The Trumpet Shall Sound: A study of “cargo cults in Melanesia by Peter Worsley

Published in 1957, this book stands as a broad synthesis into the numerous millenarian movements in Melanesia that have been categorized under the term “cargo cult”.  The problem with the term is not just the “cult” part.  Most peoples impression of cargo cults are constructed out of common usage of the term that equates the logic of cargo cults as methodology totally unconnected with the rational cause.  It is used in a judgmental pejorative sense in the same way that voodoo as a legitimate religious practice is defamed by terms such as “voodoo economics” or “voodoo science”.  The other exposure most people have had to cargo cults comes from the scene of the 1962 film Mondo Cane.  That film is not a place to get ethnographic impressions, though it might be honest in representation but mischaracterized by its framing.

The book is comparative in scope.  The analyses are geographic and linear, following movements in particular regions through their historic formations, reactions of the colonial administrations, and eventual dissolution or transformations into something else.  Worsley combs the historical sources, and in many ways this book is partly a review of the available sources.

Worsley also frames these millenarian movements in their political aspects.  In this sense the book does have a strong Marxist constructive current through it, framing the religious revitalizations that are described in their revolutionary characteristics in resistance to missionary and plantations.  As such, Worsley constructs the various movements (from the John Frum cult to the Paliau movement and the Vailala Madness) as various forms of community activism organized around a fascinating variety of Melanesian philosophical debates on Christian theology.  Alas, missionaries don’t want to debate theology with the natives…and that is to the missionary’s detriment.

Worsley’s book is an excellent presentation of the cultural history of Melanesian millenarian movements.  It is broad in context, including several primary historical sources and stands as a necessary piece of foundational scholarship in this area.

The University of Cambridge has an interesting 3 hour interview with Worsley here:  http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1139306.

Social Complexity in the Making: A Case Study among the Arapesh of New Guinea by Donald Tuzin

This is a case study of a group of Arapesh speakers in northwestern New Guinea, called the Ilahita Arapesh.  The thing that makes this ethnography important is that the Ilahita Arapesh lived at the time of Tuzin’s study in a large village community of about 1500 people, when 300 is the maximum size for New Guinea settlements before fission occurs (outside of governmental settlements or areas where industrial bases are present).  As such it provides an interesting model to test ideas of evolutionary formations of social structure against particularist ideas against such views of social formation.

Tuzin presents the mechanism that preserved such a large settlement size as not an ecological or material environmental explanation, nor a result of historical factors  owing to a particularist formation of this isolated circumstance, but instead presents a structural-functional (at least as I interpret it) reason in the practice of the Tambaran.  This is an all-male secret society that is organized into moities within moities, that entail a highly complex series of circumstances that require constant ritual exchanges, endogamy, adoption, and an ever-present maintenance of the social organization through ritual competitions of yam growing, ceremonial feasting and other performances that creates the necessary interdependence that allows for conflict resolution to be a social constant that doesn’t so much lead to social harmony as it does a passive aggressive social mode of non-violent conflict for internal disagreements, including (but not limited to) the focus of this aggression towards outsiders.

This system of ritually complex organization appears to be part of the “cargo cult” phenomenon, a poorly termed historical effect that resulted in a wide variety of social and ritual reorganizations that occurred in the New Guinea territory as a result of colonization, the fluctuations of global commodity prices effecting plantation employment and wages, cash crop prices, government taxation, and contact with the local missionaries.  Contact with missionaries was an especially interesting and variated part of the cargo cult complex in that while some indigenous groups would openly call Christianity a lie others thought the missionaries liars and postulated ideations of Christianity that were their own formulations.  Most of the emergent cargo cult philosophies had a strong dislike of whites and outsiders.

The Tambaran system was effectively destroyed in 1984, when the ceremonial paraphernalia was destroyed and all the male guarded secrets were revealed to the women.  The research that resulted in this book mostly comes from the early 1970s.  Evangelical missionary interference seems to be the main reason for the cults destruction.

This text is written in clear and concise language that is easy for a student to digest.  He even references Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel in a few places.  Nice for introductory classes who are confused by the algebraic acrobatics found in kinship systems and equally muddled by the more esoteric hermetical work of Clifford Geertz.  I am not saying that “hard” anthropology should not be given to a student as a challenge, but that the first book of anthropology you lay on a student (beyond the corporate mandated vocabulary words in bold type illustrated by numerous pictures that is called a textbook) should not be Writing Culture or a heavy piece of philosophical post-modernism.  There is plenty of time to destroy a budding anthropologists interests with those things in graduate school.  Let those young anthro maj0rs enjoy their young love with the discipline by reading more books like this.  This book is not one that will feature in the process of educational aversion therapy by promoting excessive drudgery.

Tuzin acknowledges Freeman as important to his resource opportunities, yet quotes Mead’s work with the Mountain Arapesh and even recounts a friendly visit by her during his fieldwork.  Kudos for Tuzin for staying out of that mess.

The Australian National University has an excellent website/e-book about Tuzin’s work with the Tambaran if you are interested in these things:  http://epress.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Echoes+of+the+Tambaran%3A+Masculinity%2C+history+and+the+subject+in+the+work+of+Donald+F.+Tuzin/6861/Text/intro.html.

Michael Taussig 2010 Seminar at European Graduate School

Seminar talks at the European Graduate School.  Good stuff.

There are several more videos on youtube as well.  Rip the audio and listen to them on the bus.

Review – Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music Around the World edited by Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger and Paul D. Greene

My review at Anthropology Review Database:

http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=4335

Review: Joe The Barbarian by Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy

My review on the Deconstructing Comics website:

http://deconstructingcomics.com/?p=2311

Review: Johnny Cash – I See A Darkness by Reinhard Kleist

New review up at Deconstructing Comics:  http://deconstructingcomics.com/?p=2263

From a Basement in Seattle: The Poster Art of Brad Klausen

Brad Klausen is a Seattle grapic artist and poster designer.  He was an in house artist for Pearl Jam.  Not surprisingly, the book features introductions by Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament.  A majority of the posters featured in this book are tour posters for Pearl Jam, but pieces for several other bands such as TV On The Radio, Mudhoney, Eagles of Death Metal and Queens of the Stone Age are included.

The book has a simple layout.  On the left hand sketches of the initial poster design and text describing the inspiration of the design, changes applied to the final design and some of the meanings behind design choices are balanced by a full page reproduction of the poster on the right hand page.

Klausen’s work is bold and graphically well constructed.  Text is an important design element, though at times I felt that the actual legibility was lost in a couple of pieces where he became a bit to abstract for me.  His sense of color is impeccable and his choices are bold and eye catching.  The text that accompanies the poster images is also insightful to those interested in his design genesis and process.  The printing quality of the book is great to, the colors are well reproduced on a level found with some of the better fine art museum catalogs.

If you are into poster art and graphic design this book is worth a look.  If you are a big Pearl Jam fan this book will be an extra special treat.

Review: Orc Stain by James Stokoe

New review up at Deconstructing Comics:  http://deconstructingcomics.com/?p=2169#more-2169

Review: Signal to Noise by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean

New review up at Deconstructing Comics:  http://deconstructingcomics.com/?p=2139#more-2139

Review: Recovering the Commons: Democracy, Place, and Global Justice by Herbert G. Reid and Betsy Taylor

New review up at the Anthropology Review Database:  http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=4195