Identity Dynamics of the Ġorbat: An Ethnographic Study of Beggary at Tehran Intersections

Groups of women and children beg regularly at intersections in the Iranian capital. These individuals are commonly despised and referred to as Kowli (Bohemian Gypsy), while they are part of an ethnic group and a linguistic community, completely ignored by the Iranians and scholars. This study introduces for the first time an ethnographic research of this "peripatetic" group named, Ġorbat, meaning the foreign country, the exile. It offers a gateway to the worldview of this population, through the study of a relevant step in the life of every young Babolian Ġorbat. This step consists of begging (hadūri) daily at the crossroads of Tehran, practiced by all children under the supervision of at least one of the women of their lineage. This meticulous analysis of this practice opens our vision to a dramatic view of begging, in the sense that Victor Turner employs this paradigm in "anthropology of performance". Begging is performed as a rite and produces a drama through which the cultural framework and symbols employed become visible through the social interaction between the Ġorbat and the non-ġorbat. This phenomenon emerges as a central event in the social life of the Ġorbat and the construction of the collective identity of the individual. As a sociological paradigm, this study suggests to observe the Ġorbat society through its relations with the non-ġorbat. However, these relations are not only based on economy nor on politics but on cultural features. The identity and otherness are defined through social interactions of everyday life, by oscillation between two moral frameworks and two value systems. It is through this back-and-forth between two spheres of construction and deconstruction of meaning that the definition of self and of the other emerges. This is at this intermediate level between the two spheres that it becomes possible to observe the points of divergence, but also the spheres where the Ġorbat is unified with the global society.