The Politics of Ethnography: Figures of Csangoness in fin-de-siècle and Twentieth-Century Hungary and Romania

The Csangos are an ethnic/religious minority from Moldavia, Eastern Romania. They are defined as legitimate subjects by two antagonistically nationalizing projects: the Hungarian and the Romanian one. I am not trying to discover some “authentic” or “hybrid” identity that would explain away the ambiguities connected with this ethno-religious group. The Csangos appear, in this paper, as mutating historical forms and figures, made up through fateful events and part of “historical ontologies”. Because of their specific position inside opposed nationalisms, they can provide theoretical insights into the constituting of nationalizing narratives, ethnography and social sciences in East and Central Europe.