by itself, however, is not likely to be the sole cause of change, since it is
always inserted into processes that involve existing structures of relation-
ships and also persons with agency who develop the potentialities of a
technological change within the limits of social values to which they
adhere, or per contra they may change and redefine those limits.
Cargo cults (to return to our discussion above), as they were dubbed,
exhibit rapid and often unexpected sequences of change in practices, not
ones that result simply from technological change but complex changes of
reactions to colonial situations. Inequalities of wealth and power that
make themselves sharply felt in those circumstances stimulate wishes to
redress such inequalities, and these in turn issue in ritual activities designed
to achieve such a redress. Since the circumstances are new, the rituals also
are new, but they are built out of components that draw on features
derived from past complexes of action.
The problem of explanation, therefore, comes from the difficulty of
understanding how change can happen if we use a model of the situation
that implies stability and lack of change up to the moment that the cult
begins. The problem instead, (as we have noted), is why the response to
change takes a ritual form, as a way of obtaining wealth, rather than any
other form of economic or political action. Thefirst thing to observe here is
that the cult ritual does not preclude that people will also try other means to
help themselves. However, the ritual is designed to shorten the process of
reaching one’s aims. To illustrate this point, we will review again the case
we have already alluded to above, dating from a time shortly after Jarvie
wrote his survey of materials, and in a region where people had also taken
up cash cropping by growing coffee and selling coffee beans to commercial
buyers. In other words, they had responded to the injunctions of the
colonial authorities to take up cash cropping in this way, as a part of the
project of modernization intended to lead up to political independence.
The locale was Mount Hagen in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, and
the dates were 1968–1971 (see Strathern 1979 – 1980 ).
The central ritual of the cult sequence was never directly observed
because its procedures were closely guarded by its participants and sup-
porters who hoped to benefit from it. The historical background is that
there were earlier movements in the Highlands with similar aims after
1945 when Australian colonial control was stepped up and ideas of devel-
opment and changefirst began to be implemented. The 1968– 1971
movement was distinguished from these earlier disturbances by a number
of ritual innovations that showed the lability and creativity of human
2 CHANGE 13