Common Denominators: Ethnicity, Nation-Building and Compromise in Mauritius - Couverture rigide

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1859739547 ISBN 13 : 9781859739549

Editeur : Berg Publishers, 1998

Synopsis

Unusual book

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

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 However, it is also shown how ethnic identity may be superseded by other forms of belongingness and politics in the contemporary age.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.

Biographie de l'auteur

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and is research manager of an interdisciplinary research programme on cultural complexity. He is author of numerous works including Ethnicity and Nationalism, Small Places - Large Issues, Common Denominators and Engaging Anthropology. Thomas Hylland Eriksen is an anthropologist and writer based at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway. His work is motivated by a double concern: to understand the present world, and to understand what it means to be human. Much of his work is comparative and interdisciplinary. His research has involved fieldwork in several ethnically and culturally complex societies. He has written extensively about ethnicity and the dynamics of culture and identity, nationalism and the politics of identity, cosmopolitanism and human rights, globalisation and its implications for the study of culture and society. He has also published several textbooks in anthropology and related subjects. Apart from his academic publications, Eriksen also writes essays and miscellaneous nonfiction intended for the general reader, and occasionally contributes to the press with a book review or a polemical intervention. His second novel is published in autumn 2012.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Berg Publishers
• Date d'édition: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1859739547
• ISBN 13: 9781859739549
• Reliure: Relié
• Langue: anglais
• Nombre de pages: 224