THE DEPICTION OF ROMA IN THE MACEDONIAN ETHNOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL LITERATURE

Abstract

A relatively small number of ethnological papers deal with the Roma in the Balkans, including Macedonia. In this paper, the idea is to present how the scientific interest in Roma issues increased than how the image of the Roma was conceived in Yugoslavian literature. This image was then transferred to the Macedonian ethnological, anthropological literature. The analysis has used ethnographic papers and proceedings dedicated to the Roma in the period of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFR Yugoslavia) in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, and papers about the Roma, published in the Republic of Macedonia since its independence in 1991.
In some of these papers, one can notice how the ethnologists and anthropologists build their image of the Roma in several directions. First, at the very beginning in the Yugoslavian, and then in Macedonian ethnology and anthropology, which copied the same model, the importance of researching the Roma as an important Yugoslavian nationality is stressed. On the other hand, an image of the Roma as the Yugoslavian 'otherness' is being built, followed by recommendations that ethnologists from the Roma community should research it. As a result of the efforts to employ Roma ethnologists at a Yugoslavian level, most of the Macedonian researchers who started dealing with the Roma community are Roma-educated in Yugoslavia.
After the dissolution of SFR Yugoslavia and the concept of a Yugoslavian nationality, made up of brotherly peoples and minorities, the idea of the Roma 'otherness', through the concept of Roma national tradition, lives on within the national programs of the Balkans. Moreover, the concept of Roma 'otherness', stemming from Yugoslavian ethnology, endures in Roma's researchers works in modern Macedonian ethnological literature.