Paper short abstract:

Fervent effort of a group of Roma in South Bohemia to escape identification as Gypsies is analyzed on the backdrop of local power relations and in consideration of the mutations of a long-term strategy to disappear from state categorization.

Paper long abstract:

While a number of ethnographies of Roma/Gypsy groups sought to conceptualize internal divisions as expressions of the symbolic order, they rarely looked beyond the immediate cultural context in order to anchor the divisions in a framework of existing power relations. Typically the pure/impure cleavage is linked uniquely to ritual conceptions of belonging whereby Roma/Gypsies supposedly envisage the working of their internal world in contrast with the outside. In this paper I will assert continuity over discontinuity in a local social context. In Tercov where a group of Roma is divided in two fractions of Gypsy-like and integrated Roma the cleavage is determined by the capacity of one fraction to impose a humiliating view on the other as Gypsies although in all possible aspects the two fractions do not show any differences. Drawing on Elias' concept of established/outsiders I will examine how a complex of ideologies, practices and histories resonate in the configuration which gives rise to a surprising phenomenon of Roma being repeatedly hunt down by an identity they wish to escape. Such an approach, I argue, should allow integrating seemingly culturally specific ideas of difference into a general mechanism of social distanciation.