The Time of the Gypsies

Description

Until 1989 it was official Communist policy in easter: Europe to absorb Gypsies into the “ruling” working class. But many Gypsies fought to maintain their separate identity. This book is about the refusal of one group of Gypsies — the Rom — to abandon their way of life and accept assimilation into the majority population. It is a story about the sources of cultural diversity in modern industrial society and about the fear and hatred that such social and cultural difference may give rise to. The core of the book, based on eighteen months of observation of daily life ina Gypsy settlement, describes the cultivation, celebration, and reinvention of cultural difference and diversity by a people deemed by their social superiors to be too stupid and uncivilized to have a “culture” at all. The survival of the Gypsy way of life remains one of the great puzzles of modern European history. How has this despised and feared people protected itself through five hundred years of persecution? The Time of the Gypsies evokes the rhythms of the Gypsies’ daily lives and leads the reader to the clues that unlock the secrets of Gypsy survival. The Time of the Gypsies Contents List of Tables and Illustrations Foreword, Maurice Bloch Acknowledgments A Note on the Text 1 Introduction: The Lowest of the Low Post-Communist Gypsies, or Roma Communists and Gypsies Modernity and Diversity The Local Setting and the Problem of Difference “Gaiety in the Face of Despair” Part One The Gypsy Way 2 Gypsy Work An Origin Story The Free Lunch Gypsy Horses 3 A Place of Their Own Gypsy Settlements Work The Ethics of Communal Life Idioms of Community and Identity: Romanes 4 “We Are All Brothers Here” A World Apparently Made of Men Alternative Images of Sociality: Nonbrotherly Relations Breaking Down the House The Nature of Community and the Means of Resistance 5 Breaking Out “If Only We Lived Alone” Šošoj and Čaja: Getting Rich on One’s Own Čoro and Luludji’s Story: Upwardly Mobile Gypsies The Rejection of Differentiation Part Two Beyond the Ghetto 6 Making Workers Out of Gypsies Assimilation as Proletarianization “The Living, Form-giving Fire” The Parquet Flooring Factory Redemption Through Labor? 7 Gaźos, Peasants, Communists, and Gypsies Cigány Gaźo Peasants Who Are Masters of Themselves Disorderly Persons Communists and Gaźos Gypsies, Peasants, and Communists 8 Staying Gypsy in a World of Gaźos “My Heart Was Cut in Two” The Real and the Imaginary Part Three The Reinvention of the World 9 Sons of the Market Horses, Men, and Rom Market Society A Day at the Market The Economics of Horse Dealing The Pure Dealer, or Middleman Dealers as Managers of Men 10 A Passion for Dealing From Dependence to Autonomy Through Luck Trade and the Construction of Society 11 Brothers in Song Celebrations Slow Songs True Speech Song and the Ritualization of Equality 12 The Shame of the Body Dirty Gypsies The Purity of the Rom Body Shame and the Gendered Person The Modest and the Shameless Body Beyond the Body 13 Conclusion: Marginality, Resistance, and Ideology The Sources of the Rom Adaptation Rom Identity, Ethnicity, and Ideology A Sealed Ideology and Its “Open Sesame” Glossary Appendix Notes Bibliography About the Book and Author Index