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On the Possibility of Different Sorts of Racial Categories

On the Possibility of Different Sorts of Racial Categories COMMENTARY On the Possibility of Different Sorts of Racial Categories 1 M ICHAEL B ARAN ¤ & P AULO S OUSA ¤ Inspired by his own Ž eldwork with Torguud nomads in Mongolia, Francisco Gil-White’s article “Sorting is not categorization” contributes to a long-running discussion about the speciŽ city of Brazilian racial categories in opposition to other racial categories such as those in the United States. He questions the heuristic value of Marvin Harris’ methodology and therefore doubts the substantive hypothesis based on the results of these methods — that Brazilians and Americans have a fundamentally different system of racial categories. Gil-White additionally proposes the opposite hypothesis — that Brazilian racial categories have much the same structure as those of the United States: “It is true that one does not Ž nd in the US as varied and proliŽ c a vocabulary for describing people’s phenotypes as one does in Brazil. It is also true that the US system features hypodescent, which prevents the emergence of intermediate racial categories. These are quite hoary observations of the differences between the US and Brazil. However, it is possible that this is the extent of the difference.” 2 We think that Gil-White http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Cognition and Culture Brill

On the Possibility of Different Sorts of Racial Categories

Journal of Cognition and Culture , Volume 1 (3): 11 – Jan 1, 2001

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References (19)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1567-7095
eISSN
1568-5373
DOI
10.1163/156853701753254413
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

COMMENTARY On the Possibility of Different Sorts of Racial Categories 1 M ICHAEL B ARAN ¤ & P AULO S OUSA ¤ Inspired by his own Ž eldwork with Torguud nomads in Mongolia, Francisco Gil-White’s article “Sorting is not categorization” contributes to a long-running discussion about the speciŽ city of Brazilian racial categories in opposition to other racial categories such as those in the United States. He questions the heuristic value of Marvin Harris’ methodology and therefore doubts the substantive hypothesis based on the results of these methods — that Brazilians and Americans have a fundamentally different system of racial categories. Gil-White additionally proposes the opposite hypothesis — that Brazilian racial categories have much the same structure as those of the United States: “It is true that one does not Ž nd in the US as varied and proliŽ c a vocabulary for describing people’s phenotypes as one does in Brazil. It is also true that the US system features hypodescent, which prevents the emergence of intermediate racial categories. These are quite hoary observations of the differences between the US and Brazil. However, it is possible that this is the extent of the difference.” 2 We think that Gil-White

Journal

Journal of Cognition and CultureBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2001

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