Roma communities today Historical background, culture and current issues Week 9 Class 1: - Culture (Trades), Ethnicity – ANTH 4020/5020

Today‘s outline 1.Text discussions: - Mayall, David Gypsy Identities From Egipcyans and Moon-men to the Ethnic Romany. London and New York: Routledge, pp (Ch. 8: Constructing the ethnic Gypsy. Themes and approaches). - Lev and Laederich, Stéphane Chapter 29:Trades  Small group exercise 2. A scene from the movie Latcho drom

Author’s central statement/claim? Are the definition criteria valid criteria for defining the Gypsies as an ethnic group? Examples/phrases illustrating claim? Your assessment and/or oppinion? Discussion Mayall 2004 “Constructing the ethnic Gypsy. Themes and approaches”

Central claim: Apparent effort and/or need of scholars to present Roma as a legitimate ethnic group Overall agreement that Roma form an ethnic group,  But precise boundaries & definition criteria vary! Contrasting or confused definitions Concepts of race & ethnicity & nation/nationality overlap or are used interchangeably problems resulting from approaching ethnicity as “primordial”, “natural” or “innate” What about homogenity? Global identity? Mayall-Text: Summary

Examples/Illustrations: suggestion of an absence of debate on the issue of Indian origin  but: cannot be proven! assumption of a sense of national identity, awareness of original homeland  but: questionable if such a sense belongs to people themselves (and is part of their collective memory) or whether it has been constructed by outsiders group identity resulting from delineation by Gadže! Mayall-Text: Summary

“The process of forming a Gypsy people occurred after the original migrations and as part of the experience of the diaspora itself, with various groups coming together as one people as a result of the attitudes and responses of outsiders and host societies ‘erecting a boundary against them all’” (Mayall 2004:224).

Writing about Gypsies “locked” within primordialist perspective  Gypsy identity seen as unchosen, inherited  Belief in fixed, impermeable barriers  no account of debates regarding constructed nature of ethnicity Unexplored aspects in discussion on Roma identity:  Complexities raised by multiple and competing identities  Changing character of identities Mayall-Text: Conclusion

“Within much of Gypsy studies there appears to be a shared but unstated belief that to accept notions of social construction, and with it the idea of the role of the myths, imagined pasts and invented traditions, is somehow to deny the validity of the concept of ethnicity and shared identity. (…) There is now an acceptance that national identities, also based on notions of boundaries and shared characteristics, have been constructed on precisely the same kind of imagined pasts, and yet there is no doubting their validity and force. Indeed an identity built on such foundations can be stronger and more real than anything built on truths and facts (Mayall 2004:244)”.

There is a movement away from ideas of monocultural ethnicity towards viewing identity as constantly negotiated and renegotiated by individuals and groups!  Identity formation and evolution  Change over generations  national differences  Counter-identities

Roma ethnicity „In contemporary society, to deny the Gypsies ethnicity is to relegate them to the ranks and status of parasitic and troublesome outsiders and outcasts“ (Mayall 2004:188)  Condemmned by activists as irresponsible, ill informed and damaging  Debates about Gypsy identity and especially ethnicity are highly politicised, charged with emotions and bitterly contested  Problem is the ambiguous and ill-defined nature of the concept „ethnicity“ itself

Emergence of the concept „ethnicity“ 19th cent. Ch. Darwin‘s thesis about human‘s ability of change and adaption  In opposition to racial notions of fixed and permanent type since 1935 scholars began challenging Nazi racial science wider acceptance of concept after WW II „Although the intellectual critique of race thinking could take place within the academic community, it needed the social and political expression of these ideas under the Nazis before the concept could be morally and politically, as well as intellectually, condemned“ (Mayall 2004:192).  Replaced „race“ as primary system for classifying peoples

Ethnicity: approaches Problem: wide range of differently originating, styled and composed ethnic groups  What are the meanings & components of ethnicity? 1950s & 1960s: original primordialist definition 1960s & 1970s: circumstantialist/situationalist analysis since 1980s: constructionist school of thought

Max Weber (German sociologist), 1922: „We shall call an ‚ethnic group‘ those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonisation and migration: this belief must be important for the propagation of group formation: conversely it does not matter whether or not an objective blood relation exists“ (Mayall 2004:197). A (early) definition

Difference between ethnic group and ethnic category  ethnic groups are self-conscious populations! Awareness forms bond of unity  stimulated by memories, shared activities & culture and regular social interaction Markers of ethnicity have to be clearly established Groups are formed by a combination of internal & external factors Ethnicity “ located in the eye of the observer“

1.What are the advantages and disadvantages of a constructionist approach to ethnicity among scholars for the situation of the (real) people 2.What kinds of shared narratives and/or myths do the German Sinti base their particular identity claims on? 3.Why does „persecution“ overall take such an important place in the Roma‘s own „construction“ of their ethnic group? 4.Which common markers of ethnicity are rather inappropriate in the case of the Roma? Questions