ABSTRACT
For over a century, debates about the Csangos’ collective identity have centred on traits, such as ethnicity and nationality, traits that Joseph Rothschild has characterised as simultaneously plastic, variegated, and originally ascriptive, and all too easily politicised in the fertile historical and demographic circumstances of East-Central Europe. Historically, both in common parlance and within the professional fields of history, sociology, ethnography, and anthropology, this community has been identified, understood, and framed an ‘ethnic minority’ or ‘religious minority’ or both. One of the most difficult tasks for anyone writing about the Csangos is first defining the Csangos as a subject. Historically, the Csangos were a rural, agrarian people producing crops such as corn, potatoes, and hemp. The Romanian grade-school teacher and amateur linguist and historian Dumitru Martina? undertook to retrace the ‘ethnogenealogy’ of the Csangos and, once again, to demonstrate their belonging within the ethnic Romanian nation.
