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

Abstract

Michael E. Harkin (ed.), Reassessing Revitalization Movements: Perspectives from North America and Pacific Islands, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.In 1956, Anthony F.C. Wallace introduced concept of revitatization to draw attention to what he perceived as uniform process underlying such apparently diverse religious and political as Christian revivals, Utopian communities, cargo cults and revolutions (1956: 264). Around same time and into 1960s, other sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists introduced their own schemes and terminologies, although few surpassed Wallace's model in terms of its empirical and theoretical ambitions. While has gained some limited popularity as a general label for religious movements, particularly among North American ethnohistorians, concept remains closely associated with Wallace, whose elegant study of Handsome Lake movement amongst Iroquois provides its primary exemplar (Wallace 1970). The reassessing in Reassessing Revitalization Movements thus carries a double load: it refers to extension of Wallace's model into new terrain of Oceanic where it has rarely been applied and it refers to a critical re-examination of model itself.The book is comprised of a short graciously written Foreword by Wallace, an Introduction by Michael E. Harkin and twelve case studies. The first of descriptive chapters, running to more than 60 pages, is a tour de force by Maria Lepowsky that juxtaposes a detailed analysis of a 1785 mission Indian uprising in Spanish California with reflections on cargo cult activities in eastern Papua New Guinea that first appeared in 1880s. The remaining chapters rotate between Native North America and Pacific Islands, examining that date from late 18th century to present. All but two of contributors are anthropologists, but all make excellent use of documentary and oral evidence to present fine-grained historical perspectives on these varied movements.The case studies are uniformly excellent, written in engaging prose at a high level of theoretical sophistication. Taken on their own, they are worth price of admission. The juxtaposition of studies from two regions is often very revealing, especially as one moves closer to present That said, readers who come to volume expecting to find a sustained engagement with revitalization theory or creation of an updated comparative framework based on it will be disappointed. All of authors use revitalization movement as a general label and all comment upon aspects of Wallace's 1966 model. This provides chapters with a common touchstone. Yet only three of authors actually attempt to update and apply model as an analytic tool and even then only in most general way. Everyone is very polite. Jennifer S.H. Brown's comments on relevance of revitalization theory for an appreciation of an early prophetic movement amongst Hudson Bay Cree, however, reveal what I suspect is consensus opinion: model is useful as a rough starting point but a distraction from deeper issues of documentation and meaning (pp. 121-22).Harkin asks in Introduction, Why Revitalization? (p. xi). It's a good question, although one that he never answers clearly. Harkin states, as a belief, that is most sophisticated theoretical lens through which to view [religious] movements (p. xxv). He does not say why he believes this. Indeed, he does not even provide a synopsis of Wallace's model Instead, Introduction rambles between postmodern critiques of cargo cult studies, colonialist legacy of revitalization theory, dialogic approaches to understanding movements, role of deprivation in Wallace's theory and so forth. His most direct defence of Wallace appeals to the classic virtues of anthropology as a social science-empiricism, holism, comparison of institutions and so forth-rather than details of model (p. …