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Anthropos 97.2002 
chapters, the major part of the book, as in his 
earlier “cargoist articles” Lattas writes about ideas 
that are expressed in the context of contemporary 
representations of what Censure and his adherents 
had said and done. These ideas focus first on 
the relationship between the living and the dead, 
which according to Lattas is conceived primarily 
in spatial terms (chapter 3), and secondly on sex 
uality, on beliefs about the “symbolic positioning 
of women” (1998: 152) and changing gender rela 
tions (chapter 4), the role of female participants in 
cult activities (chapter 5), and the “androgynous 
imagery in the Censure cult” (1998:208; chapter 
6). As towards the end of chapter 6, which is 
intended to present a “switch to the contempo 
rary context” (1998: xlii), Lattas uses chapter 7 
to mention cult activities which took place after 
Censure’s cult had begun to decline. Finally, in 
his last chapter, Lattas concludes by taking up his 
earlier examinations of the present-day impact of 
the New Tribes Mission. 
It would be a mistake, however, to overempha 
sise a chronological or any other clear-cut structure 
in “Cultures of Secrecy.” By contrast, when, in 
chapter 2, Lattas mentions various “precontact cult 
ceremonies,” he does not appear to be following 
any discernible order. Moreover, descriptive and 
interpretative passages prove to be as mixed up as 
in Lattas’s earlier publications, and references to 
particular subjects such as the practices initiated 
by Censure or the preachings disseminated by 
the NTM are scattered throughout the book. In 
effect, it becomes rather difficult not only to gain 
a coherent view of these subjects, but also to assess 
how Lattas is analysing them. 
VI 
As in his first writings about colonialism in Aus 
tralia and West New Britain, in “Cultures of Se 
crecy” (1998) Lattas continues to presuppose the 
existence of a process of civilisation, which, by 
entailing internalisation and self-alienation, leads 
to subjugation. He shares Foucault’s idea that, 
since “modern state power” depends on the “pas 
toral custody and control of individuals” (xliii), 
it is, as Foucault has it, “both an individualis 
ing and a totalising form of power.” 31 For the 
Kaliai, the impact of modern state power and 
of the civilisation process begins when modern 
state institutions are brought to them. Here Lattas 
31 Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 
8. 1982: 777-795; p. 782; cited in Lattas (1998: xliii). 
speaks of a “transformative pedagogic project of 
European cultural hegemony” that ultimately seeks 
to have “people becoming white by seeing them 
selves through European eyes” (223). According to 
Lattas, the Kaliai are embracing and supporting the 
process of civilisation and making the aim of “be 
coming white” their own, when they incorporate 
“Europeans, Western technology, state rituals, and 
Christianity into their narratives” (98) and adopt 
and reproduce the modern state institutions that are 
brought to them. Adopting and reproducing these 
institutions, however, also implies the adoption 
and reproduction of the discourses that authorise 
them and that construct the Kaliai as “living in 
moral darkness and in need of spiritual enlight 
enment” (233). “That critique and its primitivist 
assumptions,” Lattas writes, “were internalized by 
people, producing alienated subjects who hated the 
past for that moment of its savagery that they read 
into themselves” (267). 
What does Lattas say about the way in which 
Western institutions and their underlying dis 
courses are being adopted and reproduced? In his 
earlier publications, as well as in “Cultures of 
Secrecy,” Lattas’s answer is implicit in the cor 
relation he makes between the conceptualisation 
of colonialism on the one hand, and ideas about 
gender and about the relationship between the liv 
ing and the dead on the other. Corresponding to his 
earlier thesis that gender functions as a “metaphor 
for thinking about differences” (1990b: 75) both 
within Kaliai culture (1990b) and vis-à-vis West 
erners (199le), Lattas now states, that “Women’s 
subordination to men provided the terms for think 
ing about racial subordination” (1998: 152). As 
“gender identities and inequalities” are combined 
with “racial identities and inequalities,” the “blur 
ring and overcoming” of the one is associated with 
the “blurring and overcoming” of the other (205). 
Accordingly Lattas interprets the importance that 
women had in “Censure’s cult” - they seem to 
have formed the majority of his adherents and 
to have been specifically addressed by him - as 
an attempt to change the “symbolic positioning of 
women” (152) in order to achieve, as Lattas writes 
with reference to a female cult leader, a “refiguring 
of the gender hierarchy [that] promised a refiguring 
of the racial hierarchy” (220). 32 * * * Furthermore Lattas 
32 At the same time, however, Lattas continues to attribute 
to cargo cults the function of symbolically appropriating 
the reproductive powers of women and thus of exerting 
“the ritual control of women’s bodies” (1998: 180). With 
reference to cargo cults Lattas therefore also speaks of 
“men’s domination of women” (42) and of “the moral 
hegemony of Kaliai men over women” (75).