‘Cargo Cult Mentality’: Dependency, Disparagement and Neo-Liberal Citizenship in Melanesia.
John Cox, School of Social and Environmental Enquiry, University of Melbourne
Globally, neo-liberalism has reshaped relations between the citizen and the state. As governments retreat from direct roles in service provision, the citizen, entitled to basic common services provided by the state, has been remodelled as a customer, choosing and consuming the best services they can afford from the private sector. This shift entrenches existing income disparities and produces less communitarian social relations reoriented around consumerist aspirations. These new social relations threaten Melanesian communitarian values of kinship and reciprocity. For Melanesian urban professionals there is a need to delegitimise the claims of kinsfolk to hospitality and sharing of resources that often rest on ideas of ‘tradition’. Like the tropes of ‘dole bludger’ or ‘welfare cheat’ elsewhere, rhetorical forms of disparagement are used to lessen these reciprocal obligations. Terms such as ‘cargo cult mentality’ or ‘handout mentality’ therefore redefine appropriate social relationships to the advantage of educated white collar urban workers. These terms of disparagement reflect a neo-liberal logic as the undeserving dependent poor are contrasted with the deserving poor: self-sufficient Melanesian subsistence entrepreneurs independent of state services (and their urban relatives).
