Cargo Cults
The Melanesian island of Tanna, formerly part of the the Anglo-French codominion of the New Hebrides, latterly of Vanuatu, is home to a number of curious religious practices with their roots in the sudden appearance of military bases during World War II. Previously, the local peoples' exposure to the developed world had been mediated largely by Christian missionaries, whose primary concerns were to stop them doing things (polygamy, dancing, amusing themselves on Sunday, occasionally eating people) which they had happily been doing for centuries. The military had other priorities, and their arrival also brought a huge influx of material goods - "cargo" - quite at odds with the austerity of the preachers. Amazingly, some of the soldiers were even black-skinned, leading the locals to imagine they might be descended from islanders kidnapped long ago, or had been sent by a semi-mythical figure called "John Frum", who had supposedly led the islanders in their rejection of the Christian interlopers (1).
And then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the American troops were gone, the battle against the Japanese won. The cargo stopped flowing, leaving the locals bereft of "cargo". They set about trying to make it return, using the principles of sympathetic magic to mimic the features of the departed occupiers - building imitation airstrips, placing imitation radios in imitation control towers to be operated by men wearing imitation earphones. The Red Cross symbol became the badge of their faith.
Not a DC-8, so not as mad as Scientology
This was the phenomenon of the cargo cult. Many of its manifestations have died away but there remain villagers on Tanna who believe John Frum will one day emerge from within the volcano Yasur to shower wealth on his people once again (2).
Article about John Frum and the Cargo Cults
Cargo Cult Science
In the 1970s, Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman used the phrase "cargo cult science" to describe an erroneous approach which appeared scientific but in fact failed to use the scientific method. Examples of this might include using previous research findings unquestioningly, often as controls, and thus distorting the results, or skewing experiments towards maintaining research funding rather than discovering truth. The researcher is using the ritual behaviour of science, but is not actually doing science.
A sly demonstration of such flawed behaviour was carried out by NYU physics professor Alan Sokal, who submitted to a journal of postmodern cultural studies, a paper (3) scattered with nonsensical assertions supported by flawed or irrelevant citations, purporting to suggest that quantum gravity was a cultural construct. As Sokal had anticipated, the paper, which favoured the editors' preconceptions whilst dealing with a subject they did not understand, was not submitted for peer review, but was accepted and published. The hoax (later revealed by the author in another journal) provoked the "Sokal Affair". Sokal later co-authored a book, Fashionable Nonsense, on the subject.
Less harmless than he looks.
Cargo Cult Programming
A further adaptation of the cargo cult concept is that of cargo cult programming, a phrase which may be used to describe various behaviours suggesting that the programmer is blindly reproducing learnt strategies without understanding the problem, the solution, or both.
Cargo Cult Politics?
A subject of controversy in British politics is currently the absence of a "Plan B" for dealing with the economic and financial crisis, given the fear that austerity policies are failing to stimulate the economy and pushing Britain towards a recessionary spiral whether the Euro implodes or not. The argument is all very well but assumes the existence of a "Plan A" - in fact, the striking thing about European responses to the financial crisis are how clueless they are. In the absence of any real leadership on the matter, politicians (and their pet economists) are taking refuge in doctrinaire assertions of what the problem is, and what the solutions must be. It's cargo cult politics - recapitulation of doctrine seeking to paper over the cracks of empirical incomprehension and methodological bankruptcy. Even where there are disagreements on policy, the argument remains couched within the narrow neo-liberal consensus which was adopted by the parties of both centre-right and centre-left during the salad days of the "victory" over communism, and whose visible collapse has been the wellspring of the emergency.
And in this ideological vacuum, some very odd ideas are increasingly being sucked in.
Notes
(1) Though, as is often the case in such situations, this saviour had taken on some Christian features - the name, for instance, may be a contraction of "John from Jesus", i.e. John the Baptist.
(2) There is another group on Tanna who, their beliefs further moulded by memories of a Royal visit to Vanuatu in 1974, put their faith in John Frum's brother, erm, Prince Philip.
(3) "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", Social Text, Spring/Summer 1996
EDIT: Music Link removed 2/1/2013
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