communal association’ in reference to at least some of the movements included in our 1975 survey (contrasting such community based organisations with ‘“class” based’ interest associations) (Gerritsen 1975:14). More recently, Walter (1981) has used the term ‘community development association’ in a similar context.
[8] From the English, passenger; hence one who is ‘carried’, dependent.
[9] See, for example, Belshaw (1950), Bodrogi (1951), Guiart (1951b), Lawrence (1955, 1964), Worsely (1957), Mead (1964) and Cochrane (1970). The quotation is from Cochrane (1970:157).
[10] For accounts of similar movements in other parts of Melanesia in this period see Guiart (1951a) on the Malekula Native Company (Vanuatu) and Cochrane(1970) and Keesing (1978) on the Marching Rule (Solomon Islands).
[11] For a more detailed account of the Hahalis Welfare Society see Rimoldi (1971, 1976), Hagai (1966), Kiki (1968:chapter 7) and Oliver(1973). [A more recent publication is Rimoldi and Rimoldi (1992).]
[12] Cf. Guiart’s description of the Malekula Native Company (Vanuatu) as being ‘en marge du “Cargo Cult”’ (Guiart 1951a).
[13] Detailed studies of the Peli Association and the Pitenamu Society are included in May (1982). [On the Peli Association, also see Gesch 1985.]
[14] Detailed studies of Napidakoe Navitu, the Mataungan Association, the Nemea Landowners’ Association and the Ahi Association are included in May (1982).
[15] House of Assembly Debates (HAD) III (8):1011, 29 September 1972.
[16] For a more detailed discussion of the Purari issue see Pardy et al. (1978) and Kairi (1977).
[17] For an analysis of the impact of the Boera Association on the village people see Moi (1979).
[18] See Waiko (1977).
[19] Post-Courier 12 August 1974. For some critical assessments of the Movement see Yaman (1975).
[20] Post-Courier 16 January 1975.
[21] The most comprehensive account of the North Solomons nationalism in the period to 1974 is that of Mamak and Bedford (1974). Also see Griffin (1973, 1974, 1976), Hannett(1975) and Conyers (1976).
[22] The Papua Besena movement is examined by McKillop in May (1982), and also in Daro (1976).
[23] The HLF is described in detail, by Standish and Mel in May (1982).
[24] Post-Courier 28 November 1972.
[25] House of Assembly Debates 11(17):123, 20-24 September 1971.
[26] Note, however, the comment of Colebatch (1979:120), that ‘few of the local development associations appeared as [RIP] project sponsors’.
[27] This section draws on material presented in a preliminary form in May (1975, 1979).
[28] McSwain (1977:183) makes the general comment on the people of Karkar: ‘One of the important differences [between the Karkar and Europeans] was the Karkar merging of economic, political and educational institutions into one generalised social system oriented towards the traditional value of local communalism as against European specialisation and compartmentalism’.
[29] For an interesting critique of the materialist interpretation, from the viewpoint of a missionary discussing cargo cults, see Heuter (1974).
[30] Adas, in his study of ‘millenarian protest movements’, observes similarly that ‘prophetic ideologies are normally eclectic both temporally and culturally’ (1979:114).
[31] Compare Jarvie’s comment, in relation to the revival of old customs by cargo cults:‘ … the revived culture is a symbol reminding people of a time of freedom or happiness when there were no frustrations’ (Jarvie 1963:12). Similarly Smith (1979:176-179) sees ‘ethnic nationalism’ as a romantic reaction to the centralised, modernising state.
[32] In his analysis of the leadership of millenarian protest movements Adas (1979:112-119) distinguishes between, at one pole of a continuum, ‘displaced indigenous leaders’, who ‘emerge as defenders of the customary, precontact cultural order’ and respond to well-established models of behaviour, and at the other, ‘men of low birth’ who have no established place in either the precolonial or the colonial order but whose exposure to both allows them to act as ‘cultural brokers’ and who draw on both for their ideologies, leadership styles, and modes of organisation.
[33] Lawrence comments similarly on the Yali movement (1964:255): ‘... in 1945, when Yali tried to introduce a programme that did not include ritual activity … the people distorted his propaganda … it had to be made consistent not only with their economic and sociopolitical aspirations but also with their intellectual assumptions’.
[34] Pye (1962:22) argues that ‘sharp differences in the political orientation of the generations’ are typical of ‘transitional politics’. In the Papua New Guinea context, Townsend (1980) posits ‘difference in the attitudes of the generations’ as explanation for the contrasting post-colonial reactions of ‘disengagement’ and ‘incorporation’.
[35] Compare Bailey’s (1969:chapter 3) distinction between ‘core’, bound to a leader through multiplex (‘moral’) relationships, and ‘following’ whose attachment is transactional.
[36] Compare Pye’s comment (1962:24), that the ‘functionally diffuse character’ of groupings in the transitional political process ‘tends to force each group to develop its own ends and means of political action, and the relationship of means to ends tends to be more organic than rational or functional’.
[37] Post-Courier 16 March 1977. A similar view was expressed to me by John Kasaipwalova in 1975. Also see the comment by Nemea leaders in 1974 (quoted in May 1982:183).
[38] Compare this observation with the comments of Wilson (1972) on the performance of village industries.
[39] This is perhaps not quite fair in the case of Ahi. A Morobe Cultural Centre was established in Lae – but only with substantial initiative from sources outside the Ahi Association.
[40] On the last point compare Wallerstein (1960) and Ake (1967).
[41] For an interesting discussion of the effects of ‘size’ on political activity, see Dahl and Tufte (1974, especially chapter 3).
[42] Cf. Mazrui (1970:56):‘Until the recent interest in large scale mining enterprise, Australian indifference denied New Guineans even the advantage of a shared anti-colonial resentment’.
[43] Six years after Davis wrote, of thirty-one student groups affiliated with the University’s Student Representative Council eleven were university-wide sporting clubs, fourteen were provincial associations (Central Province Students Association, East Sepik Students Society, etc.) and five represented sub-provincial regional groups; the remaining group was an association of (non Papua New Guinea) Pacific Islands students. Ballard (1976) has also commented on student parochialism at UPNG.
[44] For a more detailed description of the mood of this period, see Ballard (1976) and Standish (1982).
[45] Post-Courier 14 January 1972.
[46] A definition of ‘cargo cults’, and a comment on the usage of the term, is offered in note 5 above. Also noted is Walter’s (1981) objection to the term. It is not our intention here to debate the semantics of the cargo cult literature; however, as Strelan (1977:11) argues, cargo is an inadequate translation of the Pidgin term kago, and in the following discussion we will use the term in the broad sense elaborated by Strelan (ibid.):‘Cargo cults have to do with Melanesian concepts of power, status, wealth, and the good life’.
[47] Gerritsen similarly sees his ‘dynamic communal associations’, as ‘the spiritual if not the lineal descendants of the cargo cults’, even to the point of describing the Mataungan Association as ‘the heir to earlier cargo cults’ (1975:8-9, 14, 18).
[48] Comparable lists of the ‘characteristics’ of cargo cults are presented and discussed in Stanner (1953), Hogbin (1958), Hobsbawm (1959), Mead (1964), Jarvie (1964), Brown (1966), Talmon (1966), and elsewhere.
[49] Hobsbawm suggests three main characteristics of the ‘typical old fashioned millenarian movement in Europe’: ‘First, a profound and total rejection of the present, evil world … Second, a fairly standardised “ideology” of the chiliastic type … Third … a fundamental vagueness about the actual way in which the new society will be brought about’ (1959:57-58). Being essentially revolutionary, however, millenarian movements are easily modernised or absorbed into modern social movements. Once so transformed or absorbed, Hobsbawm argues, they normally retain the first of these characteristics (rejection of the present order); abandon the second at least to some extent, substituting a modern, generally secular, ideology; and add a superstructure of modern revolutionary politics (ibid.:59). In the Papua New Guinea case, it might be argued that in the 1970s political responsibility was already being transferred from the colonial government to ‘the people’ – but without a corresponding transfer of economic power, and that in consequence what was added to the armoury of local mass movements was not a superstructure of revolutionary politics but one oriented to ‘development’ through a combination of modern bisnis and a somewhat romanticised ideology of communal self-help.
[50] The concept of relative deprivation is explored in Aberle (1962). Note, however, Aberle’s warning that analysis in terms of deprivation does have ‘a certain excessive flexibility. It is always possible after the fact to find deprivations’ (1962:213).
[51] Compare Aberle (1962:214): ‘… the deprivations which form the background for the [millenarian movement not only involve the sense of blockage … but also the sense of a social order which cannot be reconstituted to yield the satisfactions desired. The millenarian ideology justifies the removal of the participants from that social order … [It] justifies withdrawal, and that is its functional significance’.
[52] Stent (1973:2), in proposing a definition of cargo cults, has some interesting comments on what, in the Papua New Guinea context, is and what is not a cargo cult.
[53] On the subject of ‘rationality’ in relation to cult behaviour see Jarvie (1964:chapter 5), Jarvie and Agassi in Wilson (1970), Brookfield (1972:chapter 13), and especially Adas (1979:160-164).
[54] Lawrence has further elaborated his 1977 comments in Lawrence (1982). Similarly see Strelan (1977:10): ‘Cargoism in Melanesia is endemic; it exists even when and where there is no overt cargo movement or cargo activity’. McSwain (1977) and Stephen (1977) are amongst others who have recently documented the coexistence of cultic and secular beliefs and social action.
[55] Similarly, see Gerritsen (1975:8-9).
[56] It was not, however, universally accepted; see, for example, Stanner (1958) and Jarvie (1964:61). A more recent critic of the hypothesis is Smith (1979:chapter 2).
[57] David Hegarty, personal communication, 1976.
[58] For a recent formulation of such an ‘evolutionary’ viewpoint, with specific reference to Papua New Guinea, see Townsend (1980). Townsend sees ‘the present disengagement in some rural areas’ as ‘a transitory phase’ (ibid.:16), preceding eventual incorporation into the world system.
[59] Also see Smith (1979) and Gourevitch (1979).
[60] See, for example, Wallerstein (1960), Geertz (1963), Connor (1967-68, 1971-72), Roth (1968), Melson and Wolpe (1970), Enloe (1973), Heeger (1974), Birch (1978), Smith (1979).
[61] See, for example, Somare (1970).
[62] For one thing, it helps explain the non-development of a coherent national political party system.