Cultural significance of cargo cult: from ethnography to social sciences
The paper shows that in modern research, the phenomenon of cargo cult is often reduced to the third law of Arthur C. Clarke, according to which any sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic. Indeed, the belief that the technology of transportation and production of industrial goods for the Indians living on a subsistence basis was a magical act. In ethnography, the presence of a cargo cult allowed us to formulate hypotheses that mythological events had some material basis. However, this interpretation is very narrow and does not include the cultural component. Indeed, any new technology can be represented as a manifestation of magic in the most general sense. However, this does not take into account the fact that the inhabitants of this region explained all the phenomena of life through magical influence, including those that do not relate to the manifestation of human activity, such as natural phenomena. In conclusion, the article concludes that the term cargo-culture in its cultural aspect can simultaneously express the following assessment of actions: lack of understanding of the technology or methodology of the processes taking place; waste of resources; absolute impossibility of obtaining the desired result; unattainable gap in development between the original and the copy, lack of understanding of the causes and historical context of the phenomena.