ABSTRACT
The label “Plantation America” has been given by Charles Wagley to this so-called culture sphere which, though stretching from northeastern Brazil and the Guianas, through the Caribbean, to the southern United States, exhibits basically similar features consequent on the socio-economic primacy of the plantation and the system of slavery upon which it was built. The concept of pluralism and its applicability to certain types of composite societies have aroused considerable debate among sociologists and social anthropologists without any sign of an emerging consensus. It was another Dutchman, R.A.J. van Lier, who first applied the concept of pluralism to Caribbean plantation society. A society with minimal cultural sections is socially and culturally heterogeneous; one with maximal cultural sections is a plural society. The segmentation which is said to characterize the structurally plural society raises a number of questions regarding the maintenance of its form and stability.
