ritual, rapture and rebellion: the making of market, mercy and meaning amongst the gitanos of el rastro

The Gitanos of el Rastro carry an ’ontology of simultaneity’ as self-employed traders and Pentecostal practitioners in Madrid. This makes the Spanish Romani be considered as both a part of and apart from mainstream society. This book is an anthropological account of a group of middle and upper-class Gitanos and their ways of creating a ’society within society’ based upon distinct cultural, moral and ideological values, notions and practices. The study renders a comprehensive perspective on social processes of classification, stratification, ’othering’ and the role of ’strangers’ in society and how these processes unfold in the interface between social, ritual and economic life on a local to global scale.

Marianne Blom Brodersen is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor in social work at Nord University, Norway. Her research focuses on ethnography and phenomenologically oriented anthropological theorizing across a range of fields and topics, especially alternative forms of social organization and radical societal change.