This article argues that the instability of social arrangements, openness in economic strategies, and presentist orientations found among the Calon Gypsies (Ciganos) in Bahia are not to be attributed ...to uncertainty originating in destabilizations of Calon social life through encompassment and penetration by the dominant Juron (non‐Gypsy) society. It shows instead that Calon cultivate exploitable uncertainty and maintain forward thrust in their lives through a form of self‐discipline sometimes described as ‘making the future’, which distinguishes them from both Jurons and those Calon who have died. This orientation, which highlights the unsettlement of existing arrangements in order to create new opportunities and alter one's position, is inseparable from Calon conceptions regarding generations and gender. It provides a performative background against which Calon can demonstrate attributes of social persons and allows for ‘enchaining’ people through recomposing relationships.
Abstrait
« Seuls les morts ne font pas l'avenir » : la vie des Calons, entre les non‐Tziganes et la mort
Résumé
Le présent article avance que l'instabilité des arrangements sociaux, l'ouverture des stratégies économiques et les orientations présentistes des tziganes (Ciganos) Calon de Bahia ne sont pas attribuables à une incertitude née des déstabilisations de leur vie sociale par l'intégration dans la société des Jurons (non‐tziganes) dominante et sa pénétration. Au contraire, il montre que les Calons cultivent une incertitude exploitable et avancent dans la vie en s'appuyant sur une forme d'autodiscipline parfois appelée « faire l'avenir », qui les distingue à la fois des Jurons et des Calons qui sont déjà morts. Cette orientation, qui met en lumière le dérangement des arrangements existants pour créer de nouvelles opportunités et modifier sa position personnelle, est indissociable des conceptions des Calons concernant les générations et le genre. Elle crée un arrière‐plan performatif sur fond duquel les Calons peuvent afficher des attributs de personnes sociales et permet de « former des chaînes » avec les autres par des relations recomposées.
Economic arrangements of Romanies are complexly related to their social position. The authors of this volume explore these complexities, including how economic exchanges forge key social ...relationships of gender and ethnicity, how economic opportunities are constructed and seized, and how economic success and failure are transformed into attributes of social persons. They explore how, despite — or perhaps because of — their unstable and ambiguous position within the market economy, shared today with a growing number of people facing precarity and informalisation, Roma and Gypsy communities continuously re- create more or less viable economic strategies. The ethnographically based chapters share accounts of socially and economically vulnerable populations that face their situation with self-determination and creativity.
Gypsies (Ciganos in Portuguese) have been present in Brazil since the earliest days of Portuguese colonization. Part of the (free) masses (o povo, “the people”), they were known primarily as ...itinerant traders of trinkets, slaves, and animals, and were one category of intermediaries who made the internal economy function. Authorities viewed their lifestyle and activities with suspicion. Focusing on the state of Bahia, in the north-eastern region of Brazil, between the late sixteenth and late nineteenth centuries, this article shows that the tenuous position of Gypsies was amenable to transformations reflecting political priorities and ideas about the proper social order. The continued difference of Ciganos and their independent way of making a living were at times problematized by elites, embodying wider tensions between the authorities and the people. The case of Bahian Ciganos is revelatory within Romani-related historiography in that it foregrounds connected developments within locales enmeshed in a metropole–periphery relationship, continuities between imperial and nation-building projects, and the centrality of race on which they were built.
Les chercheurs caractérisent fréquemment la relation à l’espace des tsiganes brésiliens selon l’opposition sédentarité/nomadisme. Or une approche historique et ethnographique de leurs modes de vie ...montre que l’on objective ainsi des catégories des sciences sociales mais qu’on ne parvient pas à rendre compte de leurs sociabilités ni des significations qu’ils donnent à leur spatialité. Le monde des Tsiganes calon de Bahia est structuré par des principes spécifiques de parenté, par des caractérisations de la personne sociale, par leur manière de saisir les opportunités économiques et par les divisions que la violence introduit.
Várias evidências históricas e etnográficas demonstram que as caracterizações da espacialidade Cigana no Brasil como sendo “sedentária” ou “nômade”, tal como frequentamente elaboradas por acadêmicos, contribuem para objetificar categorias do pensamento social e científico, mas falham em apreender a socialidade e os significados que se encontram por trás da espacialidade dos Ciganos. O mundo dos Ciganos Calon na Bahia é estruturado de acordo com princípios específicos de parentesco, noções próprias sobre pessoa, oportunidades econômicas e fragmentação por meio de violência.
Scholars frequently characterize Brazilian Gypsies’ relationship to space via the opposition of sedentariness/nomadism. Yet, an historical and ethnographic approach to their lifestyles shows that whereas we visualizes categories this way in the social sciences, we do not manage to give full account of either their sociability or the meanings they give to their spatiality. The world of the Calon Romani in Bahia is structured by specific principals of kinship, by characterizations of the social person, by the manner in which they seize economic opportunities, and by divisions brought on by violence.
The community life of Calon Romanies (Gypsies) in Bahia, northeast Brazil, is politically instituted through and by violence. Violence and fear of violence underlie Calon sociability and serve as a ...way to mark Calon as distinct from Jurons (non-Gypsies). Within communities, it undermines the tendency for personal power and efficacy to coalesce into rank, as well as the tendency for settlements to petrify into entities with fixed identities. Ultimately, the article argues, what makes violence practicable as a mode of fabricating social relations in the first place is Calon non-sedentarism, which posits one's readiness to move as a mechanism through which belonging and relatedness are expressed, and which values flexibility in spatial arrangements rather than a fixed domicile.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This edited volume discusses the methodological and ethical challenges that researchers are currently facing whilst attempting to ...document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities throughout Europe.
Within the Brazilian multicultural regime of recognition, Ciganos (Romanies) are recognised as belonging to 'traditional peoples and communities'. The article discusses how this concept became ...applied to Ciganos raising questions of belonging, commonality and representation. It describes the emergence of novel ways of presenting one's culture as distinct and even traditional among Calon Ciganos. It shows how demands to overcome invisibility, led to the creation of new spaces for dialogue with state institutions and reshaped how Calon politics are enacted. Finally, it describes the first successful case of guaranteeing Calon land rights.
Témoignage Fotta, Martin
Brésil(s) : sciences humaines et sociales,
11/2022, Letnik:
5
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
video:fotta Martin Fotta est anthropologue à l’Académie des sciences Tchèque et l’auteur de l’article « On ne peut plus parcourir le monde comme avant » : au-delà de la dichotomie ...nomadisme/sédentarité, publié dans le n° 2 en 2012, dossier « Tsiganes » coordonné par Marc Bordigoni et Mônica Raisa Schpun.
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