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Ethnicity and free exchange in Mauritian society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2000

SUZANNE CHAZAN-GILLIG
Affiliation:
CNRS-Universités de Poitiers et de Bordeaux III, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, 99 Avenue du Recteur Pineau, 86022 Poitiers, France e-mail: suzanne.chazan@mshs.univ-poitiers.fr
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Abstract

The new forms of entrepreneurship that constitute the Mauritian economic landscape – modelled very often by ethnic traits – where the plantation activities are mixed with business, cannot be understood independent of the long history of the island. The double French and English colonial system has conditioned the emergence of the liberal society of today. The communal system that was born out of the independence movements has transformed the centrality of the State in a periphery coordinating and managing ethnic relations. New relations are engaged between the civil society and the State in order to harmonize the political cultural links with the contemporary external relations.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Translated from the French by Professor Aline Royet, Strasbourg. A first version of this text was presented at the second seminar of the Institut Austral de Démographie organized in November 1997 by Reunion Island's ODR (Observatoire de Développement Régional). I take this opportunity to thank M. Thierry de la Grange for inviting me to take part in this seminar. The term ‘free exchange’ in the title should be interpreted in the broad sense of a free exchange; that is, the opening of an exchange, rather than according to the narrow definition used by economic theorists.