Groups That Don't Want In: Gypsies and Other Artisan, Trader, and Entertainer Minorities

Small, endogamous populations of artisans, traders, and entertainers have existed for centuries within complex societies, competing successfully with permanently established businesses. Their organizational flexibility and willingness to move and to switch occupations enables them to fill gaps in the host economy and exploit marginal opportunities. Other attributes that make them successful include their minimal overhead, use of wage-free household labor, lack of interest in material accumulation and capital expansion, willingness to accept a narrow profit margin from multiple sources, and ability to focus on a narrowly defined market. Gypsies are undoubtedly the most familiar of these groups, but they are one of many similar populations with similar adaptations: Tinkers, Tater, Luri, Jats, and Ghorbat are some of the common names other groups are known by (104). Relegated to the status of unintegrated social and economic marginals, or else dismissed as mere exotics, such populations long have been ignored or regarded as barely legitimate subjects for serious study. Anthropologists and other social scientists, with a few exceptions, have only recently begun work with them despite the contact many have had with them in the course of their research on other groups. Scholarly research on artisan, trader, and entertainer minorities began appearing in the 1950s; Etudes Tsiganes, a French journal devoted to Gypsy