Representações sociais de ciganos: ancoragem histórica, categorização social e a invenção do outro cigano

Historical time manifests the work of elaboration of human groups in the construction of different social objects that constitute social life. Based on the objective of reflecting on the social representations of gypsies amongst non-gypsies, 319 subjects, aged between 17 and 54 years, participated in the study. Data collection was carried out through the application of questionnaires and data processing was conducted through correspondence factor analysis, cluster analysis, thematic-categorical content analysis and chi-square test. In the results, three different social representations about gypsies were identified as the image of the fortune teller gypsy, as a culture of freedom and as undesirable, associated with justifications centered on the subject's experience, in endogenous explanations to the group and comparisons between gypsies and non-gypsies. This configuration guided the debate on the production of meanings of social density from the historical anchoring.