ABSTRACT

This article explores how traditional healing is regulated in the island of Mauritius. Drawing on postcolonial Science and Technology Studies and their encounter with socio-legal studies, it maps the emergence of the Ayurveda and Other Traditional Medicines Act of 1990, pointing out the selectivity of the notion of ‘tradition’ and its entanglement to broader nation-making processes, born in the process of its independence from Britain. While the social and political histories embedded in the text of the law favour the authorisation of some healing traditions and not others, outside its scope, other practices persist, and triggering competing visions about the island’s healing futures. By bringing into the frame the plurality of Mauritius’s healing landscape, where different traditions coexist despite their ambiguous legal status, this article accounts for the tensions in the regulation of traditional medicine, where the law produces its own inclusions and exclusions, and mundane legalities of everyday healing become sites of broader political questioning about the relationship between law, science, and nation-making.

摘要

本文探讨了毛里求斯岛如何规范传统治疗。它借鉴后殖民科学技术研究及其与社会法律研究的接触，描绘了1990 年《阿育吠陀和其他传统医学法案》的出现，指出了“传统”概念的选择性及其与更广泛的国家建设的纠缠。进程，诞生于其从英国独立的过程中。虽然法律文本中包含的社会和政治历史有利于批准某些治疗传统，而不是其他治疗传统，但在其范围之外，其他做法仍然存在，并引发了对该岛治疗未来的相互竞争的愿景。通过将毛里求斯治疗景观的多元性纳入框架，不同的传统尽管法律地位模糊，但共存，本文解释了传统医学监管中的紧张关系，其中法律产生了自己的包含和排除，以及日常的平凡合法性。治愈成为对法律、科学和国家建设之间关系的更广泛政治质疑的场所。