CARNEIRO - 1951 - Arthur Ramos Brazilian Anthropologist (1903-1949)

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Clark Atlanta University

Arthur Ramos: Brazilian Anthropologist (1903-1949)Author(s): Edison de Souza Carneiro and James W. IvySource: Phylon (1940-1956), Vol. 12, No. 1 (1st Qtr., 1951), pp. 73-81Published by: Clark Atlanta UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/272324

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By EDISON de SOUZA CARNEIROTranslated by JAMES W. IVY

Arthur Ramos:Brazilian Anthropologist(1903-1949)

IN ONEof his last public utterances, a lecture delivered in 1948 in com-memoration of Euclydes da Cunha,' Arthur Ramos opened up newvistas in Brazilian anthropology. Because of the paucity of availableinformation, it seemed to him, however, that the important aspect ofthe study of material culture in a given area was not a description ofits traits,but a basic understanding of them functionally in the general culturecontext of which they are a part, as well as their comparison withthe culture traits of other areas, in order to perform the necessarytask of establishing connections and analogies and, in so far aspossible, to trace their relative chronology, to analyze the reciprocalborrowings, to examine the dynamics of culture change, in a word torecord the results of the acculturative process.Only in this way would anthropology be able to free itself of "themerely recreative and descriptive interest" which it has for so manypeople.This we might say was Ramos' main line of activity. We see thisprinciple exemplified in his magnificent essays on the Negro as wellas in his works of synthesis on the Amerindian and in his studies of theEuropean groups settled in Brazil. Dr. Ramos had a keen, analytic intel-ligence, and he saw, with extraordinary facility, every detail withoutignoring the whole and the whole without despising any of its parts.The method of interpretation which he defended and always advo-cated and used was the comparative method of Nina Rodrigues, butwith improvements furnished by the modern conquests of science.It was Arthur Ramos who had the distinction of reviving the originalmethods of Nina Rodrigues and bringing them into conformity with themost modern methods of anthropology, especially in the field of culturecomparison and acculturation. It was Arthur Ramos who pointed outthe "priority" of Nina Rodrigues in a memorial which he insisted that1 EUCLYDES DA CUNHA (1866-1909), one of Brazil's great writers, was an engineer by pro-fession. As a journalist he accompanied the Paulista battalion in its campaign against thereligious fanatic Ant6nio Conselheiro, and the reports which he wrote for the newspaperEstaao de Sao Paulo later became the basis for his classic, Os Sertoes (1902). The book isnot just a military account of an expedition, but a treatise on the geology, geography, cli-

mate, and anthropology of the backlands. The book has been called "the Bible of Braziliannationality." Now in its eighteenth Brazilian edition, Os Sertoes was issued here in SamuelPutnam's version, Rebellion in the Backlands, by the University of Chicago Press in 1944.

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PHYLONthe Brazilian delegation present to the Inter-American Conference ofNegro Studies in Haiti in 1942. He wrote:Two fundamental ideas characterized this school [of Nina

Rodrigues]. The first was that it is impossible to understand theNegroes of the New World without a systematic study of the originof their cultures in Africa. The second idea has to do with thecontact of peoples and cultures in the New World, the contact be-tween Negroes and peoples of different origins and cultures, withrespect to the subsequent processes of acculturation and culturechange.He had fought for this recognition of the priority of Nina Rodriguessince 1926, when he issued his first studies of the Negro religions ofBaia. This vindication of Nina Rodrigues 2 became the great fight of hislife. During this same year, 1942, in the introduction to Negro Accul-turation in Brazil, he devoted more than one hundred pages to the basicideas of Rodrigues, supporting them with quotations from Nina's works,3to conclude:With this cursory analysis I have amply demonstrated that Amer-ican priority in the study of Negro acculturation belongs to NinaRodrigues. Methodology and terminology may change, appearingin new vestments, but the basic method in the study of acculturationis found in the work of the Baian master. Our efforts at the presenttime can consist only in the adjustment of the new terminology tothe processes of acculturation already described by the greatBrazilian Africanist.

Arthur Ramos never failed to pay homage to the memory of a seriousand honest investigator, one who had out of human sympathy dedicatedhimself to a challenging problem of his period. It was the method ofNina Rodrigues, improved and modified by new scientific concepts,that served Arthur Ramos in his fruitful work of classification and inter-pretation of the social structure of national groups.He made this modification in the beginning by the simple substitutionof the ideas of Cesare Lombroso 4 and Enrico Ferri 5 for those of psycho-analysis- that is, by the substitution of one error for another. ButArthur Ramos, fortunately, was not an orthodox psychoanalyst. In truth,

2 RAYMUNDO NINA RODRIGUES (1862-1906), a native of the state of Maranhao, graduatedin medicine at Baia and early turned his attention to the sociological aspects of his profes-sion. He began by investigating the Negro religions and folklore of Baia but soon broad-ened his field of interest to take in the whole of Negro culture and history. For this reasonhe has been called the father of African studies in Brazil. Ironically, Rodrigues believed inthe inequality of races and the degeneration of mulattoes. Ramos points out that this wasthe scientific concept of an age when men thought in terms of superior and inferior races.3 HIS first published study of the Negro religions of Baia was O animismo fetichista dosnegros bahianos ("The Fetichistic Animism of Bahian Negroes") published in 1896 in vol-umes 6 and 7 of the Revista Brasileira. Rodrigues later collected these articles into a bookwhich he translated into French and issued as L'animisme fetichiste des negres de Bahia(1900). His premature death, however, prevented conclusion of his projected studies of theBrazilian Negro to be entitled 0 problema de raga negra na America portugueza ("TheProblem of the Negro Race in Portuguese America"). Uncompleted portions of this workwere collected by his admirers and published as Os africanos no Brasil (1932), "The Africansin Brazil."4 CESARE LOMBROSO (1836-1909), founder of the so-called positive or Italian school ofcriminology, believed as a result of his anatomical and physiological researches in the borncriminal.5 ENRICO FERRI (1856-1929), Italian criminologist, was another leader in the positive schoolof criminology.

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ARTHUR RAMOShe was to some extent a non-conformist and a progressive, and he soonabandoned this "working hypothesis" as an inadequate solution to theproblems of human relations. We may note here that psychoanalysis,which is the whole basis of his interpretation in The Brazilian Negro,really had slight influence on his Negro Folklore of Brazil and beginsto disappear, is in fact ignored completely in his later works, to be sub-stituted for instruments more appropriate to the study of social andhuman phenomena. Of extreme importance in this respect is his volumeNegro Cultures of the New World, which represents to a certain extenta combined experiment in the use of sociological, anthropological, andhistorical processes. Yet the comparative method of Nina Rodrigues isstill dominant despite the tentative nature of this experiment. ArthurRamos had already handled this method with success in his great work ofIntroduction to Brazilian Anthropology, in which, as he stated in hislecture at Sao Jose do Rio Pardo, he had been careful "to submit hismaterial to a meticulous analysis in light of the criteria to be establishedby his improved scientific process."Although his method of study was still the comparative method ofNina Rodrigues, despite new modes of interpretation and analysis, theseprocesses cannot be fitted superficially into the narrowly conventionalacademic patterns developed by the science of anthropology, even in itsmost advanced fields.

In a talk which he had with me in December, 1948, he said: "I ammore than ever convinced that the facts of society can be explained byeconomic facts." This was a statement made shortly after publicationof his work on pillow-lace, written in collaboration with his wife, DonaLuiza Ramos. It is obvious from this remark that his conception of cul-ture went beyond simple anthropological configurations. The materialculture was for Arthur Ramos the base and explanation for the juridic,political, and intellectual forms of a society. That is why in his directivesfor the study of the Brazilian Negro, Ramos always cited "the psycho-sociological dominance of non-Negro groups, race relations, stereotypedopinions and attitudes, the sociological factors of caste and class, and thepsychological mechanisms of frustration and aggression..." as probablythe most important aspects of the problem. Circumstances, however, hadbrought the brilliant mind of Arthur Ramos to the brink of dialecticalmaterialism by a quite different route.Very important in this respect is his criticism of the theses of GilbertoFreyre 6 (with his polarities of big-house- slave quarters; town-houses

6 GILBERTO DE MELLO FREYRE (1900- -- ), a native of Recife, Pernambuco, is the famousBrazilian social historian. His sociological masterpiece, Casa-Grande & Senzala (1933),describes the old patriarchal, slave-holding society of colonial Brazil. The book has revolu-tionized Brazilian thinking and historical writing. Literally the Big-House & Slave-Hut, itwas issued here as The Masters and the Slaves (1946). Its sequel, Sobrados e Mucambos(1936), "Town Houses and Shacks," traces the shift of power from the rural aristocracy tothe city and the rise of the mulatto in Brazilian society. A prolific writer, Freyre has pub-lished more than thirty-five titles in the fields of history, sociology, anthropology, belas-letras, literary criticism, etc.

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PHYLON-hovels; masters--slaves, etc.) and Ruediger Bilden7 in their inter-pretation of Brazilian society. It seemed a capital error to him to viewthe Negro almost exclusively from the coign of slavery instead of asthe representative of a culture group. Such a deceptively simple gen-eralization was inconceivable to Ramos. He wrote in Negro Cultures ofthe New World,It was not true that the slave regime of itself weakened, corrupted,and destroyed the Negro cultures in Brazil and throughout the NewWorld. Though the slave regime altered the intrinsic natures ofthese cultures, it did so only as one conditioning factor among manyothers. The two psycho-social processes of relevant significance were(1) the separation of the individual from his culture group and(2) the race and culture contacts resulting in miscegenation in thebiological realm and acculturation in the social. Looked at in thisway slavery intervened in the manner of the secondary migrations(mass flights of Negroes, etc.) already mentioned: separation ornon-separation of individuals from their culture-group and the con-tact or lack of contact of races and cultures.In a word, the scientific mind of Arthur Ramos refused to view theproblem from just one angle. He saw the whole problem in all its com-plexities and inferences.

Nor did it seem to him fair to depict the Negro as purely picturesquematerial "in pages diffused with a lyricism quite different from that ofthe abolitionist, and much more dangerous because of its scientific pre-tensions: that evocative, decadent, Proustian lyricism . . . unconscious-ly disguising that sadism of the master which these very pages are sup-posed to be combating." Eulogizers of the past like Gilberto Freyrecould naturally achieve such a conclusion, with scarcely a thought of theNegro as slave, while indulging in fulsome praise of the marvels ofpatriarchal society, the latifundia, and the sexual promiscuity of theslave compounds.It is to this extraordinary gift for clarifying the details without losingsight of the whole, the crux of the question, that we owe those admirablepages of synthesis in his studies of the Brazilian Indian in his Intro-duction to Brazilian Anthropology. Though he lacked opportunity forfirst-hand research on the Amerindian, he did, despite these difficulties,make wise use of the works of numerous investigators to present in somehundred odd pages the most complete and coherent picture of the manyextant and obsolete native cultures of Brazil. This was a work of classifi-cation, exposition, and methodical handling of material never beforeaccomplished in Brazil. And "giving unreservedly of himself in thistransformation of the difficult and the confused into the easy and clear,"7 RUEDIGER BILDEN, Freyre's friend and Columbia University classmate, believes that manyof the evils attributed by some critics to the racial composition of Brazilian society shouldbe blamed on slavery. See his "Brazil: Laboratory of Civilization," The Nation, 128 (January16, 1929), 73; "Race Relations in Latin America with Special References to the Developmentof Indigenous Culture," Institute of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, 1931.

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ARTHUR RAMOSArthur Ramos wrote masterly chapters on the Tupi-Guaranis, the Ges,the Arauks, the Caribes, the Bororos, the Nambiquaras, the Carajas, andother lesser native Indian groups, while striking a balance between thematerial and the intellectual cultures of these first inhabitants and theinfluence which their cultures exerted in the formation of Braziliansociety.Many of his works on the Negro were translated into English, French,German, and Spanish. This is surely a vindication. A justification inevery sense of the word of Ramos' seriousness in the study of the prob-lem of the intellectual stature of the Negro and the colored man's placein the sun, as well as of humane relations of justice between the variousethnic groups of Brazil. Fortunately, this work was not in vain. It is tohis studies and the strength of his convictions that we owe so much thatis commendable - and where there is no commendation, there is at leasttolerance-in the attitude which educated Brazilians bring to theirstudies of the problems of Brazilian Negroes.With The Brazilian Negro, Ramos attempted to study in a generalizedway, within the national scene, of course, the religious concepts of thevarious African nations brought in by the slave traffic, and to make com-parisons in so far as possible between them and the original Africanconcepts. Since this study was written under the aegis of psychoanalysis,the whole of the second or interpretative section, is therefore debatable.Published in 1934,the book used such terms as Negro "race" and "fetich-ism," words and concepts which he was careful to correct in the secondedition issued in 1940. Much more important is the fact that the volumewhich bears the sub-title "religious ethnography and psychoanalysis,"released in an "enlarged" edition six years later, is seldom referred toas a work of "religious ethnography." Actually this second edition ismore than an "enlarged"edition. It is a book in which Ramos broadenshis perspective and enriches it with much new material, but with careto change his terminology and polish up his phrases in order to make histhought more flexible in his effort to make his observations in The Bra-zilian Negro conform to his new approach to the problem.I believe the best proof of his scientific evolution is to be found in acomparison of the two texts. Obviously he could not mutilate the bookby amputating the section dedicated to psychoanalytic exegesis, but by1940 it is clear that he had already abandoned psychoanalysis as a "work-ing hypothesis" in the special field of the science of man, or the "scienceof human relations" as he later preferred to call it. Read his replies tothe criticisms of Professors Jos6 Imbelloni,8 of Buenos Aires, and Roger

8 JOS5. IMBELLONI (1885---- ), professor of anthropology and ethnology in the Universidadde Buenos Aires, is the author of many books, articles, and monographs in the fields ofanthropology, ethnology, and linguistics. One of his best known works is Epitome de Cul-turologia (1936) or "Compendium of Culturology." Carneiro is referring to Imbelloni'sreview of O negro brasileiro ("The Brazilian Negro") published in Revista GeogrfifcaAmericana, 2 (April, 1935), 298.

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PHYLONBastide 9 in the appendix to his second edition.His abandonment of psychoanalysis must have occurred after-orperhaps during -his work on Negro Folklore of Brazil (1935). Attemptat psychoanalytic interpretation of the surviving tales, dances, musicand dramatic representations of the Brazilian Negro must have beendisillusioning to Ramos. He preferred, as we have seen, to use the Freu-dian method in his early studies - though not as an orthodox Freudian-yet in this work, published scarcely a year later, we see him usinghistorical, sociological, and anthropological procedures in preference tothose of Freudian psychoanalysis. This fragmentary work offers no con-vincing explanations for its quasi-psychological facts, though it makes abold attempt at systematization of Negro folklore (as well as manyaspects of the national folklore), yet it is a study in which Ramos revealshimself as a pioneer in an absolutely new field.Negro Cultures of the New World came out in 1937 and in the prefaceRamos states that he has abandoned "the piece-meal investigation" ofthe Negro in Brazil "to launch a panoramic picture of the Negro in theAmericas . . . to write an essay in social psychology and culture an-thropology." His aim was to study the fate of these cultures throughoutthe Western Hemisphere "in the light of the new methods of culturalanthropology." Emphasis is still on culture contact, but without thatgingerly approach found in his comparative study of Negro cultures inBrazil and the rest of the Americas. He visualized "a better under-standing of the Negro groups brought to Brazil" notwithstanding thefact that adequate conception of their function had already been dis-torted by the burning of documents 10having to do with the slave traffic.So far as a "working hypothesis" is concerned this volume marked adefinite break with psychoanalysis. Arthur Ramos had at last charteredhis course.He followed up these three outstanding attempts at an understandingof the general problem of the African Negro in America with the publi-cation of several minor works: two offering information on Brazil toreaders of English and Spanish, and two collections of short essays onspecific aspects of the problems he had already discussed.The first of these works was written especially for translation andpublication in the United States by Professor Richard Patee, a studentof the Negro. The Negro in Brazil, an historical sketch of the Negro inBrazil rather than a study, was published by the Associated Publishers,Inc., of Washington, D. C., in 1939. The character of the study is perhaps

9 ROGER BASTIDE, French sociologist and thinker, is a professor on the faculty of philosophyof the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. Professor Bastide is internationally known for hisstudies in religion and Afro-Brazilian life. Carneiro is referring to Bastide's "13tat actuel desetudes afro-bresilienne: le probleme du contact des races," Revue Internationale de Sociolo-gie, 47 (January-February, 1939), 77-89.10 REFERENCE is to the decree of December 14, 1890, signed by Ruy Barbosa, then secretary ofthe treasury, and the circular instruction of May 13, 1891, ordering the burning of alldocuments bearing on the institution of slavery.

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ARTHUR RAMOSexplained by the fact that Ramos had no intention of ever publishingthe work in Brazil. Although it contains nothing new, this brief, infor-mative volume is a good illustration of his ability to synthesize andclarify problems.In 1942, three years later, Negro Acculturation in Brazil appeared onthe bookstalls. The introduction is the best part of this work with itsmasterful analysis of the method of Nina Rodrigues, a thorough vindi-cation of. Rodrigues' title of pioneer in modern methods of anthropology.There are two excellent essays in the volume: one is on methods of slavepunishment11 in Brazil, the most exhaustive study to appear in thiscountry; the other, on the fate of the Confederates who settled in Brazilafter the American Civil War. The rest of the volume consists of occa-sional pieces.We might say the same thing for the volume War and Race Relationspublished by the National Students Union in 1943. These are short essaysof limited interest of problems which are today happily passe. Dr.Ramos' aim at the time was to combat the so-called scientific notionsabout superior and inferior races and peoples propounded and propa-gated by Hitler and his cohorts in their efforts to corrupt and weakenthe resistance of the democracies. As a consequence Ramos, democratand friend of the people, found himself at war with the enemy on thevery terrain he knew best-that of anthropology. His preface notesthat "we have already ceased to be mere spectators at this contemporarybattle of ideas . . . we are now conscious actors prepared for the fray."Then he continues:One of the vistas opened up to us on the horizon of the future peaceand reconstruction of the world is adjustment of the relations ofpeoples, not in the old terms of white and colored, of strong andweak nations, of a humanity divided between the haves and thehave-nots, but in terms of mutual respect for the life-characteristicsand the culture of every group.This democratic attitude, logically enough, pushed him into taking aposition in favor of peace and against preparation for war and to signingthe manifesto of the Organization for the Defense of Peace, of whosenational council he was a member. When he left Brazil for France totake up his duties in the Social Sciences Department of UNESCO, hetold his friends that he would not betray them; he would continue to dowhat he could for their advancement by bringing about friendship andsympathy amongst peoples.In 1945, he published The Peoples of Brazil, another work of infor-mation for the foreigner, in Mexico. Finally, in 1943, the Casa do Estu-dante issued the first volume of his very important Introduction to11 THIS STUDY was first published in the Revista do Arquivo Municipal (Sao Paulo), 47 (May,1938), 79-104. Dr. Ramos divides instruments of slave punishment into three classes: instru-ments of capture and confinement, such as collars, stocks, handcuffs, etc.; instruments oftorture, such as thumb-screws, ferrules, rawhide whips, etc.; and instruments of debasement,such as iron neck plaques, branding irons, etc.

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PHYLONBrazilian Anthropology. This first volume, a survey of the cultures ofBrazilian Indians and Negroes, was followed four years later (throughno fault of his) by the second, a survey of European cultures in Brazil.I have already mentioned the importance of the section devoted to theBrazilian Indian. As for the chapters on the Negro, they are hardlymore than expansions of his earlier studies, but with this difference.He discusses specific cultures in reference to their African habitat, givingattention at the same time to their present status in Brazil, while ex-amining the adaptative processes through which they have passed. Hissecond volume portrays the meetings of various European groups inBrazil, a thing which had not been done before: the Portuguese, Span-iards, French, Anglo-Saxons, Italians, Germans, Dutch, Slavs, Jews,etc., concluding with a special study of racial and cultural contacts,miscegenation, assimilation, and the acculturation of Brazilian Indians,Negroes, and Europeans.Those who have worked in any specialty in the field of Braziliananthropology can appreciate the difficulties Arthur Ramos surmountedwhen he presented such a broad depiction (in a few thousand pages)of the constituents of the Brazilian population with its peculiar me-chanism of reciprocal action and reaction in the interplay of milieu andhuman groups. After interpreting these patterns and focusing the prob-lems on our attention, Ramos wrote at the end of his book:

"Brazilian anthropology is a study that is just beginning to besystematized. This introductory work scarcely does more than outlinethe road which future investigators must follow."We must mention among his last writings the lecture on "The GreatProblems of Brazilian Anthropology" delivered in Sao Jose do RioPardo 12 in 1948 during Euclydes week13 and "Negro Art in Brazil," aslightly more important study published in the second issue of Cultura,the review issued by the Brazilian Ministry of Education.It would perhaps be unfair to close without mentioning Pillow-Lace12 SAO JOSit DO RIO PARDO is the little town (Pop. 34,096) in the state of Sao Paulo whereCunha wrote Os Sert6es "during the intervals between his harassing engineering work" ofbuilding a bridge over the Rio Pardo.13 EUCLYDES WEEK or semana euclideana is the week in August when Brazil pays homage toCunha and its leading men of letters by making a pilgrimage to the town of Sao Jose do RioPardo. The zinc shack in which Cunha wrote most of his masterpiece is now preserved asa national shrine.EDISON de SOUZA CARNEIRO (1912---), son of the famous Brazilian writer and pro-fessor of engineering, Dr. Ant6nio Joachim de Souza Carneiro, was born in Sao Salvador,Baia, on August 12, 1912, and educated in that city. He graduated from the Faculty of Lawof Baia with an LL. B. in 1935. Carneiro, however, had begun publishing his ethnologicalwritings in the journals and newspapers in 1928 and has authored the following books:Religioes Negras (1936), "Negro Religions"; Negros Bantus (1937), "Bantu Negroes"; CastroAlves (1937); Trajet6ria de Castro Alves (1947), "Trajectory of Castro Alves"; 0 Quilombodos Palmares (1947), "The Fugitive Slave Settlement of Palmares"; Candombl6s da Bahia(1948), "Afro-Brazilian Religious Societies of Baia"; and Antologia do Negro Brasileiro(1948), "Brazilian Negro Anthology." With the death of his friend Dr. Arthur Ramos, Sr.Carneiro became the outstanding ethnologist of the Baian School. He is also a candidate forthe chair in anthropology formerly held by Dr. Ramos in the Universidade do Brasil.

Versatile, 38-year-old Edison Carneiro has had a varied career. He has been editor of Estadoda Bahia and 0 Jornal; English translator for the publishing house of Vecchi; editor-in-chief for four years of The Associated Press in Rio de Janeiro; organizer of the Second Afro-Brazilian Congress of Baia and the Union of Afro-Brazilian Sects of Baia; and literary criticfor the weekly Diretrizes. He is married to Profesora Madalena Botelho and lives in Riode Janeiro. He has two children: a son, Philon; a daughter, Lidia.

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ARTHUR RAMOSand Its Acculturation in Brazil written in collaboration with his wife,Dona Luiza Ramos, although, as he wrote in the preface, it was scarcelymore than the "printing of an anthropological directive to a culturetrait, a try at scientific treatment of a question of great recreational andesthetic interest." Nevertheless, these adjectives did not hide from hisfriends the fact that his interest in pillowlace went much deeper. Hisdesire was to preserve an eminently popular art, to safeguard thepeople's patrimony while seeing to it that the industrial developmentso necessary to Brazil did not destroy this native skill. His friends wereaware that he had planned a broad movement to protect this and othercreative activities of the folk.

Finally, to sum up, Arthur Ramos did not have time to do in anthro-pology those things he really wanted to do, and which he was so ablyequipped to perform, much better, perhaps, than anyone else in Brazil.He had done, to repeat an expression he used in his lecture duringEuclydes week, "ethnography, and above all good ethnography," despiteall his omissions, his hesitations in the face of facts, all his anguish insearch of a method, to leave behind an "outline" for future research.He accomplished the hardest and the most difficult task of assemblingthe parts of the picture while suffusing them with elementary realityand bringing them into perspective in such a manner as to light up thewhole. Unfortunately, however, when he was on the verge of discoveringhis dialectic, of grasping the method, the instrument of interpretationwhich would give effective value to his work, he died suddenly in hishotel in Paris.The greatest hope for the science of man in Brazil faded with hisdeath. Arthur Ramos was a sincere democrat, a friend of the people,the vindicator of justice for the black man in America, and a defenderof peace and friendship amongst nations.

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CARNEIRO - 1951 - Arthur Ramos Brazilian Anthropologist (1903-1949)

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