Gilberto Freyre,

The official theme of the program of the 1957 Meeting of the International Institute of Differing Civilizations being "Pluralism" - "Problems of ethnic and cultural pluralism in tropical and sub-tropical communities" - I have been asdek, as a student of ethnic and cultural pluralism in Brazil, to report on the papers presented to the same scientific society on cultural pluralism. Cultural pluralism in various tropical and sub-tropical areas: in America as well as in Asia and Africa.

For the most part, these papers deal with concrete phenomena of cultural pluralism, in which a sociologist is tempted to discover the presence or the manifestation of abstract social processes of intercalation, contact, conflict, domination, tension but also of accommodation, acculturation, equilibrium. The study of pluralism, in its cultural aspect, is inseparable from the study of these major universals of the sociology of culture, though one should be careful to consider, in descriptions of various regional situations, what is peculiar to each of these concrete situations, before attempting to see what is common to them.

Modern, sociologists and social anthropologists seem to agree on this point: that contact with outside groups means, for a stable group, a new life experience, with elements of insecurity becoming active, beside elements of security, both for the native and the intruder group. Cultural pluralism, roughly defined from a sociological point of view, means the coexistence of different cultures. It means, also, some from of equilibrium between the elements of security and the elements of insecurity in the life experience of each cultural group, forced to live or to function beside a different cultural group. Security, in this case, is not only economic security but also the one that results from the following, by a group, of traditional patterns and techniques, such as religious beliefs, food and sex taboos, social etiquette, work methods, notions of time and of space-time, tools, weapons. Once group security is affected in these essentials, it seems to lose its stability or rigidity, and to become plastic enough, either to remain, as insecurity, until a new type of relative security is attained by subordination of a passive culture to an active or imperial one, or to reach another from of equilibrium between its elements of security and its elements of insecurity within the group, so as to be possible for a group so adjusted to coexist culturally with a different group without passive or absolute cultural subordination to it.

In reading the papers presented to the International Institute of Differing Civilizations on cultural pluralism, I have attempted to apply - to each one this interpretation key: that pluralism implies some form of equilibrium between the elements of security and the elements of insecurity in each culture in coexistence with another culture or with two or more cultures. And it seems to me that each concrete situation analysed by the authors of the eight (1) papers that specifically deal with cultural pluralism - in Kenya, in Tunisia, in Israel, in Burma, Thailand and Malaya, in Mauritius, in South Africa, in West Africa, in Hong Kong - is an example in favour of the validity of this interpretation. Security and insecurity seem to be always present in such situations, under psychological, social and cultural general aspects of which economic and political interrelations might be considered special aspects. Even the colour bar, where it exists, may be taken as an expression of insecurity on the part of the intruder European or Anglo-American group in tropical and sub-tropical areas, whose native populations are nearly always black or brown or red, or mixed. In this case, insecurity would mean concern, preoccupation and even fear in regard to the preservation of ethnic purity of the dominating group, perhaps as a necessary expression of imperial superiority: a superiority that should be based on biological as well as on sociological and cultural evidence.

The situation in Kenya, as described by Dr. Ph. Mason, in his paper on "The Plural Society of Kenya", seems to show that the insistence by the Europeans on separate schools for Europeans and non-Europeans is based on a concern over cultural and ethnic security by the white minority since the cultural background of the two groups - indeed, three: European, African and Asian - is distinct and that the European one, as well as the Asian, should be preserved. In favour of this attitude, the Europeans state that "habits in regard to sanitation are distinct"; that "different virtues are admired"; that "attitudes to sex differ between the races"; that it would be a mistake "to educate a child in the earlier stages in a medium of instruction which is not his mother tongue".

In Tunisia, according to M. H. de Montety in his paper "Pluralisme ethnique et culturel en Tunisie", there is also a minority group of Europeans who, though divided or plural - the French are culturally preponderant - consider themselves, as Europeans, a superior group; but whose claims to superiority are being neutralized by the modernization and Europeanization of a Muslim elite, whose basic cultural purposes or inspirations, however, are not European. This seems to be happening also in Kenya, through the modernization and Europeanization of African and Asian elites.

In the State of Israel, a very interesting situation is to be found from the point of view of cultural pluralism. According to Dr. S. N. Eisenstadt, in his paper on "Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in Israel", contrary to what was for some time public opinion among the official circles of Israel, gradually it became apparent that "existing social groups and traditions", among the immigrants, had to be "taken into account and some legitimate scope found for them". His view, summarising a complex situation, is that Israel is developing into "a socially integrated community in which there will be a large scope for cultural pluralism in many secondary spheres: a situation similar to the one that has been characteristic of Brazil for a long time and explains, to a large extent, why unitary Monarchy failed here as a national political and administrative system and the Republic, while happily retaining some of the monarchical methods and traditions of government, has been successful in some of its non-monarchical developments mainly on account of its federal structure.

In his paper on "Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in Hong Kong", Professor K. E. Priestley points out that in Hong Kong there is no structure of central or local government... "in which dissatisfaction and criticism can find its legitimate channels". The result is that, according to the same analyst, "the Hong Kong citizen may find greater difficulty in attaining psychological security than an individual in a unitary society, because pressures and conflicts are apt to be more severe in a plural society". Professor Priestley asks for "remedial situations" for such tensions and conflicts. Some of them perhaps may be suggested by what has been accomplished by the Portuguese, in Macao and especially in Goa. According to an American sociologist, Professor Robert E. Park, in his essay on "Race relations and certain frontiers", published in New York and London in 1934 with other papers presented to the American Sociological Society on the occasion of its twenty-eighth Annual Meeting, in both these areas one finds Portuguese identity. In Macao, this identity is found among the descendants of the one trousand Portuguese families, who, during more than three centuries, "have intermarried with the Chinese to such an extent that they are now predominantly Chinese in blood, if not in culture". Both the modern Goanese and the Macanese are, according to Professor Park, "general intermediaries between the Oriental and Occidental worlds", a function that they would not be capable of accomplishing if Macao and Goa, though plural societies in what Mr. Eisenstadt calls "secondary spheres", were not socially integrated communities to the point of offering a comfortable minimum of psychological security to the Macanese and the Goanese.

At this point, I would like to disregard, as much as possible, the political aspect of this situation - the situation of the Portuguese in their Eastern and African provinces; but no sociological explanation of it may be considered satisfactory with the total neglect of this aspect. Goa would not be a security area for a plural society, whose populations is made up not only of Christians but of Hindus, Parsees and Mohammedans if that minimum of security - psychological security and cultural security - were not enjoyed by the majority of this culturally heterogeneous and ethnically mixed population. Security seems to be enjoyed and to have been enjoyed by the Goanese for a long time, as a result, to a large extent, of the fact that three centuries ago Goa was an extra-European State of Portugal, with political representatives in Lisbon; and most of these representatives, men of Asian or of mixed blood to whom cultural leadership in European Portugal was entirely open.

When I say that the political aspect of cultural pluralism is not to be disregarded, I think not only of the situation of areas like Macao and Goa - not to be easily included in the category of European colonies in the tropics - but also of the situation of tropical and subtropical populations that are ceasing to be European colonies to become Chinese semicolonies, through the policy of imperium in imperio that modern China seems to be following. This problem is faced by Professor Francis G. Carnells in his paper on "Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in Burma, Tahailand and Malaya". Professor Carnell points out that the Chinese "are everywhere the inheritors of vanishing European economic power in Southeast Asia..." It will be interesting to observe what will be the attitude of Chinese cultural imperialism in regard to Asian tropical and subtropical populations and cultures, different from the culture of China, whose main tradition is not based on the adaptation of men and of civilization to tropical environment. According to Professor Carnell, "despite the state of post-war minority problems in the area (Southeast Asia), we should not be too pessimistic about the future. Taking a long view, there is something in the Southeast Asian environment which is particularly, conducive both to the fusion of cultures and to the peaceful co-existence of cultures".

In areas like Mauritius, one finds the present cultural situation to be one of conflict between the Oriental way of life, as practised by the Indo-Mauritians and Chinese and the Occidental, "followed by the general population". This is the summary of that situation presented by Sir Hilary Blood, formerly Governor of Mauritius, in his paper on "Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in Mauritius". Acoording to Sir Hilary, the barriers which exist at present in Mauritius "are virtually absolute socially and the sections of the community live their lives behind these barriers - Franco-Mauritians from fear, Coloured from an inferiority complex and Indo-Mauritians from resentment". Probably, a psychological analysis of the attitudes described by Sir Hilary as being expressions of fear, of inferiority complex and of resentment, would reveal, at the basis of each, an element of insecurity, since the cultural situation at Mauritius seems to be one of apparent or superficial equilibrium; with no unitary element, psychological or cultural present among the antagonistic ones. With the possible development of Chinese or East Indian power in tropical Asia and Africa will the prestige of Europe or Western values be surpassed by the prestige of Oriental values, with an easier adjustment between conflictive cultural groups in tropical and subtropical areas in Asia?

How will the possible development of Chinese power in Asia affect tropical and subtropical Africa? How far will it be neutralized, in such areas, by the development of the Indian Union as a middle power? Or by the expansion of Islam? What new relations will develop, among cultures and populations that so far have been passive and static, between their elements of security and their elements of insecurity, in face of new imperial powers that will not be European but non-European and even anti-European? In Africa, according to the analysis "De l'influence du groupement haoussa dans le brassage des idées en Afrique Occidentale", given by M. Oswald Durand, the decline of Haoussa cultural influence upon other native groups is evident; and this decline seems to make easier the development of non-African, but at the same time non-European, cultural influences in Africa.

However, in regard to the Southern part of Africa, one should not forget the presence there of a semi-imperial power so far as cultural influence is concerned: the presence of the South Africa Union both as an Afrikander cultural system and as volcanic White-Black ethnic and cultural situation. The problem of "Culture Contact and Change in the Union of South Africa" is analysed by Mrs. Ellen Hellman in a paper thar presents the South African situation as one of internal contradictions, including the significant fact that English is the language of African - that is, Negro - political movements", since "African teachers and parents alike condemn the Bantu Educational Act" for imposing 'education in the vernacular' with "the object of keeping the African different". Here, we find "the African people themselves" stressing their eagerness "to adopt the western way of life and to qualify by educational, economic and cultural advance for the full rights a western society accords its members".

Precisely at this point one has o face he problem of the attitudes of peoples or populations of tropical and subtropical areas in regard to the type of culture or civilization that should be maintained or developed in these areas. For the problem is not one only of the adoption of civilization in terms of prestige but also in terms of ecological adaptation to a tropical or subtropical environment. From this point of view, it seems to the best advantage of tropical and subtropical peoples or populations, to reach or attain, through cultural interpenetration or cultural reciporcity, an equilibrium between native or tropical cultural elements and imported and, to a certain extent, imperial - West European, Russian, Chinese, East Indian, Arabic or Anglo-American - cultural traits. Only cultures or civilizations so adjusted seem to be the adequate ones, on the one hand, to tropical and subtropical environments, on the other hand, to modern conditions of coexistence in a world whose eagerness for progressiveness asks for an acceptance of techniques and values developed by progressive and dynamic peoples, such as the ones that have been mentioned as culturally imperial.

It is as an equilibrium between these apparently conflicting or antagonistic types of culture - a culturally imperial one, whose possibilities, of salutary survival in the tropics seem to be limited, if preserved as an imperial or a pure civilization - and ecologically tropical cultures, that the Portuguese system of adapting European men, values and techniques to tropical and subtropical environments through the acceptance of tropical and subtropical human and cultural values, seems to be a fairly successful one, in more than one respect. This conclusion may be reached, through the consideration of what this system has already accomplished in the Asiatic tropics as well as in tropical Africa and in tropical and subtropical America: in Brazil.

In Brazil, according to Professor Park, the well known American sociologist, and to other American, European and Brazilian sociologists, one finds the result of a policy not only of the Portuguese government but of the Catholic Church, begun as long ago as the sixteenth century, to encourage intermarriages between the colonists and the natives. But the Portuguese and Catholic policy in Brazil was not as simple as Park's generalization seems to imply: it included the encouragement, since the early days of Brazil, of the adoption, by the European colonists, of native or tropical values and techniques in a much larger scale than in other contemporaneous areas of America colonized by Europeans from Northern and Protestant countries. The Portuguese policy of cultural pluralism included the adoption by the Europeans of such values and techniques, as the manioc flour, as a substitute for wheat; of the Amerindian hammock as a substitute for the European bed; of the Amerindian ceramic as a substitute for the European one. Not only this: the Roman Catholic authorities themselves were tolerant of Amerindian and African elements - such as dances - in Church festivals that, due to the warm climate, became outside meetings or celebrations rather than interior ceremonies, such as the European ones. As a result of this, Brazil as well as other Portuguese tropical areas have at present a way of celebrating Christmas that is exactly opposite to the European one, without any violence or offence or offence having been done to the essentials of Christian orthodoxy.

Here, perhaps, we have more than one suggestion for a new type of developing civilization in tropical and subtropical areas. These suggestions may be useful ont only to African peoples whose eagerness seems to be, like that of the Bantu of South Africa, to adopt European civilization in a somewhat passive way - passive from a cultural point of view - and in an evident disharmony with their tropical cultural heritage and their tropical natural environment, but also to Asiatic, African and Amerindian populations of tropical areas, whose attitude is precisely the opposite one: groups that seem to dream of an almost absolute preservation of their native values. To do this they would follow a policy of practically no acceptance of values and techniques developed by outsiders, in boreal and temperate areas.

Since these non-tropical values and techniques may be adapted to tropical and subtropical conditions, it seems that a policy of adaptation of these values and techniques to tropical and subtropical conditions, and of acceptance of tropical values and techniques, is more adequate to the development of modern civilization in tropical and subtropical areas than one of deliberate resistence to outside values and techniques,

Fonte: FREYRE, Gilberto. Ethnic and cultural pluralism in intertropical communities: cultural aspect. Lisbon : International Institute of Differing Civilizations, 1957. 8p