Abstract
The paper deals with the question how to identify a subethnic Romani group in the archives of state provenance from pre-war, war and also post-war period. These archival documents always refer to the Roms as "Gypsies", which is an external categorization that does not in any way reflect the internal division of Roms into individual Romani groups. The question arises as to whether and, if so, how the state apparatus differentiated between individual Romani groups? What was its differentiation based on? And is it at all possible to detect persons which, from an actor's perspective, belong to the sub-ethnically definable categories, described by Roms as Lovára, Sinti, Kalderára etc., in the state administration's archival records? From the perspective of the narrators, the use of a sub-ethnic label is clear and simple: the idea of becoming a member of an individual group of Roms is based on common origin and kinship. From the analytical point of view, the use of these categories, and the process of reconstruction of the history of Romani groups, must be challenged and problematized, especially in a historical context, where it is no longer possible to inquire about how the self-identification of Roms occurs, and it is difficult to delineate affiliation with a sub ethnic group or to shape the form and size of such a group without essentializing this category. The question is, how to do so without committing certain forms of epistemic violence, especially by interpreting data on specific families as data on members of a concrete Romani subethnic group. And it is even possible to determine a subethnic category clearly and unequivocally?
The awareness of these ethical and methodological dilemmas in combination with the use of the given categories within a certain context and well knowledge of the communities under the study might be useful in overcoming these limits.