Unity in diversity in a polyethnic society: The maintenance of medical pluralism on Mauritius

Mauritius is a polyethnic society that provides an ideal situation in which to study medical pluralism. The population of this Indian Ocean island predominantly consists of individuals of Indian African. French, and Chinese origin; Hinduism. Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism are all represented on the island. A wide variety of both secular and religious healing resources are encountered on Mauritius, many of which are associated with particular ethnic and/or religious traditions. However, except for a few of the religious specialists, most practitioners are consulted by individuals of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds.

In this paper I examine the medical belief system and health-seeking behavior of Mauritians in order to delineate both the conceptual and behavioral mechanisms contributing to the maintenance of medical pluralism. Despite the heterogeneity of the population, lay individuals tend to hold similar beliefs about the causes of illness and to construct similar categories of illness. Mauritians believe that illness may result from a wide variety of factors and that no single healing tradition is capable of dealing with all of these. Therefore, the medical belief system and the distribution of medical knowledge require and promote the maintenance of diverse healing traditions. The decision-making process during quests for cure is structured in such a way that it allows patients to consult a variety of healing traditions for particular illness episodes and to utilize over their lifetimes a diversity of healing resources.

The medical belief system on Mauritius is a consistent, unified system that promotes the maintenance of ideologically diverse healing traditions and the acceptance of newly developed or newly introduced therapeutic resources. It is, thus, well adapted to the social history and social heterogeneity of the island. It does, however, exhibit some characteristics that are not usually reported in other less heterogeneous societies, and the question arises as to whether these correspond to the extent of medical pluralism and or ethnic heterogeneity in other sociocultural contexts.