Neither Cargo nor Cult: Ritual Politics and the Colonial Imagination in Fiji

by Martha Kaplan

Book Overview

In the 1880s an oracle priest, Navosavakadua, mobilized Fijians of the hinterlands against the encroachment of both Fijian chiefs and British colonizers. British officials called the movement the Tuka cult, imagining it as a contagious superstition that had to be stopped. Navosavakadua and many of his followers, deemed "dangerous and disaffected natives," were exiled. Scholars have since made Tuka the standard example of the Pacific cargo cult, describing...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822315939
• ISBN13: 9780822315933
• Release Date: June 1995
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"