Paper short abstract:

Roma marriages are central to the social reproduction of 'Gypsyness' at both individual and collective levels. This paper examines how personhood and intimacy contribute to the maintenance of social organisation, and, conversely, how social norms shape personal aspirations and experiences.

Paper long abstract:

Although not strictly endogamous, the southern Romanian Rom I have worked with view marriage-making as central to the social reproduction of their identity as 'traditional' and 'true' Roma. The norms of behaviour and performance that regulate the topic of marriage make this process contingent upon the couple's performance and their contribution to the social organisation of the group, not on their respective personalities, provenance, or aspirations. In this paper, I examine how these two levels, the individual and the societal, overlap, conflict, and contribute to one another in the social reproduction of 'Gypsyness'. Firstly, I examine the marriage process in several of its constitutive dimensions: courtship, asking for a woman's hand in marriage (called 'coming with the speech', a veni cu vorba), marriage negotiations—or, conversely, elopement and kidnapping—as well as marriage dissolutions through 'Gypsy judgments'. Then, I mitigate this 'structural' account by an emphasis on the subjective dimensions of marriage: the cultivation of mutual feelings, attraction and care among the spouses, their performance as competent and accomplished adults/members of the community, etc. Building on the examination of marriage patterns, as well as on life stories and participant observation into the everyday proceedings of family life at its various stages, my paper describes the points of articulation (and inevitable friction) between collective norms and individual aspirations, and shows how these are realised in marriage as the key arena where one proves oneself both as a person, and as a Rom/Romni.