GENDER, HISTORY, AND ROMA IDENTITIES: FROM CULTURAL DETERMINISM TO THE LONG SHADOW OF THE PAST

Abstract

In this article, I criticise two main approaches to Roma identity: cultural essentialism and social relationism. As a result of this criticism, I argue for a multidimensional concept of identity which would incorporate the cultural and social perspectives supplemented by an historical approach. I develop this concept in relation to empirical data collected in my research to prove false the thesis that the cultural substance of a group’s life can be treated as an independent variable and to show that groups with similar cultural values may have different standpoints regarding some important issues (for example gender constructs) and that culturally different groups may have similar views. Then, with the help of system theory and symbolic anthropology, I present Roma identities as the result of “double encoding” whereby the existential anxieties associated with transgression of the social boundary are transformed into concrete fears related to cultural boundaries, and vice versa. This process is framed in history which means, firstly, that it takes different forms in different times and, secondly, that the transgression of boundary that has occurred in the past has a significant impact on the present identities. I illustrate this impact by the different fate of Polish and Slovak Roma communities during the Holocaust which still influences the way in which these communities encode the boundary between Roma and non-Roma into the boundary between cultural constructs of men and women.