Agatas story: singular lives and

the reach of the Gitano law

P a lo m a G ay y Blasco University of St Andrews

Ethnographic representations of Gypsies/Roma have traditionally emphasized the role of the person
as exemplar and performer of Gypsy/Roma distinctiveness. They have also depicted Gypsy/Roma life
as driven towards cultural closure and towards the eschewing of moral ambiguity. Here I explore
these ideas via the story of a Agata, a Gitano woman from Madrid. My analysis focuses on the
intersection between Gitano ideals of female behaviour as enshrined in the Gitano law (a highly
reied set of understandings regarding morality and custom), on the one hand, and the choices and
personalities of Agata and some of her relatives, on the other. I show how strongly present the
Gitano law is in the lives of these men and women, but also how they engage it in ways that are
neither monolithic nor predictable. The ensuing tension has effects that, albeit not uniform, reach
deeply into the tissue of peoples lives.

Since the mid-1970s the anthropology of Gypsies/Roma1 has been dominated by twin
preoccupations: with their survival as a society, group, or community, and with the
reproduction of their shared identity. Across a variety of theoretical standpoints, the
perpetuation of the Gypsy/Roma way of life in the face of extreme pressures for
assimilation has remained the core problem to be explained. In this task, the narrative
and analytical foci have remained firmly on the group, and on the individual only as
part of the group. Single lives have figured in ethnographic texts on Gypsies/Roma in
as much as they have illustrated a communal engagement with the reproduction of
Gypsyness in one of its several incarnations as identity, as identification, as morality,
and even as old-fashioned society or culture. In this, ethnographers of Gypsies/Roma
have followed an entrenched anthropological strategy, that of dealing with the particu-
lar allegorically that is, only as an instance or example of the general (Jackson 2003:
xi). Like many other anthropologists, ethnographers of Gypsies/Roma have put their
faith in metonymy to explain the human condition (Engelke 2008: S13).
In treating individuals primarily as exemplars, anthropological strategies have par-
alleled those of Gypsies/Roma: the ethnographic literature consistently describes their
varied imagined communities not as integrated organisms or societies, but as amor-
phous aggregates of archetypes, groups of moral beings equally positioned vis--vis

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
446 Paloma Gay y Blasco

the world (Gay y Blasco 1999; 2001; 2002; Lemon 2000; Poueyto 2005; 2008; Stewart
1997; 1998; Williams 1982; 2003). These ethnographers have all emphasized the perfor-
mative character of Gypsy/Roma identity, the fact that it is the person who, by his or her
actions, enables the conceptualization of us as a group. Their work points, across a
variety of geographic contexts, to a metonymic understanding of the relationship
between the person and the community, and of the place of both in the world. Will-
iams, for example, explains that the Parisian Kalderash carry their centre with them
(1982: 341). These French Rom do not place the source of their identity in a book, an
image of the past, or a single person; rather their authenticity is never beyond the
community that they form in the here and now, not in space nor in time (1982: 341).
Hidden among the Gadje, the Kalderash of Williamss portrayal rely on mimesis (same
values for all, same activities for members of each gender) and on the continuing
reaffirmation of bonds, either of solidarity or of competition across all spheres of
everyday life (1982: 317). Likewise Stewart tells us that among the Rom in 1980s
Hungary, a Gypsy family may live alone in a village or alongside several hundred other
families; it made little difference (1997: 72): any group of Rom living the Rom way,
however small, was enough to make romanes (the Gypsy way) a reality. Even early
structuralist analyses (Okely 1983; Sutherland 1977) that portrayed the Gypsy/Roma
body as a metaphor of social organization also stressed the performative and met-
onymic dimensions of purity and pollution practices. Thus Sutherland talked about
Romania as the conditions and rules for identity as a Rom among Californian
Kalderash: Romania is at once the state of being a Rom and the essence of their
collective representations; it is the social order par excellence (1977: 381).
In previous work I have described the emphasis that, in the Madrid suburbs, Gitanos
place on commonality as opposed to social cohesion or communion (Gay y Blasco
2001; 2002). They have no concept of a structure of statuses that individuals would
occupy and vacate upon death, disregarding unlike the French Kalderash any notion
that parochial interests should or would work to sustain the group at large. It is the
gendered person, as performer of reified Gitano morality and custom of the leyes
Gitanas (Gitano laws) who sustains the Gitanos shared sense of themselves as a
group. The Gitano imagined community is therefore amorphous and boundary-less as
well as radically contextual, grounded as it is on the assumption of moral mimesis
among Gitano gendered persons and responding to the identity demands of each
moment. It works in tandem with the strong centrifugal forces governing Gitano
sociality not only feuding but class and economic differences, as well as the interven-
tions of the Spanish state. And yet, the set of moral standards on which these Gitanos
particular sense of community as commonality is premised are abundantly verbalized
and remarkably rigid: although they do not have a concept of society, they do have a
well-developed notion of culture, as an objectified set of rules and customs that
differentiates them from the non-Gitanos or Payos, the ley gitana or Gitano law. The
demand to behave gitanalmente, in the Gitano way, is constant and strongly pressing,
and processes of identification, I have argued, aim at the assertion of an unambiguously
Gitano praxis and identity.
In these anthropological accounts, social life among these various Gypsy/Roma
groups revolves around a drive towards cultural closure (cf. Wardle 2007):2 that
is, towards the affirmation of unequivocal expectations regarding behaviour which
divide and rank the social and moral world into what is Gypsy and what could not
possibly be, and which therefore define belonging (Streck 2003: 136). Analyses of purity

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
 Agatas story 447

and pollution taboos, of economic practices, of ways of dealing with the dead, and of
gendered relations all coincide in stressing the Gypsy/Roma emphasis on explaining the
world and their place in it through explicitly dualistic, clear-cut categories and moral
evaluations that separate Gypsies/Roma from others (Engebrigtsen 2007; Gay y Blasco
1999; Okely 1983; Pasqualino 1998; Stewart 1997; Sutherland 1977; Williams 1982). These
are referred to in the literature as the Roma/Gypsy way or law romanes, Romania,
romanimo, and ley Gitana, amongst other local terms. In Sutherlands account,
Romania, as a set of rules for identity, indicates the social behaviour that each indi-
vidual Rom must accept, at least in principle, in order to be considered a Rom; it
implies a purity status that is accepted by other Rom ... it is the collective values, ideals,
beliefs, actions, and behaviour of the Rom (1977: 381-2). And according to Stewart,
in 1980s Hungary, romanes included

trivial things, such as the way we warmed our hands around the fire in the cold winter mornings or
the way a man salvaged old iron to make nails. At the other end of the scale of value, romanes stood
for the crucial marker of identity, the Romany language, and, most important, romanes stood for the
whole moral code elaborated around the idea of respecting those who lived in the Roms state of siege
(1997: 44).

Of course, not only do the categories encompassed by the Gypsy/Roma way shift
meaning, but they are contradictory (Stewart 1997: 91) and their relationship to prac-
tice is fluid. Stewart describes Gypsy/Roma dualisms as ideology, a rhetorical distor-
tion and simplification of the complex reality of Gypsy lives (Stewart 1997: 241), and
Engebrigtsen emphasizes how although the core principles of romanimo are quite
univocal, their interpretations both in ... discourse and in social practice are contested
and discussed (2007: 125). These moral/aesthetic dichotomies, moreover, draw
meaning from and indeed address broader national or even pan-European cultural
and social frameworks (Engebrigtsen 2007: 126; Gay y Blasco 2008; Lemon 2000).
None the less, Williamss insight that there is no halfway position, so that persons
have to be either completely in or irremediably out, unable to grasp anything (2003:
1), sums up well Gypsy/Roma expectations of themselves and of others as described
by anthropologists.3 There is little doubt that a drive towards a sense of totality or
complete correspondence, a drive towards integrity and permanence (Williams 2003:
53), dominates Gypsy/Roma worldviews in the majority of anthropological accounts
(but see Buckler 2007; Theodosiou 2004): romanes, as Stewart (1997: 93) emphasizes,
demands total commitment.
The eschewing of moral ambiguity embedded in the Gypsy/Roma way and the
emphasis on the person as exemplar and performer of Gypsy/Roma distinctiveness
go hand in hand in these ethnographic representations: together, they are said to give
Gypsy/Roma life its distinctive quality. Here I investigate the limits of their analytical
usefulness via the story of Agata Gonzlez, a Gitano matron who, on turning 40,
left her family, including one young child, in order to pursue a relationship with a
much younger Moroccan immigrant. Agatas trajectory is one of increasing aesthe-
tic and moral openness to diverse experiences and worldviews the unfolding of a
cosmopolitan subjectivity (Gay y Blasco 2010; Hannerz 2006: 6). This trajectory
evidences a growing tendency towards what Battaglia and Wardle call ambiguation,
the capacity to avert the reduction of experience to simply opposed categories
(Wardle 2007: 568) which leads to the opening of a discursive space in which social

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
448 Paloma Gay y Blasco

relationships ... emerge in their mutability and displaceability (Battaglia 1997: 506).
This tendency towards ambiguation challenges head on, and yet also engages, the
Gypsy/Roma emphasis on unequivocal moral dichotomies that anthropologists,
including myself, have described.
My analysis focuses on the intersection between Gitano ideals of female behaviour
as enshrined in the Gitano law (as an elaborately verbalized and aesthetically charged
body of explicit understandings and rules regarding what constitutes appropriate
Gitano behaviour), on the one hand, and the choices, perspectives, and personalities
of Agata and some of her relatives, on the other. I focus on three moments in Agatas
life:4 the early 1990s, when I first met her; 2007-8, when she was involved in a protest
against the local government; and 2009-10, when she left to start a new life, to the deep
dismay of her husband, her sisters, and her father. The unfolding confrontation
between Agata and her close kin may be read as a clash between two incompatible
ways of locating the person in the social universe: one premised on the deployment of
ambiguation, the other on its avoidance; one revolving around the power of the
individual to achieve self-realization (Rapport 1997), the other around the necessity
for the gendered person to work as metonymic exemplar; one premised on notions of
heroic individualism and distinctiveness (Rapport 2003), the other on competitive
egalitarianism and amoral familism (Engebrigtsen 2007; Gay y Blasco 1999; Stewart
1997; Sutherland 1975); one Payo, the other Gitano. In fact, both Agatas attitudes and
actions and those of her relatives evidence complex interplays between, on the one
hand, a strong drive for moral certainty and cultural closure and, on the other, a
tolerance and even a search for openness and ambiguity. As Gitanos living within a
rapidly diversifying Spanish society, Agata and her relatives are very deliberately
and reflexively engaged with their identity, and view themselves very much as exem-
plars, living by the Gitano law or failing to do so. But, as well as being deeply con-
cerned with the reproduction of ethnic boundaries through the upholding of rigid
moral/aesthetic dichotomies, the men and women I talk about below also search for
existential alternatives and explore moral and practical compromises. From this per-
spective, the drive towards certainty and closure which is seen by both anthropologists
and Gitanos as defining the Gitano way of being in the world is shown to demand
hard work social, cultural, and emotional in order to be asserted. And, although
this drive touches on every aspect of the lives of these Gitanos, its reach is by no
means total.
In daring to defy so radically and spectacularly Gitano expectations of virtuous
female behaviour, Agatas life lends weight to Rapports call for the anthropological
appreciation of the individual who comes to be, who achieves a consciousness,
outwith and beyond the socio-cultural environment in which he or she was born and
has been socialized/acculturated (1997: 1). And yet, her story also highlights key ten-
sions and contradictions in the social and cultural frameworks shaping Gitano lives:
this is, very much, a Gitano story. And, whilst it is possible to approach Agatas story
in terms of broad cultural, economic, and political transformations involving
Gitanos, Payos, and immigrants into Spain, her life is also irreducible to these large-
scale dynamics. Revolving as it does around passion, impulse, grief, and determina-
tion, Agatas story directs our attention to the singularity of human life trajectories
and forces us to take ethnographic stock of such things as personality, contingency,
circumstance, and also the place of anthropologists and informants in each others
lives.5 As such it reveals the tension around which all ethnographic writing, indeed all

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
 Agatas story 449

anthropology, revolves between context and event (Dilley 1999; Huen 2009), per-
sonal biography and shared collective history (Pandian 2010: 66). More radically,
Agatas story highlights the need for ethnographers to dare to grapple with the things
most fundamentally human love and loss, fear and courage, fate and compassion
deep issues that connect readers to the people they encounter in ethnographic
texts (Stoller 2007: 181). Her story is ethnographically significant precisely because it
evidences the resistance of individual lives to be treated merely as exemplars, either
by Gypsies/Roma themselves or by anthropologists. This is where its ethnographic
value lies.

The 1990s: between compliance and dissatisfaction

Agata and I met in 1992 through her sister Dolores, one of my key informants in the
small Gitano ghetto where I had been carrying out fieldwork. Dolores was a pastors
wife at the local Gitano Evangelical church and, whereas most Gitanos in the area had
been reticent and reluctant to talk with me at all, she had been open and welcoming
from the beginning. I think she took pity on me, and also she was keen to convert me.
Whereas Gitanos tended to see Payos as not wholly human and Evangelical Gitanos
were strongly uninterested in Payo Evangelicals or Evangelicalism, Dolores was
uncharacteristically ready to extend her missionizing zeal to me, a Paya. And, when I
decided to move into the ghetto, I asked Dolores if I could stay in her house. Having
a young, unmarried Paya as part of the household would have compromised her
husbands reputation as a pastor and, after some days of thinking, Dolores suggested
that I move in with her younger sister Agata instead. Agata and I were the same age
and hit it off immediately, soon becoming close friends. At the time, both sisters were
well established as respectable young matrons, women in their mid-twenties with
children, good sellers and money-makers, well known to other Gitanos, and members
of one of the most powerful extended families in the area. Their lives were dominated
by concerns to do with work, children, relatives, and husbands, and the Evangelical
church. They were strict in their adherence to the highly reified and verbalized Gitano
code of conduct for women: they always dressed modestly and never wore trousers,
they didnt smoke, drink, or interact with unrelated men. Both had married bien
(well) at wedding ceremonies where their virginity had been publicly tested and dis-
played, rather than much less prestigiously by elopement, as some of their friends and
relatives had done.
Agata had grown up in a large extended Gitano family, first in a Gitano shanty town,
then in a council flat in an area of the city with a large Gitano population. Her parents
were economically well off by comparison with other Gitano families nearby, the
majority of whom were very poor by Spanish standards, and were generally well liked
and respected. Her fathers patrilineage was large and powerful, and controlled much of
Gitano life in the neighbourhood. The second of four sisters, she attended school
erratically, finishing shortly after turning 12. Agata describes having both Gitano and
Payo friends as a child and young teenager, and having always been interested in the
way of life of the Payas, because they had more freedom, they could go back home at
eight, whereas I had to be home whenever my father was there; we had no freedom.
When Agata reached 15, her parents arranged her betrothal to an older man, Juann, a
close relative of her mothers. She married at 16 and, when I met her seven years later,
she had two children, a girl aged 5 and a 2-year-old boy. To start with, and as was usual
for young Gitano couples at the time, Agata and Juann shared a flat with his mother.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
450 Paloma Gay y Blasco

When she died they kept her council flat, and it was there that I lived during my
fieldwork.
Throughout her married life Agata lived within the confines of her extended family:
working, relaxing, praying at the Gitano church, always surrounded by her close kin,
her parents and her sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Agata, like most other Gitanos
whom I met during my fieldwork, was never alone. On getting married she lost touch
with her non-Gitano schoolfriends so that, although Payos provided the background to
her endosociable existence, relationships with them were mostly fleeting and instru-
mental. The doctor at the local health centre, the women who bought pyjamas and
lingerie at her market stall, her childrens nursery teachers, and other Payos remained
peripheral to Agatas daily concerns. None the less, like other Gitanos whom I met in
the early 1990s, Agata was strongly aware of living immersed in a Payo world, and
deeply preoccupied with the idea of Payos as immoral counterpoints to the righteous-
ness and rightness of the Gitanos and their way of life. As a young married woman, and
like her sisters and female cousins, Agata was particularly concerned with demonstrat-
ing her Gitano-ness, with behaving properly (como debe ser) in Gitano terms, which
meant protecting her sexual virtue and being obedient to her husband, and also
keeping a good house and being an efficient provider. She seemed to me to be successful
in her endeavours, good at being a Gitana, fitting well into her social and cultural
environment.
Agatas husband Juann was a rather different story. I never talked with Juann on
my own; indeed I rarely talked with him at all since both of us were aware of the
dangers of gossip and of my morally ambiguous status as a young Paya. And yet I
could tell that he was not good at being a Gitano. He did not go out with other
married men, hardly saw his brothers or other consanguines, and did not attend
the Evangelical church. He was unique amongst the Gitanos of the area in that he
would spend his afternoons and early evenings alone, at home, often watching
National Geographic videos or playing primitive computer games on the television.
Over dinner he would sometimes ask me, timidly, about life abroad, quick questions
about the weather or the food, or probe shyly my knowledge of geography or history.
His interest in the world beyond the complexities of Gitano social relations every-
body elses favourite topic of conversation clearly set him apart. But he also always
seemed sad and dissatisfied. Agata believed that he still loved the Payo woman with
whom hed had a long relationship before his marriage. Together, we wondered if
he would be happy in the end, and make her happy too. And yet, in spite of his
idiosyncrasies, Juann took seriously his responsibilities and privileges as husband
and head of the household. These included sanctioning Agatas recreational activities,
such as going to the shopping mall with her sisters or taking part in plays or similar
events organized by the local Evangelical church.
Soon after I moved into Agata and Juanns flat, Agata and I started lying to him.
We would tell him that we were going shopping for stock for their market stalls in
the centre of Madrid, for coffee at Doloress, or visiting a relative in hospital. Instead
we would go sight-seeing (we visited all the main museums in the city, starting with
the Prado), for lunch in typical middle-class haunts like Caf Mallorca, to hang out
with my old schoolfriends at the Complutense University, or to the Spring Book
Fair at the Retiro Gardens. For these outings Agata would dress in what she called
Payo-style, with jeans and trainers, and little make-up. She wanted to know what
the lives of Payas like me were like and I was very happy to show her. Her curiosity

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
 Agatas story 451

was endless, as was her thirst for new experiences. Just like fieldwork amongst the
Gitanos for me, these trips into Payo Madrid were a great adventure for Agata. But,
whereas my social universe had opened up slowly throughout years of middle-class
life and education abroad, these trips had a radical effect on Agatas understanding of
the world and of her place in it. Having spent all her life in the working-class periph-
ery of the city, she literally discovered Madrid. And, at the university and in visits to
my family, she talked freely with unrelated men of her own age for the first time in
her life. Returning from one of these trips, Agata wrote a letter for her little daughter
to read when she grew up, wishing for her a life of freedom. In the evenings we had
long chats comparing our lives, our loves, our hopes for the future, and attempting
to determine whether, as a Paya, I really had more freedom than her, and of what
kind.6
In the early 1990s, then, Agata and Juann had complex understandings of what
Payos were like, and ambiguous relationships with their Gitano identity. They were
not different from other Gitanos I knew at the time in their insistence on the beauty
and moral superiority of the Gitano life, their pride in being Gitanos, their concern
with upholding the Gitano law. Like their relatives and neighbours, they would
happily repeat long strings of stereotypes regarding the Payos Payo women were
tireless in their desire for sex, both men and women were dirty and did not respect
their elders, and so on. They were very keenly aware of the importance of keeping up
appearances, and of who could or could not know when transgressions had taken
place: when one of Agatas young unmarried cousins had an affair with a married
Gitano, for example, Agata helped her mother and aunt to cover it up, and to keep it
secret from the men in the family. And yet, both Agata and Juann felt dissatisfied
with their Gitano lives, and drawn to finding out what life outside the Gitano world
is really like, as Agata said. For Juann, who had had a long-term relationship with
a Payo woman before his marriage, this dissatisfaction led to a growing introversion
and isolation from his wife, his children, and the rest of the family. Still in love
with his Payo girlfriend, unable to feel attraction or desire towards his wife, but none
the less having decided to commit to the Gitano way of life, Juann found himself
increasingly frustrated. For Agata, who is blessed with a positive temperament
and a definitely upbeat attitude to life, a similar dissatisfaction led to an openness
to and search for new positive experiences and relationships beyond the Gitano
community.

2007 and 2008: the ght for the school

In the years between the end of my fieldwork in 1993 and 2009, Agata and I stayed in
close contact, meeting at least once a year, writing and phoning regularly. As I
married and found myself a housewife I seemed to catch up with her, especially when
we had children at roughly the same time, my first and Agatas third, since, like many
Gitanas, she had one more once her first batch reached their teenage years. While my
teaching career developed and stabilized, Agatas older children had children of their
own, and she became a grandmother and a well-respected matron, a mainstay among
the women of the Gitano Evangelical church. She continued to be subjected to Jua-
nns authority, very much a traditional Gitano wife, needing his permission to go on
church outings or with her sisters to the local shopping mall. Their marriage went
through a succession of rocky patches, and Agata remained convinced that Juann
did not really love her. She complained that he was undemonstrative, uninterested in

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
452 Paloma Gay y Blasco

sex, and, as time went on, that he undermined her self-esteem, insulting her and
taking her hard work for granted:

At that time the father of my children used to tell me that I was all crooked, from the legs up, that I
was stupid, that I was good for nothing. Sometimes he would tell me so often that I would come to
believe it ... Once I asked him if he loved me, and he said, with time, one even becomes fond of a dog,
that is what he said, Ill never forget it, it went right inside me.

Then, in 2007, Agatas life changed in important ways. Her youngest daughter
reached 6 and started school, and Agata was invited to join the Parents Association,
a group of Gitano and Payo mothers who organized events and fundraising activities
in aid of the school. She was then asked to stand for president of the Association, did,
won, and found herself at the helm at a time of serious crisis when the local gov-
ernment announced its plans for what proved to be an extremely controversial
exchange of schools. The children from La Pinta, the school which Agatas daughter
attends, and who are mostly Gitanos and immigrants, were to be relocated to a
smaller building, with poorer facilities, then the location of the Francisco Heredia
School. The children from this second school, mostly Payos from local families,
would move to the larger, better equipped, and recently renovated La Pinta. The
council used student numbers to justify the exchange, but to the parents of La Pinta,
as well as to the press who reported the case, it seemed a clear case of discrimination
against Gitano and immigrant children. Agata led the protest against the council,
appearing on prime-time national television and on all the major newspapers and
talking on the radio. The fight, which lasted a whole year, was eventually lost and the
children were transferred.
Throughout the school campaign, Agata was the subject of intense gossip and
speculation in the area, and her motives were questioned by other Gitanas:

I knew there was a lot of envy felt towards me, and lots of gossip, This one, she believes so much of
herself, she believes she is a true president, she pretends she is a little Paya, and they would talk to me
in a mocking tone, and I knew it was plain envy.

Her looks and demeanour came under close scrutiny, as did the way she addressed
herself to Payo men. And yet she succeeded in carving a new role for herself, perhaps
because her work on behalf of the school could easily be interpreted as an extension
of her motherly duties. Indeed, she successfully displayed key feminine virtues, taking
good care of her children and husband, attending the Evangelical church, being a
good provider, giving no cause for scandal: I was on a very high pedestal, I had
everybodys esteem, I could walk with my head held very high. Because she was
a well-respected matron, important others her sisters, or her father, who was
bursting with pride were happy to see her reinterpret the mother/wife role. Even
Juann, who at the time was busy undermining her confidence within the marriage
and inside the family home, was prepared to let Agata do something completely
novel.
It was, then, as a well-respected Gitano matron that Agata became a leader of
both Payos and Gitanos, men and women, taking up an extremely unusual role for
a Gitana of her background, almost illiterate and living on a very meagre income.
At public meetings and reunions with officials and journalists she was particularly

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
 Agatas story 453

gratified to see Gitano men deferring to her and to her authority, and thrilled to
see her fathers pride in her. Above all, I loved it because we felt we were doing
something completely different, it is a totally different world, and you are pleased
and at ease with yourself because you know you are going to achieve some-
thing good. This emphasis on doing something different is important, for Agatas
work with the school gave her a respite from a life she was finding increasingly
oppressive:

I thought it was absurd that we all Gitanas had to do exactly the same things, getting up, going to work,
then church ... but if you expressed that, gosh what monotony, people thought you were crazy.
Freedom of expression, and freedom of action, that is what I lacked. I got fed up with praying
and praying, and the house, and the children, and on top of that if you dont love the person you
live with ...

By contrast, through the Parents Association and the campaign against the council,

for once in my life I felt, not better, but more important, especially when a Paya would come to ask me
to fill in a form ... I never thought something like this would change my life so much. The truth is that
at that moment I felt that I would do something else besides washing up and working and taking care
of my husband and my children, which up to then was all I had done in my life, because from the
moment you are born as a Gitano woman you are taught that you are born to marry and to respect
your husband, and have children and work outside and inside the house, and if you can cope with this
well, then you have reached your goal.

In other words, leading the school protest enabled Agata to develop a positive sense of
herself as a woman, to access the Payo world and, crucially, to envision her life
developing in new and until then unimagined directions.

2009 and 2010: the reach of the Gitano law

Throughout the mid-2000s, Agatas and Juanns marital life became more and more
difficult. They fought often, Juann became increasingly violent, and Agata took her
children and left the family home for her fathers house a handful of times. Agata was
keen to leave for good but time and again she was persuaded to go back by her father
and by other members of her family:

My father pays a lot of attention to what people say, and also he had a lot of pride in us daughters,
because we were all honest, hard-working, clean and good women, and we have all had a lot of respect
towards my father. Sometimes, even if I was dying inside with rage because he was making me go back,
it was out of respect that I allowed him to join me again with my husband, and I didnt dare telling
him the truth about my feelings.

The relationship between Agata and her father turned around the affirmation of the
status quo, of the Gitano law and its gendered hierarchies: because Juann had not
been too violent, unlike some other men in her own family, it was her duty as a wife and
mother to return, especially when it was her father who demanded it. As Dolores
explained to me with characteristic panache:

Look, Paloma, you know our aunt Maria, her husband beats the life out of her day in and day out,
youve seen it yourself, and he is a drug addict to boot, and you know what happens with drug addicts,
they cant get it up, so she doesnt even get that little bit of joy. And he doesnt bring in any money, and

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
454 Paloma Gay y Blasco

there is she, shes been with him always, why? Because of her children, because she is a good woman,
thats why, even though two of her children are already married, there she remains. So, just because
Juann tells Agata she is no good, so what? So what? I tell the same to my husband! That he gives her
a slap now and then? Whats the big deal? But that is not sufficient cause to leave, not according to our
laws; among the Payos it is different.

Towards the end of 2008, perhaps because of her new-found confidence in herself,
Agata fell in love with Nezar, a Moroccan illegal immigrant seventeen years her junior.
They met and started flirting at one of the open-air markets where Juann and Agata
had a stall, soon began a secret sexual relationship, and finally eloped together in the
spring of 2009. Agata lived away from her family for over a year: although soon after
she left, her sisters and brothers-in-law tracked them down and took her back by
force, she managed to escape again. From Galicia, where she and Nezar stayed eight
weeks, trying and failing to find work, they returned to Madrid. There they spent the
summer living a precarious hand-to-mouth existence, staying in the cheapest pen-
siones or in flats shared with other migrants, and hiding from Agatas family, surviving
on research assistant fees paid by my university, and on what Nezars family and I
sent. Then in late August she found a job as a domestic, cleaning the house and caring
for the children of a middle-class family who did not know she was a Gitana. Her
small but regular monthly salary of 700 euros enabled Agata and Nezar to rent a room
in a house shared with just one Ecuadorian couple, and to begin to build a somewhat
stable life together. Although Nezar didnt manage to find work, they had enough to
pay the rent, buy food, and go out the odd evening, and took the first steps to make
his status legal.
Throughout the year Agata spent with Nezar, she talked with her sisters and her
father on the phone sporadically, and a couple of times with Juann she met none
of them. During this time, her relationship with her relatives revolved around a single
notion: as an adulterer, Agata had dishonoured her husband, her father and sisters,
her brothers-in-law, and her children. Adultery is strongly and unambiguously con-
demned by the Gitano law, and by leaving in order to be with another man, Agata
forfeited any rights she may have had as a sister, wife, mother, or daughter: none of
her relatives would see her, she could not visit the area where they all live, and, most
importantly, she was not permitted any contact with her children. For this reason,
Agatas family and even Agata herself conceptually opposed the needs and well-being
of her son and daughter to her own: as a good Gitano woman, she should have put
the necessity of her children for a mother before her own desire to live a life apart
from Juann, and with a new man. In their minds, she had left her children rather
than leaving Juann since enduring a difficult husband is, after all, something that
many Gitano women do, or should do. In this respect the Gitano law allows no
compromise: Agata is under no doubt that, had she taken the children with her when
she left, her relatives would have tried to find her in order to kill her, and they would
have been right in doing so. And, when I put to Dolores the idea that Agata might
use a Payo solicitor to get access to her child (in fact, we had recently gone to see one
together), she was horrified: Tell her not even to think about it, she said, visibly
agitated, not to bring the Payos into this. If she brings the Payos into this, my father
will cut her throat, without a doubt, he will. Tell her not to bring the Payos into this.
She is a Gitana, let her not forget that.
Dolores was vocal in phrasing Agatas decision to leave in terms that were strongly
morally dichotomous and unambiguous: A thousand times Dolores and the others

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
 Agatas story 455

told me that, if I dare to steal my children and take them away, that even if I hide
in another country, they will find me and kill me .... Graphically, Agata explained
Doloress behaviour when, after eloping for the first time, she was found by her sisters
and brothers-in-law:

She lied to Nezar, and told him that she just wanted to make sure I was alright, and he let her come
up to the flat. And it was awful, her words were awful, she was swearing, and mentioning my poor dead
mother,7 Ill never forgive her for that, and doing horrible things, and saying, I know you are being
fucked front and back, and she lay on the bed and lifted her legs and her skirt and poor Nezar was
amazed, and she said, fuck me in the front, and then like a dog, fuck me in the back; and now that
you have fucked, lets go home, it was awful.

Like Dolores, others in the family Agatas older children, her sisters, and her brothers-
in-law interpreted Agatas motivation to leave and stay with Nezar in purely sexual
terms: est encoada, they told me, shes dominated by her cunt. It was the selfish
desire for sexual gratification that, in their view, led Agata to leave her children. Not
only did Agata show herself unwilling to restrain her lust, but she did so with a moro,
a Moor, a particularly filthy kind of Payo in Gitano eyes, and a man young enough to
be her son. At an age when women are expected to be fully in control of their bodies,
as a grandmother, she clearly demonstrated that she was incapable of doing so. In other
words, she behaved like a Paya: Many Payas, Dolores told me,

take Moors as gigolos. How can they do that? Its disgusting, even when I have to touch their hands
when they give me change at the market, yuk, I feel revolted. How the women can allow themselves to
be touched by them, I dont know. Then when the Moors have their papers they dump the Payas, and
thats that. It will happen to Agata, mark my words, hell leave her, in one year or two or three shell
find herself alone, completely alone in the world.

Doloress attitude encapsulated the views of the rest of the family, who were unani-
mous in their evaluation of Agatas behaviour. Although they were very well aware of
Juanns physical and psychological mistreatment of Agata in their last years together,
they were unequivocal in seeing her leaving as unquestionably selfish and evil: You
know how we Gitanos are, you know how we do things. According to us she has fallen
as low as one can fall, there is nothing worse a woman can do, short of killing her
children. Even in early April 2010, one year after she left, Agatas sisters and her husband
were unambiguous and relentless in their insistence that she must return to the family
home: in phone calls and letters, again and again they repeated that she must come back
because without her, the children were suffering. She is lucky, Dolores told me,

in that Juann is not a proper man, he is a mandiln [a man who wears a womans apron], he is a
risin [a laughing stock], he is ready to forgive her. Now, my husband, or the husbands of my other
sisters ... ha! those ones would have already taken another woman into the house, and rightly so, and
Juann has had two offers of two virgins, who his sister brought to him, and he doesnt want either
of them, because he wants her. So, my sister, do come back. Youve had your fun, youve known love,
youve given joy to your body, youve been mistress of your life for a year now its your turn to be
brave, and come back. She needs to have the same courage she had to leave which let me tell you
it took a lot of courage that courage she needs it now to come back to her child, who is still very
little and needs her.

Dolores, like Agatas other sisters, was pragmatic rather than dogmatic in her insis-
tence that Agata should return:

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
456 Paloma Gay y Blasco

Her house is being eaten by shit, her little girl wears the same knickers for a month, she has to come
back. She cannot expect us to take care of the children, and Juann is good for nothing, he doesnt
have the head for it. The children need her, even the older boy needs her. He still cries in the night for
her, even though he himself is married and about to be a father.

Agata, her sisters insisted, must take advantage of Juanns atypical reaction to her
departure: no other Gitano man, I was told, would forgive his wife and take her back
knowing that she has been in another mans bed for a year. The woman who leaves
with a man, Agata explained, knows she can never come back; if they do it they know
the consequences. But Juann is more apayado [Payo-like]: he doesnt care what people
say, he doesnt care about that and this is why he wants me to come back. And, in his
letters, Juann did indeed seem desperate for her to return: I need you, your children
need you, your little home needs you, see how much I love you, I am waiting for you
with open arms, even after all you have done. His tolerance, however, was not uncon-
ditional. He was adamant that, unless she returned, she would never see her children or
grandchildren again these are no longer your children, they are mine and, although
in dire straits economically, he would not take any money from her.
Just like her husband Juann and her sister Dolores, Agata too interpreted her own
defection through the lens of the Gitano law, describing herself as a bad mother and
a bad woman: They see me as a whore, worse than a whore, and I know I am a whore,
I have left my children for a man. Yet, at times she also asked,

Do I not have the right to a happy life? With Nezar I have felt what it is to be treated as a real woman,
a real person. I know what it is to be really loved and treated with respect; something that never
happened to me before ... They think one can live without love, without fondness from somebody,
they think it is about sex, but it isnt.

Explaining Nezars love, and his complete acceptance of her, Agata described coming
home from work, tired and sweaty after a long day, and how he loves so much, he takes
my feet, and kisses them, even though I havent had time to wash yet. Can you imagine,
Paloma, a man who loves me like that? They just have no idea. And, having spent a year
in control of her own life, Agata felt that she could not go back to being subordinated
to the will of man: I know I could not be happy there, ever again ... I would be happy
with my children, but not in the world in which they live, I no longer fit in there. With
Nezar, Agata insisted, she was well taken care of, and appreciated. Small things, like the
fact that he always had lunch ready when she came back from work, that he was happy
to change his plans in order to fit hers, or let her chose which video to rent, meant,
according to Agata, not only that Nezar loved her but that he respected her too. His
insistence that she dress up in order to go out, and that she follow the latest fashions,
showed that his pride in and love for her was not limited by his culture (su cultura):
Even though he is a Muslim, and you know, Palomi, that they are worse even than the
Gitanos, he doesnt want me to put on a veil, or anything like that. On the contrary. I
never felt with Juann the way I feel with him.
Moreover, whilst away from her family, Agata could do things that she very much
valued and longed for, and that had been impossible in her previous life: in February
she came to visit me and my family in St Andrews, making her first ever aeroplane
flight, and staying in my home also for the first time. Together we gave a presentation
to the Department of Social Anthropology on the relationship between informant and
anthropologist, and on the possibility of doing a more equal kind of ethnography. She

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
 Agatas story 457

also enjoyed visiting museums and galleries in Madrid, having fun with Nezar, going to
the theatre doing things that, as a Gitano wife, had not been within her reach.
And yet, in mid-April 2010, Agata returned to Juann, very much feeling that she
had no option but to do so: Dolores told her that he had defaulted in his rent pay-
ments and had received a letter of eviction; the family were in desperate need of her.
Agata posted him money but he sent it back, emphasizing that, unless she returned,
she would not be allowed to help: Its clear, she said to me, its inside or outside, I
cannot be in between. Agata went back to Juann in order to save her family from
being thrown out of their home, certain that she had the resources and know-how to
obtain a delay and find the money, but also convinced that her return was for good:
I cannot do that to the children. Once I am back, I know I cannot leave again.
In fact, she did not manage to stay long. This time, she was kept under even closer
watch than after her first elopment. Her father and eldest daughter refused to meet her,
and she remained most of the time in the flat, unable to go out for fear that other
Gitanos would see her and take offence. Her relationship with Juann was extremely
tense, and Agata was appalled and disgusted when he approached her wanting to have
sex. When Dolores brought a pastor to exorcize Agata, it was the last straw. At 3 a.m. one
night, whispering on a mobile phone she had managed to hide, she told me,

Paloma, they havent asked my permission. I am 41 years old, I dont want to be exorcized. I cant go
out, I cant do anything on my own, they are constantly watching me. I cant go on like this. They all
lied. It wasnt true about the rent, it wasnt true they were going to forgive me, they just had to get
me back.

After three weeks at home, Agata managed to escape again. She has finally started
formal legal proceedings to get her divorce from Juann and access to her youngest
daughter. She is terrified of what her family may do to her, and is currently living in
hiding in the house of some relatives of Nezars. But she is also determined that her
child will

know that I have done my best to have her with me: I am going to get a job again, and Nezar and I will
marry and he will then be able to get a job too. With two jobs, the lawyer has told me we will get
custody. For the moment I would be happy seeing her once a week, and weekends. But I tell you,
Paloma, I am brave, I am very brave doing this. Because I know that when they get the divorce papers,
they will want to kill me.

I had one last conversation with Dolores. Agata, she made clear, has crossed the final
line:

Dont ring ever again, and dont come around, Paloma. I dont want to know if Agata is alive or dead.
If you find out that she is in hospital, dont tell us. If you find out she is dead, dont tell us. We dont
want to know. If I find out that Juann has been in touch with you to find out how she is, Ill have him
killed. Ill have my father kill him. She has shamed us in front of everybody. Thats it. I hope you have
a happy life with your children, Paloma. Goodbye.

Discussion
Writing about the musicians of Parakalamos, near the Greek-Albanian border, Theo-
dosiou persuasively argues against the conceptualizations of Gypsyness as a clearly
articulated sense of identity (2004: 40) that have dominated the work of earlier

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
458 Paloma Gay y Blasco

scholars like Stewart (1997), Okely (1983), and myself (Gay y Blasco 1999). By contrast,
amongst both the Gypsies and the non-Gypsies of Parakalamos,

there is no way of fixing self and other, and therefore no way of clearly recognizing an opposition
between them. Many fixed elements classifications, categorizations, essentialisms of all sorts are
evoked, they are tested and tried out, but the outcome seems to be a situation of permanent indeci-
sion about them, rather than a coherent and conclusive account about what constitutes Gypsyness
(Theodosiou 2004: 29).

What defines these Greek Gypsies experiences, then, is the condition of being-in-
between, being neither one thing nor the other (Theodosiou 2008: 156). It is precisely
this being-in-between that I have written of above, and the ways Agata and her family
work to avoid it whilst also reaching for it at times very tentatively, at times with huge
force and courage. Among these Gitanos, everyday life is indeed dominated by a
concern not merely with categories and classifications, but with moral divisions and
choices and with their aesthetic and emotional dimensions. But, unlike in Parakalamos,
here the assertion of an unambiguous Gypsyness, the drive towards cultural closure, is
constant and overwhelming, even whilst it is challenged. The Gitano law, as a reified set
of understandings and rules regarding appropriate Gitano behaviour, and as a state-
ment on Gypsy identity, is strongly present in the lives of these men and women. They
engage it in ways that are neither monolithic nor predictable. The ensuing tension has
effects that, albeit not uniform, reach deeply into the tissue of peoples lives.
Thus, these three episodes from Agatas life evidence the importance of negotiation
and cultural compromise (Buckler 2007: 203; Wimmer 2002: 26) whilst pointing to the
disagreements and indeed ruptures that also make up intersubjective relationships. In
the early 1990s, both Agata and Juann were able to imagine alternative lives for
themselves, and in our escapades to Madrid, Agata could even play at being Paya instead
of Gitana. And yet our trips into the city were adventures, carved out from real time and
space, and their ludic character shored up the normality of Agatas everyday life as a
righteous Gitano woman. Many years later during the fight for the school, once again
Agata reinforced Gitano laws regarding appropriate female behaviour just as she
innovated on the mother/wife role. At both these times, Agata, her relatives, and other
Gitanos reflected on what was Gitano and acceptable and what was not, pushing the
boundaries and engaging moral ambiguities. At both times, however, Agata was ulti-
mately successful in her performance as a Gitano exemplar: I was on a very high
pedestal, I could walk with my head held high. In 2009 and 2010, the situation could not
have been more different. Yes, Juann waited for Agata, with open arms, even if this
made him laughable in the eyes of other Gitanos, men and women alike. Dolores and
the other sisters were desperate to see her return, even knowing how miserable her life
would be made should she come back: they were waiting to forgive her. And yet Agatas
attempts at getting her family to embrace a flexible perspective on her defection utterly
failed. Their interpretations of her motivations were, throughout a whole year, as
consistent and monolithic as their judgements. One year on after her elopement, the
contemplation of Agatas transgression cut as deeply as on the first day. As Dolores put
it, This is so big, so big, that we cannot get used to the idea, no matter how much time
passes, it will always hurt us the same.
Remembering the determination of the family not to compromise, witnessing Agata
pine for her children, day after day, I cannot but reflect on the immense power and

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
 Agatas story 459

reach of the Gitano emphases on cultural closure and on the codification of identity.
But it is also watching Agata resist the pressure to return, defiant in her search for a
different kind of life for herself in spite of all her heartache, that I realize the limits of
this reach. The struggle between Agata and her family, Agatas deep agony about her
choices but also her success in opening doors onto what she calls new worlds, are a very
tangible tug-of-war in which the metonymic link between the person and the ideal of
the group is stretched, fought over, and perhaps broken. It is the detail of Agatas life in
all its sadness and its joy that shows how crucial this tug-of-war is to the lives of these
Gitano women and men. And it is also this detail that demonstrates the difficulties
involved in understanding human experience by reference to prescription and model,
whether of the etic or of the emic kind, ours as anthropologists or theirs as infor-
mants. Just as Agatas motives and hopes exceed the explanatory parameters of the
Gitano law, her life escapes the constraints of the story I have tried to tell, of the
anthropological argument I have attempted to build around it.

NOTES
Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the Department of Anthropology, University of Leipzig, in
April 2010, and at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, in June 2010. I am
grateful to both audiences for their useful commentaries. Many thanks also to Huon Wardle and Jan Grill,
and to the Editor of JRAI and four anonymous reviewers for their detailed and helpful suggestions. My
deepest thanks to Agata for allowing me to tell her story.
1
I use the term Gypsies/Roma in preference to either Gypsies or Roma. There are persuasive arguments
for using and for avoiding both terms. My deployment of Gypsies/Roma aims to acknowledge but also
bypass debates concerning the cultural/ethnic unity of these groups and the moral and ethical rights and
wrongs of using either Gypsy or Roma. These debates have permeated political activism and scholarship in
recent years and I suspect the pendulum will continue to swing for a long time to come.
2
Here I am drawing on and inverting Wardles (2007) characterization of the Caribbean in terms of
cultural openness.
3
Stewart (1997: 93) makes the same point as Williams in his description of the pressure put on Rom
individuals to conform to romanes, describing
a situation in which the Gypsies were in or out of the ghetto ... It was as if no halfway position
could be contemplated, just as there was no category for affines. In the language of kinship,
affinity can provide a kind of halfway house ... In the context of the state of siege, it was not
surprising that the Gypsies rejected the possibility that there could be a group of people in
between. The brotherhood demanded total commitment (1997: 93).
4
I have known the people I talk about in this paper since 1992, when I carried out fieldwork in Jarana
(a pseudonym), a special colony for marginal population, built by the Madrid government to house poor
Gitanos, which has since been demolished. Throughout the years, Agata and her relatives have remained my
closest informants and, more recently, I have been drawn deeply into the conflict that has enveloped the
family. All names are pseudonyms.
5
Although there is not sufficient space here to discuss the issue at length, it is important to emphasize that
I have played an important role in Agatas life, embodying for her the possibility of living life as a Paya and
facilitating for her some access to what she calls the Payo world. I have discussed this in another publication
(Gay y Blasco 2010), and Agata and I are currently preparing a co-authored life-history that deals in part with
our relationship and with the role of anthropology in both our lives. In Jacksons words, ones ethnographic
understanding of others is never arrived at in a neutral or disengaged manner, but is negotiated and tested
in an ambiguous and stressful field of interpersonal relationships (1998: 5).
6
Looking back I realize that, in the mid-1990s, I did not give sufficient thought to the effect that these
outings might have on Agata. She was very keen on taking these trips and at the time I felt I could not deny
her what she was so generously giving me: access to my home, my family, and my friends.
7
The Gitanos of Madrid put much emphasis on respecting the dead through name avoidance. They
combine private memorialization with public obliteration of the dead through a series of practices that I have
discussed in detail elsewhere (Gay y Blasco 2001; 2004).

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
460 Paloma Gay y Blasco

REFERENCES
Battaglia, D. 1997. Ambiguating agency: the case of Malinowskis ghost. American Anthropologist 99, 505-10.
Buckler, S. 2007. Fire in the dark: telling Gypsyness in north-east England. Oxford: Berghahn.
Dilley, R. 1999. The problem of context. Oxford: Berghahn.
Engebrigtsen, A. 2007. Exploring Gypsyness: power, exchange and interdependence in a Transylvanian village.
Oxford: Berghahn.
Engelke, M. 2008. The objects of evidence. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) Special Issue:
The objects of evidence: anthropological approaches to the production of knowledge (ed.) M. Engelke,
S1-21.
Gay y Blasco, P. 1999. Gypsies in Madrid: sex, gender and the performance of identity. Oxford: Berg.
2001. We dont know our descent: how the Gitanos of Jarana manage the past. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 7, 631-47.
2002. Gypsy/Roma diasporas: introducing a comparative perspective. Social Anthropology 10,
173-88.
2004. Love, suffering and grief among Spanish Gypsies. In Mixed emotions: anthropological studies of
feeling (eds) K. Milton & M. Svasek, 163-78. Oxford: Berg.
2008. La feminit gitane dans le contexte de la fragmentation politique dans lEspagne du XXe sicle.
tudes Tsiganes 33-4, 140-62.
2010. The fragility of cosmopolitanism: a biographical approach. Social Anthoropology 18, 403-9.
Hannerz, U. 2006. Two faces of cosmopolitanism: culture and politics. Barcelona: CIDOB.
Huen, C.W. 2009. What is context? An ethnophilosophical account. Anthropological Theory 9, 149-70.
Jackson, M. 1998. Minima etnographica: intersubjectivity and the anthropological project. Chicago: University
Press.
2003. Foreword. In I am dynamite: an alternative anthropology of power, N. Rapport, xi-xiv. London:
Routledge.
Lemon, A. 2000. Between two fires: Gypsy performance and Romani memory from Pushkin to postsocialism.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Okely, J. 1983. The traveller-Gypsies. Cambridge: University Press.
Pandian, A. 2010. Interior horizons: an ethical space of selfhood in South India. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 16, 64-83.
Pasqualino, C. 1998. Dire le chant: les gitans flamencos dAndalousie. Paris: CNRS.
Poueyto, J.L. 2005. Le nom, ltat et la personne chez les manouches de la rgion paloise. In Le nom dans les
socits occidentales contemporaines (eds) A. Fine & F.R. Ouellette, 33-56. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires
du Mirail.
2008. Out of the frame: presence, representation and non-presentability in a community of
Manushes in the South of France. Third Text 92, 397-408.
Rapport, N. 1997. Transcendent individual: toward a literary and liberal anthropology. London: Routledge.
2003. I am dynamite: an alternative anthropology of power. London: Routledge.
Stewart, M. 1997. The time of the Gypsies. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.
1998. Brothers and orphans: two egalitarian models of community among Hungarian Rom. In Lilies
of the field: marginal peoples who live for the moment (eds) S. Day, M. Stewart & E. Papataxiarchis, 27-44.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview.
Stoller, P. 2007. Ethnography/memoir/imagination/story. Anthropology and Humanism 32, 178-91.
Streck, B. 2003. La cultura del contraste: sobre la diferencia y el sentido de pertenencia: el caso de los gitanos.
Revista de Antropologia Social 12, 59-179.
Sutherland, A. 1975. Gypsies: the hidden Americans. London: Tavistock.
1977. The body as a social symbol among the Rom. In The anthropology of the body (ed.) J. Blacking,
375-90. London: Academic Press.
Theodosiou, A. 2004. Be-longing in a doubly occupied place: the Parakalamos Gypsy musicians. Romany
Studies 14, 25-58.
2008. Disorienting rhythms: Gypsiness, authenticity and place on the Greek-Albanian border.
History and Anthropology 18, 153-75.
Wardle, H. 2007. A groundwork for West Indian cultural openness. Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute (N.S.) 13, 567-83.
Williams, P. 1982. The invisibility of the Kalderash of Paris: some aspects of the settlement pattern of the
Kalderash of the Paris suburbs. Urban Anthropology 11, 315-46.
2003. Gypsy world: the silence of the living and the voices of the dead. Chicago: University Press.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011
 Agatas story 461

Wimmer, A. 2002. Nationalist exclusion and ethnic conflict: shadows of modernity. Cambridge: University
Press.

Lhistoire dAgata : lempreinte de la loi gitane dans la vie des individus

Rsum
Les reprsentations ethnographiques des Gitans (Roms) ont souvent soulign le rle de la personne
comme manifestation et incarnation de la spcificit gitane. Elles dcrivent aussi la vie des Gitans comme
culturellement ferme et moralement ambigu. Lauteure explore ces ides par lintermdiaire de lhistoire
dAgata, une Gitane de Madrid. Son analyse se concentre sur lintersection entre les idaux gitans du
comportement fminin, consacrs dans la loi gitane (un ensemble trs rifi de notions concernant la
moralit et la coutume) et les choix et personnalits dAgata et de certains membres de sa famille. Larticle
montre quel point la loi gitane est prsente dans la vie de ces hommes et de ces femmes, mais aussi
que les manires dont ils sy rapportent sont peu monolithiques et imprvisibles. La tension qui en rsulte
a des effets certes htrognes mais profondment intriqus dans ltoffe de la vie des individus.

Paloma Gay y Blasco teaches social anthropology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She is currently
preparing a co-authored monograph with her informant Agata Gonzlez.

Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY15 5PY, UK.
pgyb@st-andrews.ac.uk

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 17, 445-461

Royal Anthropological Institute 2011