La crainte des Roms. Pratiques romanès de la défiance

Abstract

“The fear of Roma.” Is this the fear that Roma evoke in non-Roma (gadje) or conversely the fear that gadje provoke in Roma ? This article builds on ethnographic fieldwork amongst so-called “Hungarian” Roma whose ancestors came to France at the end of 19th century. It explores the inclination of these groups to distrust everything and everybody. Such distrust, it contends, is not merely a tactic of resistance, but also a relational practice constitutive of intra-group relations. Far from being a cause of social inaction, distrust forms the basis for a political disposition to ceaselessly reinvent social relations through a series of practices including “true-lies”. This distrust of appearances thus goes hand in glove with a capacity ceaselessly to reconfigure the human world.

Keywords

• fear
• Roma
• Gypsies
• distrust
• self-presentation