Serbian Gypsy Witch Narratives

A salient characteristic of the Serbian Gypsies' demography is an unusually high percentage of infant and child mortality. This paper discusses the narration of Serbian Gypsy women who have lost at least one child to 'the deadly doings of witches'. These narratives serve to communicate the mother's innocence before the local community, as a means of justification of the unfortunate event. The mother's kinship group's endorsement of such talk includes the communicative acceptance of the supernatural accusation or claim. Because the actual evidence is irrelevant, by such acceptance the kinship group uniquely communicates its willingness to support and cooperate with the narrator. The narratives thus seem to be aimed at encouraging particular social behaviour: cooperation among kin

Art · Ethnology · False accusation · Genealogy · Innocence · Kinship · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Psychoanalysis · Serbian · Sociology · Witch · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Romani and Gypsy Studies · Social Psychology

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