Seminarium 21.12.2021: „We Live by Outsmarting People”. Making virtue out of necessity in a southern Romanian mahala

Zapraszamy na Seminarium Naukowe Instytutu Antropologii i Etnologii UAM w Poznaniu.

21.12.2021 WYŁĄCZNIE ZDALNIE:
MS Teams, link do spotkania.

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Ana Chiritou
(Central European University)

„We Live by Outsmarting People” Making virtue out of necessity in a southern Romanian mahala

The spectre of inequality continues to haunt the contemporary social sciences and public debates alike. Much scholarship concerns itself with documenting the horrendous effects of inequality on vast numbers of people, while a smaller, but compelling body of work argues that people can nonetheless live virtuous lives even in the most improbable circumstances, whether they be afflicted by inequality, exclusion, criminalization, or by other forms of social suffering. Despite of all these hurdles, the argument goes, the human search for meaning and virtue prevails. But does it in fact prevail in spite of hardship, or through it? My ethnographic research of social order, crime, and virtue at the European margins analyses the relation between social inequality and virtuous personhood not as adversative, but as dialectical. Building on ten years’ research experience with Roma/Gypsies, Europe’s largest and most marginalized minority, I argue that people do not merely aspire to live good lives in spite of social exclusion, but by virtue of it; indeed, I show that they make virtue out of necessity.

My talk is centred around what the Rom I worked with call ‘outsmarting’, i.e., tricking non-Roma through stealing, begging, and witchcraft. Based on 16 months of fieldwork with a group of self-described Rom ‘Thieves’ (Rom Čor) from the outskirts of a southern Romanian town, my talk sounds out the dialectical relation between the Rom’s social exclusion and their own ‘internal’ processes of social ordering and distinction. I show that ‘outsmarting’ enables the Rom Čor to recast their socially marginal status not just as a predicament, but also as a challenge to be overcome and harnessed in pursuit of virtuous personhood.

Ana Chirițoiu is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University in Vienna. Her research examines the relation between the social exclusion of Roma and the cultivation of virtue, distinction, and hierarchy inside a group of Roma from the outskirts of a southern Romanian town. Prior to her doctoral work, Ana worked as an engaged researcher for a Roma NGO in Bucharest. In 2021, she received CEU’s Award for Advanced Doctoral Students and in 2020 she was a writing-up fellow at the ‘Law & Anthropology’ Department at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale). She is currently an editor of Anthropology Matters Journal.

Seminaria naukowe IAiE UAM stanowią forum otwartej dyskusji akademickiej na temat najnowszych publikacji przygotowywanych przez pracowników i doktorantów Instytutu oraz realizowanych przez nich badań i projektów. W ramach seminariów odbywają się także wykłady gościnne będące okazją do wymiany poglądów z badaczami z kraju i zagranicy reprezentującymi różne ośrodki oraz dyscypliny naukowe, którym bliskie jest podejście antropologiczne, kładące nacisk na analizowanie zjawisk kulturowych w powiązaniu z towarzyszącymi im procesami i relacjami społecznymi.

Seminaria mają charakter otwarty, ich adresatami są wszyscy zainteresowani, w tym zwłaszcza pracownicy, doktoranci i studenci IAiE. Celem spotkań jest inspirowanie aktywnego życia naukowego, integracja środowiska oraz popularyzacja antropologii społeczno-kulturowej.

Serdecznie zapraszamy!