EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This edited volume discusses the methodological and ethical challenges that researchers are currently facing whilst attempting to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities throughout Europe.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This collection scrutinizes the methodological and ethical challenges that researchers face when working with and for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in the context of global crises. Contributors assess the impact of the pandemic on their engaged research, evaluating novel methods and technologies. They reveal how current research practice blurs the borders between activism and scholarship, and they argue the need for innovative collaborations with local communities. Showcasing emerging aspects of GRT-related scholarship, this book makes a key contribution to larger debates on the positionality of researchers and the politics of research, and affirms the continued value of rigorous ethnography.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND. Drawing on Roma community voices and expert research, this book provides a powerful tool to challenge conventional discourses and analyses on Romani identity, poverty and exclusion. Through the transformative vehicle of a ‘Social Europe’, this edited collection presents new concepts and strategies for framing social justice for Romani communities across Europe. The vast majority of Roma experience high levels of exclusion from the labour market and from social networks in society. This book maps out how the implementation of a new ‘Social Europe’ can offer innovative solutions to these intransigent dilemmas. This insightful and accessible text is vital reading for the policymaker, practitioner, academic and activist.
"This is the first account of Roma and Gypsy-Travellers from a pan-European perspective. With a comparative focus on Britain and the Czech Republic, it considers their contemporary experiences and needs in the context of their relationship with the rest of society".--BOOKJACKET.
This edited collection draws together contributions from various social scientific fields and explores the mechanisms and strategies that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities employ to preserve identities and cultural practices in different situational and national contexts. The book has a global focus with case studies from different European nations, as well as from Australia, North and South America. While several chapters acknowledge the power of cultural maintenance in the preservation of identity, others take a critical stance towards those aspects of inwardly focused and self-regulated examples of cultural isolation and highlight the implications that cultural marginality can have for members of these groups. The book is therefore essential reading for students in professional fields such as social work, education and community development. It is also relevant to academics with interests in anthropology, ethnography, migration studies, politics, public administration, sociology and social policy. Many of the book’s themes have a cross-disciplinary and transnational relevance and will be of interest to a range of international audiences.
A collection of essays on a wide range of aspects of the Roma communities, cultures, social and political conditions across Europe. The scholarly field of Romany studies is trapped by the history of Roma in a unique and peculiar position in Europe. The investigation of Roma was in the past marginal to academic concerns because most of its practitioners were amateur folklorists interested in treating the Roma as paragons of a lost world and not as citizens of modern nation-states. Today the field is hemmed in by two different power fields: the emotionally understandable, though intellectually debilitating, concern to turn the plight of the Roma into a matter of human rights and the difficulty that academics experience in dealing with people who are not a people in the sense that nation states constitute and make peoples. CONTENTSIntroduction Michael StewartOPERATIONALISING ETHNICITY AS A THEORETICAL TERM What Makes Us Gypsies, Who Knows !: Ethnicity and Reproduction Judit DurstConstructing Culture through Shared Location, Bricolage and Exchange: the Case of Gypsies and Roma Judith OkelyThe Romani Musicians on the Stage of Pluri-culturalism: the Case of the Kalyi Jag Group in Hungary Katalin KovalcsikHarming Cultural Feelings: Images and Categorisation of Temporary Romani Migrants to Graz/Austria Stefan BenedikOPERATIONALISING ETHNICITY IN PRACTICECrediting Recognition: Monetary Transactions of Poor Roma in Tercov Yasar Abu GhoshOn the Borders of Gender. Marriage and the Role of the Child amongst Hungarian Gypsies Cec lia Kovai Passing: Rebeka and the Gay Pride. On the Discursive Boundaries and Possibilities of Skin Colour Kata Horv thThe Employment of Roma, Turks and Bulgarians. A Comparative Report Based on the Outcome of the Multipurpose Household Survey 2007 Alexey PamporovANTI-ROMANY RACISMSHistory and MemoryFrom Time-Banditry to the Challenge of Established Historiographies: Romani Contributions to Old and New Images of the Holocaust Huub van BaarThe Other Genocide Michael Stewart The Unhidden Jew . Jewish Narratives in Romany Life Stories Zsuzsanna VidraContemporary ManifestationsNomads Land? Political Cultures and Nationalist Stances vis- -vis Roma in Italy Giovanni PickerNot Always the Same Old Story: Spatial Segregation and Feelings of Dislike towards Roma and Sinti in Large Cities and Medium-size Towns in Italy Tommaso Vitale and Enrico ClapsRomany ResponsesThe Web against Discrimination? Internet and Gypsies/Travellers Activism in Britain Marcelo FredianiRomany/Gypsy Church or People of God? The Dynamics of Pentecostal Mission and Romani/Gypsy Ethnicity Management Johannes RiesClaiming Legitimacy in/of a Romany NGO Hana Synkov Short Biographies of the Contributors
The term "sense of place" is an important multidisciplinary concept, used to understand the complex processes through which individuals and groups define themselves and their relationship to their natural and cultural environments, and which over the last twenty years or so has been increasingly defined, theorized and used across diverse disciplines in different ways. Sense of place mediates our relationship with the world and with each other; it provides a profoundly important foundation for individual and community identity. It can be an intimate, deeply personal experience yet also something which we share with others. It is at once recognizable but never constant; rather it is embodied in the flux between familiarity and difference. Research in this area requires culturally and geographically nuanced analyses, approaches that are sensitive to difference and specificity, event and locale. The essays collected here, drawn from a variety of disciplines (including but not limited to sociology, history, geography, outdoor education, museum and heritage studies, health, and English literature), offer an international perspective on the relationship between people and place, via five interlinked sections (Histories, Landscapes and Identities; Rural Sense of Place; Urban Sense of Place; Cultural Landscapes; Conservation, Biodiversity and Tourism). Ian Convery is Reader in Conservation and Forestry, National School of Forestry, University of Cumbria; Gerard Corsane is Senior Lecturer in Heritage, Museum and Galley Studies, International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University; Peter Davis is Professor of Museology, International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University. Contributors: Doreen Massey, Ian Convery, Gerard Corsane, Peter Davis, David Storey, Mark Haywood, Penny Bradshaw, Vincent O'Brien, Michael Woods, Jesse Heley, Carol Richards, Suzie Watkin, Lois Mansfield, Kenesh Djusipov, Tamara Kudaibergonova, Jennifer Rogers, Eunice Simmons, Andrew Weatherall, Amanda Bingley, Michael Clark, Rhiannon Mason, Chris Whitehead, Helen Graham, Christopher Hartworth, Joanne Hartworth, Ian Thompson, Paul Cammack, Philippe Dubé, Josie Baxter, Maggie Roe, Lyn Leader-Elliott, John Studley, Stephanie K. Hawke, D. Jared Bowers, Mark Toogood, Owen T. Nevin, Peter Swain, Rachel M. Dunk, Mary-Ann Smyth, Lisa J. Gibson, Stefaan Dondeyne, Randi Kaarhus, Gaia Allison, Ellie Lindsay, Andrew Ramsay
Exploring contemporary debates and developments in Roma-related research and forms of activism, this volume argues for taking up reflexivity as practice in these fields, and advocates a necessary renewal of research sites, methods, and epistemologies. The contributors gathered here – whose professional trajectories often lie at the confluence between activism, academia, and policy or development interventions – are exceptionally well placed to reflect on mainstream practices in all these fields, and, from their particular positions, envision a reimagining of these practices.
Since the arrival of the "Gypsies," or Romanies, in Europe at the beginning of the eleventh century, Europeans have simultaneously feared and romanticized them. That ambiguity has contributed to centuries of confusion over the origins, culture, and identity of the Romanies, a confusion that too often has resulted in marginalization, persecution, and scapegoating. The Role of the Romaniesbrings together international experts on Romany culture from the fields of history, sociology, linguistics, and anthropology to address the many questions and problems raised by the vexed relationship between Romany and European cultures. The book's first section considers the genesis, development, and scope of the field of Romany studies, while the second part expands from there to consider constructions of Romany culture and identity. Part three focuses on twentieth-century literary representations of Romany life, while the final part considers how the role of the Romanies will ultimately be remembered and recorded. Together, the essays provide an absorbing portrait of a frequently misunderstood people.
In this volume the authors present an alternative approach to the history of gypsies and travelling groups in western Europe. By focusing on processes of social construction, stigmatization and categorization, they offer new insights into the development of government policies towards itinerants in general and the ethnicization of some of these groups in particular. They analyze the western images and representations of gypsies and other itinerant groups, at the same time focusing on their functions for the labour market. By doing so, they add a new chapter to the field of social history.