A01=Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Ancestral Language
Author_Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Category=JBCC
Category=JBSL
Category=JHM
Census
Common Language
Contemporary Societies
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eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ethnic Categories
Ethnic Membership
ethnicity
Follow
Interethnic Marriages
La Francophonie
Le Mauricien
Major Ethnic Categories
Mauritian History
Mauritian Nationhood
Mauritian Politics
Mauritian Population
Mauritian Society
Mauritian State
Mauritius
MMM
multiculturalism
nation-building
PMSD
Postwar
South Western Indian Ocean
Sugar Estates
Tv Set
USA
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9781859739549
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jul 1998
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This book seeks to enhance comparative understandings of ethnicity, to refine theories of nationalism, and to contribute to ongoing debates on multiculturalism, identity politics and creolization. Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island-state with a population of about one million, provides a fascinating focus for this comprehensive study of social identity and political culture. Fifteen languages are officially spoken on the island, and four world religions are represented, as well as a high number of ethnic groups. The author argues that the social importance of ethnicity depends not only on political and economic circumstances, but also on kinship organization, and shows how ethnicity is expressed through the idioms of language and religion. However, it is also shown how ethnic identity may be superseded by other forms of belongingness and politics in the contemporary age. Nationhood, gender, class and individualism are all examined for the role they play in social organization and the formation of collective identity. Multiethnic and peaceful, the pace of social change in Mauritius has been rapid throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The ways in which Mauritians negotiate the relationship between ethnic, national and other identities in forging a surprisingly stable and democratic society, and the peculiar tensions which arise in the interface between the ethnic and the non-ethnic, ought to be familiar to anyone concerned with the future of multiethnic societies.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen Professor,Department and Museum of Anthropology, University of Oslo
