Gypsy Justice versus Gorgio Law: Interrelations of Difference
Abstract
Resonating with Frankenberg, this article explores the role of the individual stranger/outsider. The non-Gypsy (gorgio) individual or system is often used to settle internal disputes among Traveller-Gypsies, although rarely in the relatively benign role, as in Frankenberg's study. The outsider's system, while representing centuries of sedentarist and racist persecution, may also be open to manipulation. While popular discourse represents the Gypsies’ non-literate system as an isolate in some potential evolution, the few studies of Gypsies’ resolution of conflict have attracted attention in other disciplines because they raise questions about alternative controls and local cooperation in post-industrialist societies.
Rather than any classical contrast and comparison, the article demonstrates inter relations of differences with emphasis on agency and institutions of law enforcement as a resource. My ethnographic material emerges not from former colonies but the once centre of the British Empire. The Traveller-Gypsies also have relatively independent, appropriate means of settling conflicts. Hitherto, this detailed material from localized fieldwork rather than from afar, has been withheld for a safe passage of time. It may have become even more relevant.
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Article first published: November 2005
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