ABSTRACT
The views on conception that the Gitanos of Jarana put forward include elements of Payo medical knowledge together with others that do not form part of the cultural baggage of the Payo population among whom the Gitanos live - although they may have done so in the past. Among other activities, the social workers organized a series of weekly talks in which women were shown slides depicting the human reproductive systems, and were told about fertilization and foetus development in great detail. The Gitanos of Jarana often say that it is men who 'provide' or 'make' the child. The mother's role is to feed the child during and after pregnancy. In Jarana, these theories of conception and gestation feed directly into Gitano political organization: beliefs regarding the make-up of persons are linked to norms and rules that dictate the form that relations between kinship groups should take.
