ABSTRACT
One of the more popular concepts used to deal with the increased complexity of the empirical fields now studied by anthropologists, is creolization. Creolization, as the term is used by some anthropologists, is an analogy taken from linguistics. This discipline in turn took the term from a particular aspect of colonialism, namely the uprooting and displacement of large numbers of people in colonial plantation economies. It may be said that all the cultures of all the ethnic groups in Mauritius have been culturally creolizeduprooted and adapted to local circumstancesto a greater or lesser extent. In spite of obvious cultural creolization evident throughout Mauritian society, it is chiefly the Mauritians of African and/or Malagasy descent who are classified locally as Creoles. Mauritian notions of creoledom are traditionally associated with language and origins, which only partly overlap. Creoles as an ethnic group have no fixed criteria for membership.
