The “Other Gypsies” - Ethnicity among the Rudari and Boyashes of the Southeastern Europe[1]
Jens V. Bengelstorf - Magisterarbeit
The master-thesis of Jens Bengelstorf is based on different field studies led in the countries of Romania and Serbia from 2001 to 2005. There he visited different settlements of different groups of this “macrogroup”, which can only be unified by their Romanian mother tongue and the former manufacturing of wooden products.
The main question connected with these people is the question of their ethnic identity. Because whenever it comes to question, who the so called Rudari and Boyashes are, we will not get clear and (in our terms) understandable answers. There are different discourses dealing with the question of ethnic identity among the Rudari and Boyashes.
One primary discourse, led mainly by the Rudari and Boyashes themselves, claims, that they are Romanians, because they speak only Romanian and do not know any Romani. Some protagonists even pronounce the opinion, that they are the descendants of the “old Dacians” and by this they would be the “truest Romanians” of all.
On the other hand, many people of the majoritarian population in these countries think of the Rudari or Boyashes as ţigani (Gypsies). Nevertheless Romanian peasants, who stand in direct contact with them, will admit, that the Rudari are somewhat different from the “typical” Gypsies like Ursari (Bearleaders) or Căldărari (Kettlesmiths). For them they are a kind of “other Gypsies”.
This work tries to line out the reasons for these different perceptions and this question, significant not only to these people themselves, as this issue has also been subject to a scientific dispute led for over 100 years, mainly in the countries of Romania, Serbia and Bosnia. During the work it becomes clear that we can not judge one opinion as wrong or right, but that the reason for these different perceptions lies in the different meanings of the word “Gypsy” we use without distinction for both a social substratum of society and an “independent” ethnic entity, the ethnic mosaic of the Roma. By dealing with different concepts of what we understand under the term “Gypsy”, we will get different answers to the question if the Rudari and Boyashes are the Gypsies or the Romanians.
Another focus lies on portraying the life of the Rudari and Boyashes and the places they occupy in the societies of different surroundings. For this reason the three different regions of field study are described independently, each with the focus on special topics as economics, social organization and identity.
As mentioned before, economics is connected with identity by the fact, that all Rudari and Boyashes manufactured wooden products once a time or still do this today. In Romania we can still find them on rural markets selling brooms, spoons, troughs and baskets. The topic of social organization is much more difficult to analyse, because we apparently have to deal with different subgroups, which developed and migrated independently and stood under different influences. One main question is, why a part of these people practise gurban (khurban, sacrifice of a lamb) and bride price but others not.
The place of the Rudari and Boyashes in society also varies in different locations depending on the co-residing nations. For Romania in most cases we find besides Rudari only Romanians and the so called ţigani (Gypsies in the meaning of Roma). Here the identity is mostly negotiated between the poles of Romanian and Romani identity. In different cases we can observe an identification with likewise the Romanian and the Gypsy population. Especially in resent times the growing importance of Roma-NGO's and parties makes it attractive for the Rudari and Boyashes to declare themselves Roma in favour to be organized in a common movement. On the contrary, the Rudari and Boyashes outside Romania live in other surroundings, where we find additionally other majoritarian populations as the Hungarians, Serbs or Bulgarians. There their identity becomes more and more flexible with every ethnic opportunity .
The whole work is completed with a general perspective, which reflects the place of the Gypsy and Roma in the societies of the Southeastern Europe. It manages to integrate the Rudari and Boyashes in this picture by describing central characteristics of the Gypsy communities apart from ethnic or linguistic treasures. Following this scheme we can group the Rudari and Boyashes together with other Non-Roma Gypsies such as the Ashkali, Egyptians or Jenischen.
[1] Originaltitel: Jens Bengelstorf – Die “anderen Zigeuner”: Zur Ethnizität der Rudari und Bajeschi in Südosteuropa. Magisterarbeit am Institut für Ethnologie der Universität Leipzig. 2007.
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Kontakt: Jens Bengelstorf [bengelstorf@gmail.com]