ABSTRACT
Fredrik Barth’s Introduction to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries proved inspiring, indeed indispensable to this anthropologist’s research and publications on Gypsies in England. The multifaceted definitions, through centuries, by outsiders of Gypsies, Travellers or Romanies in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, reflect the problems that nomads present to dominant sedentary societies. Paradoxically, Adams believed the majority of Gypsies wanted housing and ‘regular’ employment, namely, wage labour. Alongside powerful representatives of sedentarist law, scattered, outsider scholars emerged. In UK academia, the social anthropology of Britain, even of Europe, was then sidelined, another reason for appreciating Barth’s work in Norway. Thanks to Barth, the emergent, initially confusing, chaotic material from intensive fieldwork contradicting outsiders’ authoritatively stereotyped reports, all this was clarified by Barth’s pointers. Self-ascription could be applied to the full range of cultural and economic preferences.
