Darcy Ribeiro - Ideas and Theories

Ideas and Theories

Darcy Ribeiro's ideas belonged to the evolutionist school of sociology and anthropology. He believed that people went through a "civilizatory process" beginning as hunter-gatherers. This "civilizatory process" was according to him marked by technological revolutions, and among these he stress the eight more important as the following:

  • the agricultural revolution
  • the urban revolution
  • the irrigation revolution
  • the metallurgic revolution
  • the livestock revolution
  • the mercantile revolution
  • the industrial revolution
  • the thermonuclear revolution

Ribeiro proposed also a classification scheme for Latin American countries where he identified "New Peoples" (Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela etc.), that merged from the mix of several cultures; "Testimony Peoples" (Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and Bolivia), remnants of ancient civilizations; and Argentina and Uruguay, former "New Peoples" that became "Transplantated Peoples", essentially European, after massive immigration.

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