Millenarianism

Abstract The study of millenarianism has long been a key interest of the anthropology of religion. Classic case studies include Melanesian “cargo cults,” American Protestant fundamentalism, and the Ghost Dance. Why draw these disparate movements into a single category? On whose terms do we theorize the intentions and motivations of millenarian activists? Prevailing social scientific thinking on millenarianism still frames these movements as primarily a response to sociopolitical deprivation or psychological discomfort. Yet deprivation theory and cognitive dissonance theory have developed little since their inception more than sixty years ago. Beyond the theories of deprivation and dissonance is a growing body of anthropological literature about morality and temporality. The chapter draws on this new literature as a route to examining millenarianism in both its “ordinary” and “transcendent” forms, as emerging from deliberate and considered acts of human agency, but without denying the importance of macrosocial context. The chapter concludes by arguing for framing millenarianism as “moral world-building.”