The Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond

Record summary

Lamont Lindstrom’s book surveys cargo-cult movements and the scholarly history of interpreting them, with particular attention to Melanesian expectations, prophetic authority, material exchange, and colonial misunderstanding. It offers comparison points for visionary leadership, millenarian prophecy, ritual innovation, and the circulation of esoteric explanations. The subject is a body of historical and anthropological traditions rather than a single paranormal incident. The term cargo cult itself has been criticized as reductive, so the relevant movement names and local categories require verification in the text and later scholarship.