Cyclonic lives in an Indian Ocean world: environment, disaster, and identity in modern Mauritius / Robert M. Rouphail

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rouphail, Robert M., 1985- Author.

Series:

Indian Ocean studies series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cyclones--Mauritius--History.

Cyclones.

Cyclones--Social aspects--Mauritius.

Mauritius--Environmental conditions.

Mauritius.

Mauritius--Social conditions.

Cyclones--Social aspects.

Ecology.

Social conditions.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, [2026]

Summary:

"Disasters as historical processes shaping identity, governance, and diasporic memory in colonial and postcolonial Mauritius. In a world marked by increasingly destructive ecological and meteorological upheavals, Cyclonic Lives in an Indian Ocean World offers a historical analysis of how these catastrophes shape people’s understanding of themselves, their collective history, and their relationship to the institutions that govern them. An examination of cyclonic disasters in the multiethnic Indian Ocean island of Mauritius throws into stark relief how deep histories of diasporic identity formation, of imperial governance, and of the informal practices of racial difference making graft onto how everyday people interpret these moments of loss and the futures that emerge in their wake. Cyclonic Lives shows that disasters are not only events; they are also processes through which people evaluate and rethink the most elemental social and cultural categories that give meaning to their lives. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing until the early postcolonial era, this book tracks, for example, how Mauritians of African descent integrated these disasters into broader collective histories and memories of the Indian Ocean slave trade, how Hindu Indo-Mauritians understood cyclones’ ecological effects as material elements to be accounted for in a broader Hindu diasporic space, and how the late colonial and early postcolonial state built infrastructures—material, conceptual, and financial—to mitigate the threats posed by these storms and ensure their own long-term durability. The increasing political, social, and economic instability that climate change has already triggered demands that humanists develop analytical geographies and methodologies that shed light on how power can modulate in asymmetrical ways at moments of crisis. If there is one central takeaway from this historical study of this small island in a big ocean, it is that catastrophic events are not things that merely happen to people; they are processes that remake them"-- JSTOR

Contents:

Prologue : Cyclones, witches, and werewolves

Introduction : Tropical cyclones and the remaking of an Indian Ocean society

Identity, entitlements, and social worlds of disaster aid in 1892

The cyclonic roots and social worlds of Uba

Cyclones, calories, and cultures of development

Race, decolonization, and the cités of Cyclone Carol reconstruction

Reconstruction, conjugality, and the cyclone-proof family

Epilogue : The postcolonial cyclone

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed April 24, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Rouphail, Robert M., 1985- Cyclonic lives in an Indian Ocean world

ISBN:

9780821426784

0821426788

OCLC:

1581704628