Repertoires of diversity and collective boundaries: diverging paths between Portugal and Brazil? (completed)

Nuno Oliveira

This project, pursued during a short-term visiting fellowship with the Max Planck Fellow Group under Matthias Koenig, traces two divergent trends in the conception of diversity between Europe and Latin America which have far-reaching implications at the level of public policy. Case studies of Portugal and Brazil are taken as illustrations of these trends. The first trend, exemplified by Portugal, is towards the blurring of ethnic and racial boundaries under the policy concept of ‘interculturalism’. The second trend, exemplified by Brazil, is towards traditional multicultural policies such as the recognition of group specificity according to ethnic boundaries and belonging, with impacts on the distribution of symbolic and material resources. The project accounts for both trends by developing the concept of ‘repertoires of diversity’, which helps mitigate the problems inherent in theories of historically path-dependent national models.