An Integrated Group of Strangers Called Gorbat

The study of internal social mechanisms of “marginal” groups has long been neglected by the Iranian social science tradition. Such omission brings us to a partial and narrow understanding of today’s Iranian society. The category “marginal groups”, as Iranian functionalists “labelled” them without further knowledge of their empirical social life, embraces, amongst others, all the “Gypsies of Persia” and itinerant or “peripatetic” ethnic groups. This article propounds an ethnological approach to one of these groups named Ġorbat. According to the small number of researchers who encountered this group, the ethnonym would stand for the strangeness of the group vis-à-vis the cultural and moral standards of the wider society.
Although this group has always lived in “symbiosis” (based on commercial, material and service exchange) with other populations, conflict seems to be the most important characteristic of all the interactions between Ġorbats and their settled neighbours. This has led to a despising and stereotype-based image of the latter towards the former. The fundamental assumption of this article, based on Fredrik Barth’s theory of “ethnic boundaries”, is that ethnic identity is partly constructed through a relational sphere that the group share with its neighbours. In this regard, each “marginalised” or “unwelcome” group entering the social structure of another population, is expected to discover certain categories, statuses and values within the host’s system of representations, in order to define its own identity and status. The study of cultural interstices through which Ġorbats can be seen as living in symbiosis with others -in spite of their conflicts- brings to light cultural categories, statuses and values proper of Iranian society which at the same time rejects this group, while accepting it in its social structure. Furthermore, it illustrates the process of identity construction of an integrated group of “strangers”.