Rosabelle Boswell received her doctorate from the Free University of Amsterdam and is conversant in French and the Indian Ocean Creole dialect. A Creole born in Mauritius and raised in Malawi (during the dictatorship of Kamuzu Banda), she emigrated to South Africa in 1990 where she is now teaching Anthropology at Rhodes University.

"... a major contribution to both the ethnography of Mauritius and to the anthropology of discursive identity formation."  ·  Paula Heinonen, University of Oxford"Nobody has done this ethnography before... her material is rich and unique... [it will] be a standard reference in anthropological studies of the Indian Ocean island societies, but it will also be of interest to scholars and students looking at the Caribbean as well as hybridity in other settings."  ·  Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo

• List of IllustrationsList of AbbreviationsMapsAcknowledgementsPrefaceChapter 1. Unravelling le malaise CréoleChapter 2. Anthropology at ‘Home’Chapter 3. Defining CreolesChapter 4. Dignity and Prestige in FlacqChapter 5. Re-viewing the Past in KarinaChapter 6. Imagining Homelands in Roche Bois and the River CampChapter 7. Negotiating Landscapes in Chamarel and Le MorneChapter 8. Shifting SelvesBibliographyIndex