The remarkable amount of thematic diversity provides this festschrift to Professor Wagley with its most salient characteristic. The variety of topics touched upon by the contributing authors pays appropriate homage to a foremost scholar whose far- and wide-ranging interests so influenced the development of anthropology in Brazil and the development of Brazilian studies in the United States. The volume includes a rather representative concern of American anthropologists over the complexities of the internal organization of central Brazilian indigenous groups, the traditional Brazilian interest in problems of ethnic acculturation, and papers that focus upon the peasantry, the colonization of frontiers, and the emergent middle class. Thus, as a tribute to the broad inspiration of Wagley, the book succeeds.
As an effort to further the understanding of Brazilian problems or even to summarize the present state of Brazilian anthropology, however, the book falls short. With some notable exceptions, the papers illuminate no new facet of Brazilian life, or capture the dynamics of a society in change. Many are episodic and anecdotal (e. g., Greenfield, Miller, Gregor); others purport insights that simply are not adequately argued (e. g., Harris, Margolis, Gross, Brown). In sum, only a few of the contributions evince any effort to deal systematically with the respective areas of focus.
The exceptions to this generally lackluster performance are important ones. Moran’s analysis of the social forces that influence the process of Amazonian settlement follows in the tradition of Wagley’s Amazon Town and begins to fill a major gap in the study of Brazilian society. Shirley also provides a highly informative description of the gradual penetration of a national judiciary system into the Brazilian hinterland. Forman and Riegelhaupt rightfully suggest a more careful and contextual use of the concept of patron-client relationships. These papers, plus the introductory comments by Wagley, do compensate for some of the volume’s other shortcomings.
One last major point needs to be emphasized. The editors have followed a traditional anthropological format in the selection and organization of the contributed papers. This format poorly accommodates and, in fact, camouflages many of the present efforts by both American and Brazilian scholars. The crucial problems in contemporary Brazilian society focus on the fate of the Indian groups who face unrelenting pressure from various outside interest groups in the Amazon, the future of a peasantry beset by the increased capitalization of agriculture, and the unstemmed growth of urban poverty. These prominent questions find no expression in the volume, a fact that seriously compromises both its contribution and utility.
