Summary
On the territory of ex-Yugoslavia numerous Romani groups, with special ethnic and cultural characteristics, have formed. One of them is the Djorgovci, mentioned only sporadically in ethnographic literature as a specific group of Orthodox Gypsies who speak the Serbian language and live in south Serbia (around the town of Vranje), Kosovo and Macedonia. This paper is based on field research conducted during 2004 in the village of Golemo Selo near Vranje and its aim is to sketch a portrait of the Djorgovci-a community with an ambivalent identity. The Djorgovci are linked to the majority group of the Serbs by 'objective' cultural traits: religion, language and customs, but the cultural and ethnic boundaries do not necessarily overlap. The differences between the two groups are obvious in the models of conceiving and organising existence and in their subjective belief that they represent different groups. While Djorgovci are connected with the Serbians by cultural identification, they are linked to the Roma living in south Serbia (who speak Romani and are mainly Muslim) by their ethnic origin (we can also add here perceptive indicators which, although always undetermined, have a bearing on identification). The ethnic and cultural schism in the identity of the Djorgovci places them in the realm of liminality, 'betwixt and between' clearly determined, socially acknowledged ethnic categories, so they are doubly included and doubly excluded. In the existing ethnic classification they are striving to find their place by conjoining both poles of their identity, so they are 'both-and' (We are Serbian Gypsies) or, by denial and self-contempt, 'neither-nor' (We aren't Gypsies, we aren't Serbs, we're nobody). In the rural milieu of south Serbia, where identity or its aspects are not a matter of choice, the Djorgovci are floating between two 'deeply-rooted' and mutually exclusive identities, and are being marginalised by representatives of both.
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Extract
Djorgovci: An Ambivalent Identity
Introduction
When analysing the process of self-identification and identification by others, establishing the borders of ethnic groups can be quite complicated. Ethnic classifications based on binary oppositions imply clear identity borders and this is why they can hardly be applied to those groups which, as liminal entities, are 'betwixt and between' already established categories, being 'neither-nor' and/or 'both-and', depending on the situation and context (Eriksen 2002: 62). For such undetermined categories, Eriksen uses the term ethnic anomalies, emphasising that the empirical context can determine whether they are to be considered anomalous or entrepreneurial categories (2002: 62, 65). In practice, they function as hidden minorities, which is a constructed term for small ethnic, respectively ethnographic groups which are not officially recognised as a minority (Sikimic 2004a: 7; Promicer 2004:12-13).The Roma, 'a nation without a state', spatially dispersed in such a way that they represent a transglobal national minority (see Marusiakova and Popov 2004a: 71-100), are an example of ambivalent identity in certain contexts. Roma heterogeneity, at a global level, is so overwhelming that, according to Marusiakova and Popov, some authors question whether the use of such concepts as community and nation is justified for groups of people who not only speak various dialects of Romani, but also other languages (Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Albanian, Spanish etc), and choose to belong to groups of different, non-Roma ethnic identity (op. cit). The Roma represent an inter-grouped ethnic community with a hierarchically complex structure. They are dispersed into a number of distinct groups (sometimes even mutually opposed), subgroups and metagroups with their own ethnic and cultural features and different levels of 'Roma identity (Marusiakova a...See the full content of this document
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