Paper short abstract:

Marriage is a tool through which Calon Romanies of Brazil construct and maintain social relationships. But it also holds seeds of fragmentation and estrangement. Since parties in feud are almost always those who used to live together in the past, marriages are central to the institution of revenge.

Paper long abstract:

Marriage is the main way through which Calon Romanies of Brazil recognise and manage the fact of their dispersal among the non-Gypsies (*Jurons*). In the past, within the context of colonial expansion, capitalist exploitation and exile, marriage was central to Calon community survival. Today it remains the key site of their differentiation from Jurons -- of Calon self-identification and commonness. It is through marriage that households and *turmas* (groups of households that commonly move and camp together) as well as other forms of connectivity, which they simultaneously presuppose, emerge. At the same time, marriages are also a motor of differentiation, estrangement and fragmentation. It is through marriages that novel lasting relationships between individuals and families are primarily forged. These provide married men and women with the performative contexts through which they singularise themselves as social persons. Marriages allow them to build sets of affective ties that are distinct from those of their parents, siblings and cousins and thus give rise to new relationships and spaces around which individuals re-orient their lives. Marriages also constantly redefine relationships within communities. Relationships between affines are particularly tense and, as a consequence, much interpersonal violence occurs between them. In addition, since parties in feud (*vingança*, revenge), who by rule avoid each other, are almost always those who used to live together, e.g. as a part of one *turma*, feuding and marriages need to be analysed together as belonging to the same system of social organisation.