Cargo cult
A label for Melanesian movements that expected a new order and goods, a term many scholars now avoid as condescending.
Also: cargo cults, cargo movements, John Frum movement
In the twentieth century, a number of movements in Melanesia, including the John Frum movement on Tanna in Vanuatu, began after contact with colonial powers and with the supplies of the Second World War. Participants held rituals and built structures in hope of securing prosperity and a changed order. Outside observers called them cargo cults and presented them as people mimicking the West in error. Anthropologists such as Lamont Lindstrom and Kirsten Dewar argue that the movements were political and religious responses to inequality, with their own logic, and that the term misrepresents them. The John Frum movement continues on Tanna and has become part of national life in Vanuatu.