Talk by Peter Worsley
Department of Social Anthropology,
University of Manchester
Dr. Worsley describes some particular manifestations of the 'cargo ' cult-movement in Melanesia, which is characterised by the expectation of deliverance upon the arrival of a ship carrying ancestral spirits and trade goods (or cargo). Such messianic movements, he suggests, ' are characteristic of stateless societies and of peasant communities in agrarian states.' They are radical rather than regressive, representing ' a step in a desperate search for an effective means of changing the world,' and politically they constitute a stage in developing nationalism.