Reassessing Revitalization Movements: Perspectives from North America and the Pacific Islands (review)

Abstract

Michael E. Harkin, editor, Reassessing Movements: Perspectives from North America and the Pacific Islands. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2004, 341pp. Nearly fifty years ago the April 1956 issue of American Anthropologist carried an article titled Revitalization Movements, by Anthony F.C. Wallace, then 33 year-old assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. In it, Wallace proposed the word to subsume various terms that had been used in the scholarly literature of several disciplines to refer to the attempted and sometimes successful innovation of whole cultural systems. Among these other terms were nativistic movement, cult, messianic movement, millenarian movement, utopian community, charismatic movement, and revival. Wallace presented general definition and processual model of revitalization movements in cybernetic terms, portraying an initial socio-cultural steady state followed by buildup of individual stress and cultural distortion that triggered period of revitalization resulting in mazeway resynthesis and return to new steady state. Subsequently Wallace published other studies of revitalization, the most important of which was book, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1970). The reprinting of Wallace's original essay in the third (1972) and fourth (1979) editions of William Lessa and Evon Vogt's well-known Reader in Comparative Religion helped propel it to classic status. Its inclusion in Hicks' Ritual and Belief: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion (2002ed), Warms, Garber, and McGee's Sacred Realms: Essays in Religion, Belief, and Society (2004), and Lehman, Myers, and Moro's Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural (2005ed) confirms that status to the present. However, fifty years is rather long time for an essay to receive the benediction of re-publication, especially if it is included for more than historical interest, as seems to be the case in the above volumes. Needless to say, much water has passed over the anthropological spillway in that half-century. How well do Wallace's term, concept, and model actually stand up in the light of more recent research and thinking? This is essentially the question to which the book under review here is addressed. Based on papers originally given at the 98th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, the volume grew into something quite substantial. Twelve authors consider the utility of the revitalization concept in number of settings in native North America and the Pacific. An introductory essay by Michael Harkin sets the stage for the other chapters (including one by Harkin), which are not ordered in any apparent way save that they alternate between the two geographical regions. About half of the cases are approached ethnohistorically, and about half involved ethnographic research. Except for the long (60 page) first chapter by Maria Lepowsky, which is the only one to explicitly compare cases from North America and the Pacific, the essays average just under twenty pages in length. All of the source citations are assembled in final references cited section that runs to 45 pages. Of special interest is the foreword to the book, written by Anthony Wallace. In the introduction, Harkin both justifies the volume and exercises an editor's prerogative of offering his own overview of the topic. Not all of the contributors agree with Harkin's assessment, which makes for more interesting collection of essays. Harkin's thesis is that the model of revitalization movements is a useful way to view (p. xv) both certain political movements-exemplified by John Frum or other manifestations of the 'cargo cult'-and certain religious movements (e.g. the Ghost Dance)(p.xvi). Though familiar with recent studies of the cargo cult written from post-modernist perspective, Harkin questions the wisdom of what he takes to be the post-modernist rejection of virtually any explanatory or interpretive system, including abstract theoretical models and generalizing terminology. …