6 - Negotiable Boundaries, Negotiable Identities

Summary

Research on group formation and social identities has tended to regard groups as mutually exclusive in a digital way: either one is a member of X or one is not…. it may, perhaps, be more appropriate to think of identity in general as an analog phenomenon than as a digital one. Conceptualized in this way, degrees of sameness and difference, of inclusion and exclusion, may be identified.

This chapter examines the social boundaries between Garos and others, and how Garos relate to those who transcend these boundaries. Whereas the previous two chapters explored social boundaries from a historical perspective, in this chapter the focus is primarily on the present.

We have seen that “primordial” characteristics play an important role in the self-definition of Garos. The only way to become a Garo is to be born as one, so it was argued. This chapter shows that both self-perception and membership are more pliable and changeable than primordialist discourse suggests (see Chapter 3). Especially where new membership is concerned, Garos show much leniency with regard to the criterion of birth. Such notions of flexibility and permeability lead to the question of how to define who is really Garo and who is not. Here I use the term Garo for everyone who considers himself Garo, who considered himself Garo in the past, and who has been accepted as Garo by others. That reality is far more complex should become evident in the following pages. Through a focus on the ethnic boundaries, degrees of sameness and difference, and of inclusion and exclusion, will come to the fore, and I hope to show that it is more correct to consider Garo identity as an analog phenomenon rather than as a digital one, as suggested in the afore-mentioned citation. Questions that arise are how, in the perception of Garos, a person can become a Garo, and when a Garo stops being one. How do Garos relate to those on the other side of the boundary, and how do they relate to people crossing these boundaries? In other words, how do Garos maintain and create boundaries between Self and Other?