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Telephones, Cameras and Technology in West New Britain Cargo Cults
Author(s) -
Lattas Andrew
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1834-4461
pISSN - 0029-8077
DOI - 10.1002/j.1834-4461.2000.tb03070.x
Subject(s) - cult , sociality , meaning (existential) , modernity , white (mutation) , sociology , history , media studies , political science , law , ancient history , biology , ecology , biochemistry , chemistry , gene , psychology , psychotherapist
In this paper, I explore the creative practices of cargo cult followers in the Kaliai bush of West New Britain. I focus on how rural villagers reworked their experiences of meaning and sociality through their appropriations of western technology. In particular, bush Kaliai cult followers frequently used telephones and cameras in idiosyncratic ways that mapped out anew and redisclosed the spaces occupied by a racialised human existence. Through their novel use of western technology, cult followers struggled to resituate and overcome the new distances and cleavages of modernity by unearthing other ways of being white that came from their customary past and ancestral homelands.