Syllabus
1. Introduction 2.
Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century, Princeton University Press 2004, Chapter 1: Mercury's Sandals: The Jews and other Nomads, pp. 4-20 3. Y.
Slezkine, ibid., pp. 20-39 4. Michael Stewart, The Time of the Gypsies, Westview Press, Oxford 1997, Chapter 1: The Lowest of the Low, pp. 1-26. 5.
M. Stewart, ibid., Chapter 3.
A Place of Their Own, pp. 27-37, pp. 43-49. 6. M.
Stewart, ibid., Chapter 4: We Are All Brothers Here, pp. 50-67. 7. M.
Stewart, ibid., Chapter 12: A Shame of the Body, pp. 204-231. 8. M.
Stewart, ibid., Chapter 13: Conclusion: Marginality, Resistance, and Ideology, pp. 232- 248. 9. Judith Okely, Cultural Ingenuity and traveling autonomy: not copying, just choosing, in: Thomas Acton, Gary Mundy (eds.): Romani culture and Gypsy Identity, University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield 1999, pp. 188-203. 10.
Patrick Williams, The Invisibility of the Kalderash of Paris: Some Aspects of the Economic Activity and Settlement Patterns of the Kalderash Rom of the Paris Suburbs, in: Urban Antropology, no. 3-4, 11, 1982, pp. 315-330. 11. P.
Williams, ibid., pp. 330-344. 12. Paloma Gay Y Blasco, Gypsy/Roma diasporas.
A comparative perspective, Social Antropology, 10,
Annotation
The course will begin by the exposition of the concept of Mercurians which, according to Iuri
Slezkine, captures shared features of Gypsies, Jews and similar groups of “service nomads” such as the Parsis in India or the Chinese in Indonesia. They have, however, their own way of constructing their identity. Rather than on a mythical past and genealogy, they base it on their ability to maintain their living-together “here and now”. Their difference does not stem from specific cultural contents but rather from their ability to give a specific Gypsy twist to any cultural content which they appropriate for their own use from the surrounding societies. In modern times they resisted assimilation and processes of modernization tended to make of them an underclass. Still, many Gypsy groups were able to maintain or re-invent their identity even at the social bottom.