‘They say he is a man now’: a tale of fathers and sons

Abstract

Similarly to other minimalist societies lacking formalised social structures and offices, emotions play a central role in sustaining, expressing and evaluating relationships among the Calon Gypsies of Bahia. An analysis of emotions therefore has to take into account Calon views of personal transformation and how people’s interactions, as well as their views of themselves and situations, are patterned and described through emotions. The article is centred on three episodes that focus on the father-son relationship and are marked by strong affective ties. Love, fear and anger for one’s father or son, and a memory of care and sharing, are set against a world that is perceived as hostile and underpin the Calon institution of revenge. This article describes how, through the performance of culturally intelligible forms of violence, actors in specific social positions manipulate and create social order. As this order is unambiguously gendered, the article explores the making of a gendered, specifically masculine subjectivity: how through an affective relationship with others, one becomes and remains a man (homem).

Keywords:

• Calon Gypsies (Ciganos)
• Bahia, Brazil
• emotions
• interpersonal violence
• masculinity
• revenge

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Silvia Posocco, Frank Smiths and Márcio Vilar for their comments.

Notes

1. ‘Headhunting: a tale of ‘fathers,’ brothers,’ and ‘sons’’ (Rosaldo 1980: 137–176).

2. Calon terms jurón, gajon/gajão (pl. gaje) and brasileiro refer to a non-Gypsy; I use them interchangeably throughout this article.

3. By ‘segmentary’, I refer to the existence of a multiplicity of crosscutting relationships and interests people might have that, depending on context, make social units ‘simultaneously divisible and unifiable’ (Goldman 2001: 85).

4. I had not met the man despite my spending one year in this town, which reveals this specific ideology of initial closeness.

5. For instance, during a feast one night before his brother’s wedding, a few men from the bride’s family tried to disrupt the marriage by challenging Jorge, a conflict that eventually led to the police storming the place.