Race and Culture in Casa-Grande & Senzala

Abstract

n this work my aim is to present a line of interpretation which allows us to consider the concepts of “race” and “culture” in the work of Gilberto Freyre without reducing them to simple opposition, by thinking about them in a complementary and dynamic way in Casa-Grande & Senzala. I intend to show that in his work the racial issue also includes econo-mic and ecological variables, adaptations of organisms to climate, and the possibility of hereditary transmission of such adaptations, which in con-junction with cultural elements forms a complex called milieu. To support this interpretation I looked back to the work of Franz Boas, an author who was always present in the structuring of Gilberto Freyre’s arguments, in order to find the genesis of the tension between multiple natural and social elements that are usually reduced to the simple opposition between nature and culture.