Social Analysis, Volume 58, Issue 2, Summer 2014, 108–119 © Berghahn Journalsdoi:10.3167/sa.2014.580206 • ISSN 0155-977X (Print) • ISSN 1558-5727 (Online)

The MulTiculTuralisM DileMMa

Alexandre Coello de la Rosa

Randi Gressgård, Multicultural Dialogue: Dilemmas, Paradoxes, Conflicts (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 190 pp.

John L. and Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 236 pp.

We do not classify things because they need to be classified, but because by clas-sifying, we discover [and perhaps we can add ‘invent’] the elements with which to do it. (Pouillon 1981: 29)

Culture has become the semantic terrain of scientific, social, and political debates. The notion of culture is today as ubiquitous as it is ambiguous (Stolcke 2011: 6). The economic globalization described by Brazilian lawyer and geog-rapher Milton Santos (2000: 23–36) is associated with the progressive cultural homogenization of post-national societies that is nonetheless accompanied by an explosion of local identities centered on cultural, ethnic, and/or racialized axes. The indigenous peoples of America, Oceania, and the South Pacific demand respect for their political/ethno-political rights by appealing to a complex web that threads their native, ethnic authenticity with a ‘salvationist’ rhetoric (Kuper 2003: 389–395).1 Transnational migrations incite alarm in host countries, whose natives fear that recent arrivals will erode (or are eroding) their cultural identity and social cohesion by introducing ‘different’ cultures.2 Some analysts see in cultural intermingling or mestizaje an antidote to identity-based fundamental-ism, something like the ‘friendly face’ of the culturalist boom.3

Literature on multiculturalism is overwhelming. It relates to ideologies and policies that promote interaction and communication among groups with dif-ferent cultures within a society. In Multicultural Dialogue: Dilemmas, Para-doxes, Conflicts, Randi Gressgård looks at multiculturalism as the conflictive co-existence of difference in the same national-political space. Reconciling the opposites that it generates—dignity and equality, on the one hand, and identity

The Multiculturalism Dilemma | 109

and difference, on the other—leads us to wonder if it is possible to translate into praxis the theoretical debates on socio-political recognition of subaltern ethnic groups, generally called ‘ethnic minorities’ even when they are large (or majority) demographic sectors. Gressgård refers to Charles Taylor’s view that modernity defines human liberty, dignity, and equality before the law as universal rights, but at the same time, and perhaps for this very reason, it suggests that the differences between human groups and the way that they diverge from modernity itself must be respected (1). Therefore, the cultural particularities or specific characteristics of human groups and individuals must be legally protected (4).

This ‘human beings are equal but different’ debate is not new. Pro-indepen-dence sectors in Spanish America debated the issue of citizenship and racial difference as early as the 1810s, and Bolívar at some point declared that there were no more Indians, simply nationals, only to backtrack a few years later and reinstitute the legal differences between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens. In most ‘equal but different’ nation-states, elites have sought to make non-whites and non-mestizos invisible in their projects of national construc-tion, and the latter’s refusal to accept this invisibility is the historical foundation behind processes of ethnic revitalization and ethno-genesis that today exist in practically all of Latin America—even in Argentina, long considered a country of European descent (Kradolfer 2011: 41–42). In today’s Western democracies, those regarded (and self-regarded) as ‘nationals’ still erect barriers to protect themselves—and their nation—from ethnic minorities, mostly foreign nation-als. For their part, immigrants demand citizen rights based on the same liberal principles of modernity that legitimate the power of ruling elites (whites).

From this perspective, multiculturalism seems to suggest an opportunity for so-called minorities to fight inequalities—of class, race, gender, culture—and enjoy the same rights and opportunities as the ruling groups. But this is naive at best. According to the ethical and juridical theory of natural rights (iusnatu-ralismo), all human beings are equal in nature and so must enjoy the same juridical-political rights. But this theory is neither universal nor natural, and it is not necessarily compatible with multiculturalist policies. Authors such as Foucault and Laqueur, among others, remind us that the equalitarian ideals of the nineteenth-century Liberal Revolutions were threaded with the belief that inequality in the political body reflected a basic and ‘natural’ inequality among humans. This justified the colonization of some groups (blacks, Indians) and the political and social marginalization of others (women) who did not, and could not, enjoy the same rights that full citizens (white metropolitan males) enjoyed. The superiority/inferiority of the different races was the first ‘inven-tion’ that thus undergirded the dominant bourgeois social order; the second was cultural fundamentalism. Both seemed to justify—naturally and rationally—the moral and political inequalities between people. Women’s inequality was justi-fied by the inferiority of their sex. In the case of nineteenth-century racism, the ‘naturalization’ of gender inequalities had to do with a genealogically indelible logic (‘accursed races’) tied to modernity and reinforced by the discourse of scientific racism. However, these inequalities were based not on indisputably

110 | Alexandre Coello de la Rosa

unique and differentiating factors but on the discriminating and essentializing socio-political will of various groups and individuals.

In the European Community, the discourse on multiculturalism regards immigrants from outside the community (especially those coming from coun-tries with Muslim majorities) as bearers of cultures that are incompatible with the hegemonic Western model (Gonçalves Barbosa 2011: 481–482). Promising the theoretical possibility of applying the supposedly universal rights of moder-nity to all groups, the discourse paradoxically reinforces the binary division of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ (the ‘others’) instead. Multiculturalists offer a ‘relativist’ discourse that supposedly recognizes and protects the culturally distinct ‘oth-ers’, but the system of social classification transforms these ‘others’ into the negation of ‘our’ cultural identity. Instead of analyzing them as contextual and historical realities (‘anti-rationalism’), liberal democracies ‘invent’ these ‘oth-ers’ and provide them with an essential—that is, ahistorical—nature. When their capacity to adapt to Western public life is questioned, they are indeed ‘culturally determined’, which favors the appearance of all kinds of prejudice.

However, the alternative to multiculturalism does not constitute a better solution. Standing against ethnocentric multiculturalism, cultural relativism demands the protection of ‘endangered’ cultural minorities. Far from elimi-nating differences, this tension reaffirms them through what Gressgård has defined as ‘planned pluralism’. The case of Norway’s politics of integration of ethnic minorities is a case in point. The liberal-democratic rhetoric is measured in terms of its capacity to integrate minorities—and their ‘impurities’—into the hegemonic cultural order. In this sense, acknowledging them as ‘equal but different’ implies an inevitable process of assimilation and/or subordination. Incorporating their cultural particularities into a normative model means that non-EC immigrants are transformed into ‘diverse others’ through national poli-tics of integration and/or exclusion. Referencing Aleksandra Alund, Gressgård states that plurality and cultural diversity are normalized and rationally con-trolled in order to standardize those very cultural differences that are targeted for protection, which turns “multicultural dialogue” into “a monologue” (11). It is therefore worth wondering whether a dialogue that does not aspire to planned pluralism, with its reification of class, race, and gender inequalities, is even possible (11–12).

Gressgård contends that the ‘politics of recognition’ presupposes the con-figuration of the Western subject and its universalization as necessary precondi-tions for the assimilation of ‘different others’ in a hegemonic cultural order. The objectifying (and subjectifying) of these ‘others’ as barbarians or savages—or simply as uncouth and pre-modern—defines to a large extent the history of European colonialism. As Foucault has pointed out, it is our categorizations that allow us to reproduce human subjectivity. Citing Mary Douglas, Gressgård states that this is especially the case with regard to notions of purity and impu-rity (22). The dynamics between cultural order (purity) and cultural disorder (impurity, chaos), are, according to Gressgård, tied to liminality (23–26). Lim-inal spaces mark the limits between what Mircea Eliade defines as ‘the sacred’ and ‘the profane’ or, what is the same, a chaos that threatens to engulf the

The Multiculturalism Dilemma | 111

established cultural order. Transnational migrations generate alarm in liberal democracies whose citizens fear that newcomers can corrupt their cultural identity and their national social cohesion, as if any change in national cultures brought about by the different customs of immigrants signified a loss (of self-identity, of national pride) (Stolcke 1994, 1995). Gressgård asserts that “ethnic minorities certainly do not constitute a pathological impurity” (26), yet liberal democracies refuse to share with them the privileges acquired by their citizens, including the privilege of introducing change. With respect to this matter, there are two ideal types of reaction. While British multiculturalism supports differ-ence, French universalism openly calls for dissolving ‘extra-communitarian’ immigrants into the Republic. In other words, these European governments pre-fer to integrate, adapt, and assimilate immigrants through a process of cultural domestication—that is, culturization—that dissolves their particularities in a new symbolic order.

Unlike origin myths, the great narratives of history (liberalism, republican-ism) are projected onto a (utopian) future in which the individual fades into the ideal of universal equality. Liberalism (Locke, Smith) identified supposedly uni-versal qualities that define human beings as such, thus describing and qualifying the ‘human’ and the ‘humane’. In the eighteenth century, nobody questioned whether ‘barbarians’ had souls, but they did doubt that they could rationally adapt to the standards of civilization. Consequently, it was not possible to rec-ognize those ‘others’ if they were not previously incorporated to the cultural parameters of Western civilization (34). But this does not suggest that, in com-plying, these ‘others’ obtain the same rights that the rest of the citizens enjoy, as the special education classrooms of Norway show (35). The criteria that determine the creation of such classrooms are monocultural and monolingual. There are no shared educational formulas that favor interculturality in pedagogi-cal terms. Ethnic minorities are thus categorized as ‘traditional’ and ‘inferior’, as the moniker ‘special education’ itself implies. Far away, in Brazil, a meaning-ful intercultural perspective in education can be achieved only by engaging the whole indigenous community, including caciques or lideranças (leaders) and the elderly, endowed with great knowledge (D’Angelis 2012, 2013).

As Manuel Gonçalves Barbosa (2011) suggests, it is indispensable to carry out an ample and profound recomposition of civil society’s educational role. While educational politics in the global village are based on universal values that supposedly promote integration, in reality they discriminate against all of those groups—minorities, who are in fact, the global majority—that do not fit the parameters established by a given European model. Gressgård argues that this ‘ethnocentric fallacy’ (34–36) is the result of another multiculturalist para-dox based on a modern ideal of natural equality that does not match the ethnic diversity of the ‘others’. To understand this foundational paradox between the French model (i.e., the supposed cultural homogeneity of the citizenry) and the actual diversity that existed, for example, in the new Latin American republics, or even within the French empire itself, we have to locate multiculturalism as a product of ‘modern ideology’ (42–44).4 In this sense, the work of Louis Dumont on the centrality of the individual in Western ideology is indispensable

112 | Alexandre Coello de la Rosa

to an understanding of the limits of modernity’s ideological logic. In Dumont’s words, “the idea that we are part of a culture does not depend only on the available data, but on our way of interpreting that data and our way of think-ing more generally” (cited in Stolcke 2001: 15; my translation). Counterpoising the ‘holism’ of the self associated with ancient India and the ‘individualism’ of Western society, Dumont puts modernity into perspective, shedding light on the ideological configuration of etic, or outsider, anthropology. Gressgård tries to do the same with multiculturalism, agreeing with Dumont that the problem of modernity occurs when “holism is confounded with … egalitarian principles, that is, when non-modern idea-values acquire meaning within the modern political ideologies” (52).

At this point, Gressgård suggests the possibility of individual subjects’ het-erogeneity in a community model centered on the virtues of differences instead of the assertion of identities. She bases this on a Kantian conception of ‘reflex-ive judgment’ that attempts to define a universal moral character by establish-ing connections between the notions of subjectivity and liberty. A theoretical solution to a real problem, that is, the tension between the guarantee of equal-ity of rights, on the one hand, and the cultural differences between ‘us West-erners’ and ‘those immigrants’, on the other, it would allow us to dispense with tribalism and reach a high level of tolerance through an open, constant, and constructive dialogue (63–65).5

In contrast, for years indigenous peoples the world over have been reassert-ing their identities through an intense political activism that often embraces the essentialization of their cultural uniqueness vis-à-vis the non-indigenous. The internationalization of the so-called indigenous movement has provided these groups a forum for debate that has strengthened the re-ethnification of America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. The Declaration on the Rights of Indig-enous Peoples, adopted on 13 September 2007 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, boosted the identity revitalization of ‘autochthonous peoples’ (the term commonly used by French ethnologists). These communities include the Mapuche of Neuquén (Argentina) (see Kradolfer 2011: 44–51); the Chamor-ros of the US territory Guam (Mariana Islands);6 and the Kaiowá, Guarani, and Terena of Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil),7 among hundreds of others, who made increasing appeals to their cultural particularities (cuisines, language, dress) in their efforts to recover the lands taken from their ancestors.

In Ethnicity, Inc., John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff conceptualize the relation between ethnicity and culture quite differently from the primordial and ontological ties that are usually assumed, looking at how groups com-modify culture “for mass consumption” (20). In this sense, the identity claims of minority nations and/or ethnic groups—such as Scots, Kenyans, Catalans, Chamorros, or Zulus, to name just a few—cast their ‘differences’ in terms of a given set of identifying hallmarks that act as a brand or a copyrighted set of unique traits. Instead of the traditional, monolithic image that defines the term ‘ethnic’ as something that ascribes certain predetermined cultural patterns upon the individuals that bear it, the Comaroffs see ethnicity as a cultural product that is in permanent “self-construction” (9). More than a political recourse that

The Multiculturalism Dilemma | 113

is automatically activated in situations of conflict, ethnicity is a “labile reper-toire of signs by means of which relations are constructed and communicated … through which a collective consciousness of cultural likeness is rendered sensible” (38). That is, ethnicity is a mechanism that different peoples and/or nations use to delimit their identities and project themselves toward the outside.

For the Comaroffs, the commodification of culture is universal, and it is inserted in the neo-liberal model that paradoxically has allowed said groups to reinforce and/or construct ex novo their own ethnic categories (e.g., ‘the Zulu’, ‘the San’). An entrepreneurial management of their cultural patrimony tout court through the creation of thematic parks, such as Shakaland, popularizes the images associated with given ethnicities and allows bearers to sell them for their own benefit. By exploiting ‘traditions’ to satisfy ethno-tourism, these cul-tural industries do not dissolve the minority peoples’ supposed ‘ethnic authen-ticity’; on the contrary, they reaffirm their ethnicity at a different level—a level that is not only economic but also political, for it allows ethno-nations of cul-turally diverse states to exist according to their own terms and ends (46–48). The cultural industries appeal not to multiculturalism and its sanctimonious progressivism but to the language of legality. ‘The ethnic’ becomes not only something that can be bought and sold, but also a juridical language invested in the attribution of rights (53–59).

However, as capitalist enterprises based on the law of supply and demand transform cultures into commodities, the scientific community becomes appre-hensive about the effects that this will have on cultural survival. The ‘casino capitalism’ of so-called American Indians starkly reveals the transformation of ethnic groups into corporate owners of a territory and a culture and of their leaders into administrative boards that manage the material and/or symbolic capital represented by their customs and land. A legal vacuum regarding fed-eral lands in state boundaries has permitted American Indian tribes to set up casinos on reservations, and many tribes have acquired extraordinary economic power: in 2006, the Seminole tribe of Florida bought the Hard Rock Café chain for $965 million. The proliferation of these enterprises has generated a debate regarding the kind of political and cultural independence enjoyed by casino-operating tribes, given the control and supervision exercised by the federal government through the National Indian Gaming Commission over tribes such as the Navajo and Seminole. Many wonder whether instead of helping native communities survive by providing them with economic resources, casinos rep-resent a way of integrating these groups into the capitalist system.8 Other mat-ters related to ethno-capitalism are also debated, such as the criteria (blood, genealogy, property) used to determine who belongs to an ethnic group or how the ethnic is born or perhaps reborn, precisely through the incorporation into the ethno-capitalist system. The recovery (or ‘rediscovery’) of some tribes’ identities (e.g., the Californian Pom o or Me-Wuk peoples) was produced a posteriori—that is, particular differentiating elements within a dynamic social space were identified as their ‘traditions’, instead of the other way around.

But what does being ‘Indian’ really mean? And what is a ‘traditional’ or ‘native’ people? Facing the ‘autochthonous illusion’ of aboriginal purity (see

114 | Alexandre Coello de la Rosa

Grünewald 1999: 140, 172), R. Radhakrishan wondered: “Por que eu não posso ser indiano sem ter de ser ‘autenticamente indiano’? A autenticidade é um lar que construímos para nós mesmos ou é um gueto que habitamos para satis-facer ao mundo dominante” (Why can’t I be an Indian without having to be ‘authentically Indian’? Authenticity is a place that we build for ourselves, or a ghetto that we inhabit to satisfy the dominant world) (cited in Little 2001: 22–23; see also Pacheco de Oliveira 1999c: 37). In Brazil, one of the most eth-nically diverse countries on the planet, culture has become an instrument of self-affirmation that allows access to political rights without dependence on the ‘kindness’ of entrepreneurial corporations. In the northeast, the inhabitants of Sergipe, a long-standing single rural community, have splintered into two separate ethnic groups: the Xocó Indians and the Mocambo, a Maroon commu-nity. In 1991, the Xocós were defined as ‘Indian’ and were thereby granted the protection of the Fundaçao Nacional do Índio (FUNAI, National Indian Founda-tion). Almost a decade later, in 2000, the Mocambo were officially recognized as a Quilombo and also obtained a secured land base. In both cases, territorial conquests were at the root of their ethnic claims and their newly acquired vis-ibility in the public sphere (Maurício Arruti, cited in Montero 2012: 82, 83–85).

In Serra do Umã, in Pernambuco (Brazil), toré (ancient Indian knowledge) is considered the determining mark of Indianness—that which distinguishes the indigenous from the ‘civilized’ folk (Grünewald 1999: 166–167). Anybody in Serra do Umã who actively participates in toré—described by Grünewald (ibid.: 167) as “un corpo de saberes dinámicos sobre o qual fundamenta-se a segredo da tribu” (a set of dynamic knowledge and understandings upon which the secrets of the tribe are founded)—is considered indigenous, whereas those who do not know toré are not. In the early twentieth century, the Atikum, one of the many indigenous groups in the area, had abandoned the indigenous ethos, adopted the Portuguese language, intermarried with non-indigenous settlers, and were referred to (and self-identified) as caboclos. But in the mid-1940s, this peasant community sought to have their lands recognized as an indigenous territory and thus become exempt from municipal taxation and safe from hacen-dado incursions. They were told by an officer of the Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (SPI, Indian Protection Service) that they had to perform a toré ritual to demonstrate their “ethnic consciousness” (PIB 2013).9 The Atikum asked the Tuxá to instruct them in toré, and after performing the ritual, they obtained their ‘traditional’ territory, which encompassed land, environment, and biodiversity.

Thus, not only some anthropologists but also some indigenous groups reject the notion that ethnicity exists as an a priori attribute; indeed, it constitutes an instrument of identity construction produced through social practice. On the other hand, not all groups have commodified their traditional knowledge or customs, although they are probably reaffirming the traditional patterns of capturing and absorbing external cultural elements. Prior to the attempts of the Western world to ‘eat up’ their culture, Brazilian ethnic groups, such as the Matis people, aimed at “pacifying” or “taming the White man” through ritual (Calavia Sáez and Arisi 2013: 206–207). In any case, historical perspec-tive becomes an indispensable tool for understanding the dynamics of the

The Multiculturalism Dilemma | 115

self-recognition of ethnic groups that live in ethnically (or nationally) diverse states such as Brazil, where ethnic projects are included in a national identity model that excludes or limits any attempt at claiming sovereignty (Calavia Sáez 2011; Carneiro da Cunha 2009: 330–332).

The Comaroffs offer two illuminating examples of how identities are trans-formed into legal instruments and the consequences that can result. The first involves the San hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. This group, originally designated as Bushmen, reconstituted their identity around the industrial exploitation of the Hoodia gordonii, better known as xhoba (a cactus with medicinal properties), used as both an invigorating and a weight-loss supplement.10 After the renowned American talk show host Oprah Winfrey11 announced in 2006 that Southern Africa might hold the answer to defeating obesity, various pharmaceutical companies raced to commercialize xhoba, and the first to release it on the market (under the name of P57) was Phytopharm. However, the San demanded compensation, arguing that they held a ‘cultural copyright’ over the product. In 2001, under the tutelage of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA), the San established a council that looked after their intellectual rights and the equitable sharing of benefits (86–98).12 After two years of legal disputes, the San signed an agreement that guaranteed them royalties amounting to 6 percent of the profits made from xhoba’s commercialization. Through the establishment of an ethno-corporation that provided them with collective coherence, the dispersed and nearly extinct Bushmen became the proud ‘San people’. No longer the poor Bushmen who languished in the Kalahari ghetto, they now performed before tourists as a people who bore a traditional ethnic identity (Calavia Saez 2011).

The second example, also from Southern Africa, is a very different case because the group identity of the so-called Royal Bafokeng Nation, a Setswana-speaking people who live in the North West Province of South Africa, was already constituted when, in the 1960s, their king, Edward Lebone Molotlegi I, began receiving substantial benefits from Bafokeng Minerals. The Bafokeng Nation held 25 percent of the exploitation rights to the rich platinum reserves found in their territory, but Molotlegi, who as the Bafokeng’s representative obtained and managed the benefits, did not comply with the traditional meth-ods of redistribution and instead enriched himself and those closest to him. The problem that the people faced, therefore, was not so much the construc-tion of an ethnic identity, but how to adapt to the introduction of modernity and its political and social strains. Their solution—the ‘invention’ of a tradi-tional (albeit modern) monarchy—was considered suspect by anthropologists. As Calavia Saez (2011) points out, when Europeans invent a tradition accord-ing to the logic that the older a custom is, the more authentic it is, we call it a ‘renaissance’, but when Africans or Indians do it, we accuse them of ‘falsifica-tion’. In any case, the ‘modern’ Bafokeng ended up becoming Bakofeng, Inc., a “rich nation of poor people” (110), reminding us that the socio-political and economic dimensions of ethnicity cannot be underestimated.

In any case, it is clear that ethno-national construction can be separated from the corporatization of ethnicity and the commodification of culture. Cultures

116 | Alexandre Coello de la Rosa

shared by hundreds, thousands, even millions of people, who become consum-ers of copyrighted ethnic or national symbols with which they become emo-tionally identified, are seen as essentialized cultures and ethnicities with notary registries (Calavia Saez 2011). The recent nationalist claims in Catalonia are a clear example of this essentialization of culture—that is, the canonization of certain rituals, languages, and customs upheld to the detriment of others that are looked on as less ‘ethnic’.13 The Comaroffs point out that these sentiments of national belonging are (re)formulated in the interior of neo-liberal politics that project corporate images as the ideal types for all human groups, with little or no concern for social costs. Nostalgia for the return to the reification of ethnic identities should lead us to consider the following questions, follow-ing Manuela Carneiro da Cunha’s example:14 Who owns ‘culture’? How does the reification of these identities relate to the ethnic pluralism that character-izes the social space shared with others, and who owns that ‘culture’? More specifically, do ‘ethno-futures’ guarantee the integration of cultural differences, or, on the contrary, do they reproduce such differences by engendering new mechanisms of exclusion?

To sum everything up, these two reviewed books intertwine with each other. While Gressgård’s Multicultural Dialogue tackles the multiculturalist paradox from a modern ideal of natural equality that does not match the ethnic diversity of the ‘others’, the Comaroffs’ Ethnicity, Inc. analyzes ethnicity as the creative result of ‘ethnic others’ who are autonomous subjects with political, economic, and social aims. This ‘ethnic self-fashioning’ is based on the commodifica-tion of culture, which, according to the authors, is a universal pattern. It is a component of the neo-liberal model that has allowed many groups to reinforce and/or construct ex novo their own ethnic categories. However, in reshaping ethnicity, we should not forget that most ethnic groups have not commodified their ‘culture’ but rather a ‘folklorization’ of their traditional knowledge or customs. Despite such a ‘commodified culture’, indigenous people struggle to reshape a way of being in the world and of reinterpreting both the world and their culture. In so doing, many of Brazil’s indigenous peoples are still struggling for their territorial rights while reaffirming traditional patterns and absorbing external cultural elements that soon will be their own.

Alexandre Coello de la Rosa is a Professor and Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona. He is the editor of a reissue of Luis de Morales and Charles Le Gobien’s Historia de las islas Marianas (2013); the author and editor (with Doris Moreno and Javier Burrieza Sánchez) of Jesu-itas e imperios de ultramar (siglos XVI–XX) (2012); and the author of Historia y ficción: La escritura de la historia en Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1478–1557) (2012). His expertise lies in colonial Latin America and the Philip-pines, modern Latin America, chronicles of the Indies, and cultural anthropol-ogy. He is currently working on a book manuscript on the Jesuit evangelization of the Mariana Islands during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Multiculturalism Dilemma | 117

Notes

1. As regards this ethno-political revitalization, Brazil is a paradigmatic example (see Pacheco de Oliveira 1999a).

2. In European Parliament elections in May 2014, far-right and Euroskeptic parties made sweeping gains. One of the most significant winners was France’s far-right National Front party, which was the outright winner in France with 26 percent sup-port, or 4.1 million votes. See http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2014/may/25/france-national-front-win-european-elections.

3. The context of the investigations of the group Antropología e Historia de la Con-strucción de Identidades Sociales y Políticas (Anthropology and History of the Social and Political Construction of Identities) of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona was a result of this confusing movement between the celebration of identities and difference, on the one hand, and the celebration of mestizaje, hybridity, and syncretism, on the other, which permeated the socio-cultural frontiers.

4. The new constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador that identify the countries as ‘plurina-tional’ are an attempt to resolve this problem through the reification of ethnicities.

5. On this issue, see also Montero (2012: 90). 6. As Pérez (2005) contends, today’s Chamorros are airing their claims not as mestizos

or ‘hybrids’, but as descendants of the ancient settlers of the Mariana Islands. 7. As Pacheco de Oliveira (1998: 45) points out, both the land loss and the

deterritorialization of the indigenous peoples of Brazil have promoted the state’s administrative recognition of their lands.

8. A similar debate was generated around the Kaiapó or Mebengokré, an indigenous group living on the banks of the Xingu River in central Brazil, who managed to build the first ‘airport’ in the jungle after obtaining part of the funds from exploit-ing the María Bonita gold mine. While this economic activity revealed the adaptive practices of these Mato Grosso natives, their ‘traditional’ ways of life were inevita-bly transformed. Their popularization of images of feathered Indians carrying video cameras on their shoulders and writing e-mails on laptops, on the one hand, was balanced by dancing for tourists, on the other (see Turner 1991).

9. Criteria today are a bit more ‘institutionalized’. According to the Constitution of 1998, indigenous territories were to be declared only when their Indian inhabitants demonstrated a regular and stable ‘traditional occupancy’ of the land (see Montero 2012: 89; Oliveira 1999: 111).

10. It was in fact considered a ‘natural Viagra’, or virility aid. 11. A recent international affair that demonstrates Oprah’s global influence was her

public denunciation in August 2013 of a Swiss store that refused to serve her because they doubted her ‘economic solvency’. This was a ‘disaster’ for Switzer-land’s international image and prompted the government agency Suisse Tourisme to apologize to Winfrey (BBC Mundo 2013).

12. In the 1990s, some ethnic groups in Brazil claimed intellectual rights over the use of the hallucinogen ayahuasca, as well as an equitable distribution of the benefits (Carneiro da Cunha 2009: 314–317).

13. On the problematic issue of multiculturalism as applied in Catalonia, see Delgado (1998).

14. While ‘culture’ has been a concept that anthropologists have patronized for a long time, in the last several years ethnic groups have turned customs and traditional knowledge (i.e., ‘culture’) into strategic elements aimed at political ends (Carneiro da Cunha 2009: 311–368).

118 | Alexandre Coello de la Rosa

References

BBC Mundo. 2013. “El polémico caso de ‘racismo’ que denunció Oprah Winfrey.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/video_fotos/2013/08/130809_oprah_winfrey_racismo_ tienda_suiza_jp.shtml (accessed 22 September 2013).

Calavia Sáez, Óscar. 2011. “De las banderas a las logomarcas.” Revista de Antropología Social 20: 373–416.

Calavia Sáez, Óscar, and Barbara Arisi. 2013. “La extraña visita: Por una teoría de los rituales amazónicos.” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 43, no. 1: 205–222.

Carneiro da Cunha, Manuela. 2009. Cultura com aspas e outros ensaios de antropologia. São Paulo: Cosac Naify.

D’Angelis, Wilmar da Rocha. 2012. Aprisionando sonhos: A educação escolar indígena no Brasil. Campinas: Curt Nimuendajú.

D’Angelis, Wilmar da Rocha. 2013. “É fácil fazer o diferente, difícil é ser intercultural (currículo diferenciado e interculturalidade).” Presentation at the roundtable of the State Conference on Indigenous School Education, Serra Negra, 13 June.

Delgado, Manuel. 1998. Diversitat i integració: Lògica i dinàmica de les identitats a Catalunya. Barcelona: Empúries.

Gonçalves Barbosa, Manuel. 2011. “Educação e imaginário intercultural: Recomposição do papel da sociedade civil.” Revista Brasileira de Estudos Pedagógicos 92, no. 232: 477–492.

Grünewald, Rodrigo. 1999. “Etnogênese e ‘régime de índio’ na Serra do Umã.” Pp. 137–172 in Pacheco de Oliveira 1999b.

Kradolfer, Sabine. 2011. “(Self)essentialization of Cultural Differences: How Peoples and States Play Hide-and-Seek.” Anthropological Notebooks 17, no. 2: 37–53.

Kuper, Adam. 2003. “The Return of the Native.” Current Anthropology 44, no. 3: 389–402.

Little, Paul E. 2002. Territórios sociais e povos tradicionais no Brasil: Por uma antropolo-gia da territorialidade. Anthropology Series No. 322. Brasília: University of Brasília.

Montero, Paula. 2012. “Multiculturalismo, identidades discursivas e espaço público.” Sociologia & Antropologia 2, no. 4: 81–101.

Pacheco de Oliveira, João. 1998. “Redimemsionando a questão indígena no Brasil: Uma etnografía das terras indígenas.” Pp. 15–60 in Indigenismo e territorialização: Poderes, rotinas e saberes coloniais no Brasil contemporáneo, ed. João Pacheco de Oliveira. Rio de Janeiro: Contracapa.

Pacheco de Oliveira, João. 1999a. “A busca da salvação: Ação indigenista e etnopolítica entre os ticuna.” Pp. 21–59 in Ensaios em Antropologia Histórica, ed. João Pacheco de Oliveira. Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ.

Pacheco de Oliveira, João, ed. 1999b. A viagem de volta: Etnicidade, política e reelabo-ração cultural no Nordeste indígena. Rio de Janeiro: Contracapa Livraria.

Pacheco de Oliveira, João. 1999c. “Uma etnologia dos ‘índios misturados’: Situação colonial, territorialização e fluxos culturais.” Pp. 11–40 in Pacheco de Oliveira 1999b.

Pérez, Michael P. 2005. “Colonialism, Americanization, and Indigenous Identity: A Research Note on Chamorro Identity on Guam.” Sociological Spectrum 25, no. 5: 571–591.

PIB (Povos Indígenas no Brasil). 2013. “The Formation of the Atikum-Umã Indigenous Community.” http://pib.socioambiental.org/en/povo/atikum/159 (accessed 22 Sep-tember 2013).

Pouillon, Jean. 1981. “Appartenance et identité.” Le genre humain 2: 20–29.

The Multiculturalism Dilemma | 119

Santos, Milton. 2000. Por uma outra globalização do pensamemto único à consciencia universal. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record.

Stolcke, Verena. 1994. “Europa: Nuevas fronteras, nuevas retóricas de exclusión.” Pp. 235–266 in Alicia Sánchez, Ana Giménez, et al., Extranjeros en el paraíso. Barce-lona: Virus Editorial.

Stolcke, Verena. 1995. “Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe.” (Sidney W. Mintz Lecture for 1993, Johns Hopkins University.) Current Anthropology 36, no. 1: 1–24. Special issue titled “Ethnographic Authority and Cul-tural Explanation.”

Stolcke, Verena. 2001. “Gloria o maldición del individualismo moderno según Louis Dumont.” Revista de Antropologia 44, no. 2: 7–37.

Stolcke, Verena. 2011. “Presentación simposio internacional: ‘¿Naturaleza o cultura? Un debate necesario.’” Quaderns 27: 5–10.

Turner, Terence. 1991. “Representing, Resisting, Rethinking: Historical Transformations of Kayapo Culture and Anthropological Consciousness.” Pp. 285–313 in Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.