Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
‘extravagant’ economic behaviours, spending fortunes in the blink of an eye – a kind of
potlatch –
these were punctual and could be attributed to their famous prodigality.
However, through the building of striking palaces, this new élite of Roma has
attracted public attention mainly at home and also on the web. Like tribal societies, Roma are
frequently used and misused by the media to show some extravagant or exotic features. After
early marriage among traditional Roma/Gypsies (blacksmiths are among the most traditional
groups, preserving their visible exotic identity and customs), luxurious housing has become
the new exotic characteristic for Roma/Gypsies. But only a few socio-anthropological studies
have been devoted to this topic
Why palaces?
As previously mentioned, Roma/Gypsies had no ‘real’ or at least fixed homes. Like other
nomads of the Balkans, they practised a bi-seasonal type of dwelling: in the summer they
would use removable (black) tents or their carriages/wagons. The wagon still figures as the
‘traditional’ shelter of Gypsies, although it has been totally abandoned in South-Eastern
Europe for more than half a century. Actually, this mode of seasonal housing is or was very
common in all pastoral societies particularly among Indians and Inuit or other groups of
Eskimos (Mauss 1904[1960]). Temporary shepherd huts, made of straw, are equally observed
by travellers and in use to this days in the entire Balkan regions.
What is important to recall from these descriptions is the negative image of improper,
dirty, sometimes even underground holes, where people lived ‘like animals in promiscuity’.
This is at least what one can read in the accounts of travellers in the 18
th
Century. Like the
nomad stereotype, the miserable housing of Roma/Gypsies is still alive.
In the winter, however, they used to stay in ‘holes’ or so-called
bordei
– semi-buried
houses. The latter have no ethnic characteristics and were inhabited by Romanians, Serbians
and Bulgarians as well as by Gypsies in the plains along the Danube. Described several times
by travellers and ethnographers (see, e.g., Stahl 1972) because of the strange impression they
leave, their chimneys rising directly out of the ground, they are sometimes seen more
positively. However many travellers note that when occupied by Gypsies these holes are in
rather poor conditions:
5
It is worth noting that a similar older new rich élite established in a
mahala
in Soroca, in nearby
Moldova, started constructing palaces long ago.
6
Neculau’s interviews in Boscoboinik & Ruegg (2009: 84) offer good ethnographic examples.
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