Book Reviews 155

mainly on documentary materials, is useful as a reference, but disappointing as an analytical work.

Social and Cultural Pluralism in the Caribbean. (Papers from a conference on Social and Cultural Pluralism in the Caribbean supported conjointly by the New York Academy of Sciences and the Research Institute for the Study of Man.) (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 83, Article, pp. 761-916.) New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1960. Bibliographies, tables. n.p.

Reviewed by R. T. SMITH, University College of Ghana

The term “pluralism” is rapidly becoming one of those words, like “institution,” that everybody understands in a general sort of way but few people would care to define precisely. The general idea of a “plural society” is as old as the idea of society itself, but Furnivall gave it a peculiarly sharp definition when discussing the Far Eastern societies in which he had worked as a colonial administrator. In his book, CoZoniaZ Policy and Practice, he used the following striking language in describing the medley of ethnic groups to be found in Burma and Java: ‘ I . . . they mix but do not combine. Each group holds by its own religion, its own culture and language, its own ideas and ways. As individuals they meet, but only in the market place, in buying and selling. There is a plural society, with different sections of the community living side by side, but separately, within the same political unit.” Furnivall’s ideas have been taken up and applied by anthropologists, historians, and economists working in multi-racial, colonial, or ex-colonial areas such as East Africa, Central Africa and the West Indies, mainly, I think, because it has the merit of summarizing in two words a series of very complex problems. It does not solve these problems but merely poses them. Those with a more definitely sociological background have not been attracted to the concept in the form in which Furnivall used it, perhaps because they were already too familiar with extreme social and cultural differentiation in the so-called “complex” societies to think that there was need for a special theory to deal with cases of the type Furnivall examined. Eisenstadt, in his book The Absorption of Immigrants, used the term “plural- ism” to indicate roughly what Linton meant when he referred to “alternatives”; more recently Kornhauser has spoken of “pluralism” in a fundamentally different sense to indicate a healthily differentiated society as opposed to the monolithic structure of totalitarian states.

The volume reviewed here is a collection of papers and discussions delivered a t a conference on Social and Cultural Pluralism in Ihe Caribbean which was held in New York in May 1959, sponsored jointly by the New York Academy of Sciences and the Research Institute for the Study of Man. Dr. M. G. Smith of the Institute of Social and Economic Research of the University College of the West Indies has been mainly responsible for making Furnivall’s idea of the plural society a bone of contention among students of Caribbean societies through his booklet, A Framework fo r Caribbean Studies, which was published in 1955. It is fitting, therefore, that he should have the first word in the discussion and the first paper in this collection. Most of the other papers orient their discussion around Smith’s general theoretical position or else virtually ignore the idea of plural society. M. G. Smith’s paper is entitled “Social and Cultural Pluralism” and contains a lengthy restatement of the argument first pre- sented in A Framework for Caribbean Studies. I t would be impossible to do justice to the complexity of his position in a short review, but the skeleton of his argument is that we must distinguish a completely independent type of society in which there is

156 American Alzthropologist [63, 19611

not merely a system of internal differentiation but rather a state of affairs in which a number of “sections,” each with its own peculiar institutional complex, exist side by side within the framework of a common political system.

Territorially distinct units that practice differing institutional systems and that are politically separate are culturally as well as socially distinct. In short, institutional differences distinguish differing cultures and social units. When groups that practice differing institutional systems live side by side under a common government the cultural plurality of this inclusive unit corresponds with its social plurality. . . . This argument rests entirely upon the way in which institutions are thought ol and I believe that it is a fundamental weakness of Dr. M. G. Smith’s position that he takes a peculiarly Malinowskian view of social institutions. He seems to say that societies constitute clusters of institutional sub-systems such as a kinship sub-system, a n economic sub-system, a government sub-system and so forth. Each of these component sub-systems is made up of institutions which are complexes of ideas, activities, rules, groupings, and values. An institution forms an integral whole, and an institutional sub- system is also an internally consistent cluster of institutions. But a t the societal level no such functional integration of sub-systems is necessary, he says:

We need not predicate any pre-established harmony of institutions, as functional theory has tended to do. The available evidence suggests that consistency, interdependence and coherence are necessarily greater within each institutional sub-system than between them.

If institutions are reified in this way then it is perfectly easy to squeeze all the important variables into a few key clusters, but Dr. Smith does not tell us how to recognize the point a t which variations within one institutional sub-system become great enough to warrant our identification of two separate sub-systems. There are some societies in which there is a wide range of alternatives and specialities, such as any modern in- dustrial society, and Dr. Smith tells us that such a society may be culturally hetero- geneous without being plural so long as its “basic institutional system” of “kinship, education, religion, property and economy, recreation, and certain sodalities” remains common to all its members. Such fine distinctions and vague categories need to be illustrated by a detailed analysis of particular cases, and Dr. Smith’s own work on West Indian societies should help to enlighten us when it is published. Dr. Vera Rubin, in her excellent appraisal of Smith’s argument, points out that, although he identifies the United States as a heterogeneous but nonplural society, it is impossible to deter- mine exactly why he does so since his criteria of plurality appear to be met.

This first paper provides the starting point for most of the subsequent papers and discussions, and particularly noteworthy is Braithwaite’s contribution on “Social Stratification and Cultural Pluralism” in which he defends the adequacy of general structural-functional theory to deal with Caribbean societies and warns against the danger of defining social systems purely in terms of cultural institutions. Many of the papers are valuable contributions to the general stock of knowledge about Caribbean societies and it is particularly pleasing to see that material on the Netherlands and French Antilles is now beginning to appear in greater volume. It is also timely to see discussions of the role of the intellectual and the artist appearing in a symposium of this kind. The whole project serves to remind us that the traditional distinctions be- tween sociologist, anthropologist, and historian begin to fade when a lively argument develops about the correct way of understanding societies which can be studied without ever being more than a couple of hours drive from a luxury hotel or more than a day’s journey from Miami. Whatever the merits or demerits of the plural society argument,

Book Reviews 157

(and one suspects that it could easily be pushed to a barren limit like the famous diffusionist controversy), i t has certainly served as a very useful peg on which to hang a series of interesting papers.

Etnolog%a y Etnografia de Guatemala. FRANZ TERMER. (Seminario de Integracih Social Guatemalteca, Publicacih No. 5.) Guatemala: Editorial del Ministerio de Edu- caci6n PCblica, 1957. xviii, 299 pp., appendix, 2 illustrations. n.p.

Reviewed by RICHARD N. ADAMS, Michigan State University and the University of Calijonzia, Berkeley

This is a Spanish translation of Zur Ethnologie und Ethnographie des nordlichen Mittelamerika, based on a three and one-half year residence in Guatemala from 1925 to 1929. This edition is a product of the Guatemalan Seminar of Social Integration’s program to make available in Spanish all major works on Guatemalan cultural anthro- pology. No changes have been made in the original apart from a brief additional in- troduction by Termer and a few editorial footnotes.

Almost half the book is devoted to “Spiritual Life” and “Religious Concepts’’ (involving calendrical uses, dances, and other tangential matters), and the rest is divided into approximately equal sections on “Living Conditions,” “Subsistence Means,” “Social Life,” and an introduction and conclusion. The lack of balance re- flects the methodology, or lack of it, but there are frequent points of rewarding reading.

The work is essentially in old ethnographic style, a point which the author notes in his new introductory note. As such, it shows certain characteristics of method peculiar to its time, but which probably need mention in a review. (1) There are points when the text is not clear as to whether the data is from Termer’s own field work, or from some other sources, (e. g., disposition of widow, p. 107). Termer is geneially scrupulous in citing his sources but tends to accept the reports of others a t face value. As a report on general ethnology, he combines in his section on religion data from scattered personal experience, local ladinos (i.e., non-Indians), earlier students, and colonial sources. (2) Many descriptive points are extremely general (e.g., women’s clothing, p. 68), and when precision is added (e.g., list of towns with distinctive men’s clothing) i t is sometimes incomplete, and therefore misleading (e.g., no mention of Lake Atitlan towns). (3) While it does not mar the text, “race,”’ “pure race,” “mixed race” are used to refer to Indians and ladinos, and the term “incest” is used to refer to inbreeding, thus suggesting confusion of racial and cultural phases. (4) Since the information is essentially organized around data collected during Termer’s visits, the material is uneven and unrepresentative. Thus, residence patterns are described for one section of the population, and various religious elements for another. It is neither a systematic regional ethnography (it is heavy on the Cuchumatanes and Alta Verapaz) nor a specific functional study. (5) Occasional lapses into psychological causation mar an otherwise sophisticated treatment: “The undoubtable high suggestibility of the Indian plays an essential role [with respect to witches] . . . ’’ (p. 193) ; “That ladiniza- tion has not been able to extend broadly is owed principally to the fact that the greater part of the present Indian population is lazy and indolent” (p. 250). (6) A final point, which can hardly be laid at Termer’s door, is that, since the original writing, much detailed work has been done in Guatemala, and a great deal of the material in this volume is now better described and analyzed by more intensive functionally-oriented studies. Thus the contemporary student will find many passages dated in terms of available knowledge.