Economic Adaptability

Abstract

Gypsies have survived as an ethnic group by becoming skilled in a variety of marginal economic enterprises that allow them to remain outside the dominant economic system and its conventional wage-labor relations. This study explores the adaptive strategies that underlie and promote this highly flexible and successful pattern of exploiting the economic margins. These strategies include nomadism, creating profitable uses for objects viewed as worthless within the conventional society, organizing work within the group in ways that minimize gender and age distinctions, and pursuing a number of different economic activities depending on local circumstances and opportunities.