ABSTRACT
The political issue contrasting 'national culture' with cultural pluralism and differentiation, an important topic in the ideological discourse of Mauritian society, thus pertains not so much to the distinction between identity and difference, but to the communication of sameness and difference. The relationship between ethnicity and culture, as these and many other scholars have noted, is complicated, and since it is crucial for an understanding of Mauritian society. Social organisation in Mauritian society varies crucially with respect to compass and importance in society at large, although this difference may not seem important to the participants. Ethnic identity and organisation are produced and reproduced in several social fields, some of which are systemically more important than others in so far as actions at those systemic levels influence a larger number of people and/or are more authoritative than others. In this sense, truth is local and relevance relative when the people deal with complex action sets like Veerasamy's, common in urban Mauritius.
