The 1940s and 1950s were marked by an efflorescence of Melanesian cargo cult activities--periodic movements in which native people deeply believed they could attain abundant European goods (and the status that these goods seemed to assure) by ritual means. Road Belong Cargo has long been the authoritative account of the cargo phenomenon in New Guinea. Written from Lawrence's own careful research, as well as from historical records and comparable studies in anthropology and ethnohistory, this theoretically sophisticated study describes how the villagers of the Madang District sought, through religious experiment and speculation, to change a world in which they felt themselves to be the underdogs despised by the colonial masters. An excellent history of culture contact and ethnic relations over nearly eight decades, this study of people living in a tiny segment of the frontier between the industrial world and that of the village, in a long isolated corner of the world, enables readers to see five short-lived religious movements, aggravated by the rigid rule imposed by a succession of Western administrations.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Description of the Cargo Cults,
By
This review is from: Road Belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District, New Guinea (Paperback)
This is an in depth study of the Cargo Cults with New Guinea as the focus. I had a relative who was an explorer to the central highlands of New Guinea and this book gave us much to talk about. This book should be of interest to anyone interested in New Guinea generally.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Useful if you are doing a doctoral thesis in anthropology,
By FairHopeLady "FairHopeLady" (Lower Alabama) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Road Belong Cargo: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District, New Guinea (Paperback)
or if you are one of the few with an indepth interest in either cargo cults or the indigenous peoples of the island of New Guinea. otherwise, it's dry and tough going. a better read would be a comparison of the cargo cults in melanesian New Guinea and the cargo cults in the polynesian islands of the South Pacific to the east.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Atlantean Cargo Cult,
By Airport Spider (Ireland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Road Belong Cargo: A Study Of The Cargo Movement In The Southern Madang District New Guinea. (Hardcover)
Peter Lawrence strikes a balanced tone in his account of the Madang 'Cargo Cults', considering it is a work of early to mid twentieth century. This book is cited by various authors (such as Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz) in the debate over the meaning of Yali's question - why does his people not have cargo, and why do these 'others' from beyond the sea have so much? Lawrence clearly has his own agenda and his own predjudices, but this is a highly readable account of a fascinating period in human history, one which is so visible to us in the Pacific, but may have been rehearsed in various guises at many periods in history. Pidgin English is itself a fascinating subject, of which I must learn more. It seems to work like an inverted mirror in which humans from industrialised societies cannot recognise their own reflection. Road belong Cargo, indeed.
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