The paradox of the plural society entered anthropology with J.S.Furnivall’s discussion of colonial policy and practice in Burma and Indonesia. He described a plural society as one in which racially distinct peoples met only in the market place, a feature of colonial *political economy. Critiques of the concept followed in rapid succession. It was suggested by Maurice Freedman, writing about Malaya, that although *ethnicity might be recognized as a preliminary to the useful fiction of a plural society, and although members of each ethnic *community recognized commonality, these were cultural categories (mental constructs) and not organized entities (groups). None of the ethnic divisions distinguished was politically autonomous; none constituted a unit; none was a valid group. How such categorical labels became instituted in colonial societies, often in the face of local opposition, later became the subject of anthropological inquiry.
Furnivall’s term was taken up by M.G.Smith, the most prolific exponent of plural society theorizing in anthropology. Smith found the concept useful first in order to delineate the structural forms to be found in *Caribbean societies and then to compare them. In Smith’s formal analysis, the plural society model based on *race ignored all other cleavages between individuals and groups, such as those of *class or *religion.
Smith argued polemically for an umbrella concept of pluralism to be used comparatively in social anthropology; Caribbean ethnographers suggested that he failed to recognize the historical context of the so-called plural societies there. They suggested that societal pluralism was more usefully viewed not as a structural form but as a phase in a historical process. In the ethnographic cases they presented, the plural society was a colonial construct. This led to discriminations based on racial—and sometimes ethnic—categorization and legal codification. In its most extreme form, racial pluralism was used to segregate, enclave and exclude, as in apartheid South Africa where there was at one time a Ministry of Pluralism.
Plural society theory underscored the polyethnic character of most Third World societies but it did not significantly influence the trend in either post-colonial or ethnic studies. Adjusting constantly to his critics, Smith’s own theorizing eventually became so conceptually involuted that it was superseded by theories of cultural pluralism.
Cultural pluralism embraces the idea that historic cultural differences among peoples should be both admitted and respected by a legal order which assures them equal rights within the national society. This has proved a concept of more universal application than the plural society model. It took hold first with concern over the cultural survival of indigenous peoples such as Amazonian Indian groups, and today anthropologists have organized to ensure international protection against †genocide in such societies. Among them are David Maybury-Lewis who founded the organization Cultural Survival and Leo Kuper who campaigned for the protection of *indigenous peoples at the United Nations.
