Cultures Of Secrecy: Reinventing Race in Bush Kaliai Cargo Cults (New Directions in Anthro Writing) [Paperback]

Andrew Lattas (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0299158047 | ISBN-13: 978-0299158040 | Publication Date: July 29, 1998

After driving the Japanese out of Papua New Guinea during World War II, the U.S. military left their gearand the makings of a cargo cultto the native Kaliai. Cultures of Secrecy offers a close look at how, for fifty years, the bush Kaliai in Melanesia have worked these tailings of the western world into their indigenous culture. Andrew Lattas shows how cargo cults in general bring together past, present, and future in their curious blending of traditional myths, imported folklore, borrowed state practices and ideologies, and reworked Christian stories. The result is a richly interdisciplinary work that uses ethnography to explore questions of racial experience, gender relations, space, time, death, and the politics of human relations. A wonderful book: an original and compelling argument, a wealth of empirical detail analysed with great political sensitivity, and a break-through in understanding what cargo means to those people whom anthropologists have used cargo to define.Michael Jackson, Victoria UniversityWellington

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Andrew Lattas is fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia. He has been editor of two special editions of the journal Oceania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (July 29, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299158047
• ISBN-13: 978-0299158040
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 in Books > History > Australia & Oceania > Papua New Guinea

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