Plural Societies

Abstract

The term ‘plural society’ was originally a creation of colonial administrators (e.g., Furnivall), for societies where diverse populations ‘mixed’ only in the market, but failed to achieve cultural consensus or organic solidarity. In the 1960s, anthropologists and sociologists (Kuper, Smith, Van den Berghe), developed the idea of pluralness for newly independent states, where divisions of race, ethnicity, and culture tended to coincide, creating deep cleavages which reinforced each other, and offered few opportunities for cross-linkages. Of these, bipolar societies were seen as more divided than those with multiple constituencies, allowing for some cross-alliances. (Here, it is important to stress that plural ness is the obverse of plural ism (Dahrendorf, De Tocquville), where institutional networks create ties across ethnic and cultural boundaries.) Most of these authors assumed that race, ethnicity, and culture were the motive forces, above class, as a basis for social stratification. During the first phase of independence for many new states, the common cause of nation-building briefly subdued some of this divisiveness, but as new forms of nationalism and subnational interests evolved, older forms of ethnic, religious, and cultural loyalties (‘retribalization’) emerged in response to changing political and economic conditions and as the basis of the social infrastructure, each with their own visions of the ‘nation-state.’ Towards the end of the twentieth century, many ex-colonial ‘white settler’ as well as a growing number of ‘immigrant’ societies (Canada, Australia, Europe) are becoming de facto plural, although the term ‘multiculturalism’ seems to have replaced it, but the problems of minorities, of national integration remain. Trends indicate that plural/multicultural cleavages, now in combination with those of class and other perceptions of inequity and human rights, continue to play in new formations, notably the politics of identity, in most states.