Romani StudiesPub Date : 2018-12-01DOI: 10.3828/RS.2018.8
V. Shaidurov
{"title":"Gypsies in the Russian Empire: Theories and practices addressing their situation during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century","authors":"V. Shaidurov","doi":"10.3828/RS.2018.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2018.8","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The history of Gypsies in Russia is a tabula rasa against the background of myriad studies in the development of diasporas (Jews, Germans, Poles, Finns, Chinese, and Koreans). There are few publications, and based on a limited range of subjective sources. Reasons can include both the absence of written sources, authored by Gypsies, and specialists' ignorance of an array of historical sources that have been preserved in the archives. In our paper, we will review the history that surrounds the formulation of basic legislative acts concerning Gypsies in the Russian Empire until the mid-1850s. By using specific examples, we will demonstrate the practice of enforcing tsarist edicts and the way Gypsies adapted to them. We employed both published laws and archival documents from the archives in St Petersburg and Pskov, which are first introduced into academic research. These allow us to conclude that the tsarist policy towards Russian Gypsies had common features with similar campaigns in European nations as well as its own individual features. In terms of its content, the policy was not intended to eliminate Gypsies as a special ethnic group, even in the context of military-police absolutism established by Paul I and Nicholas I. But even a limited goal–to turn nomadic Gypsies into sedentary farmers or townspeople–was not achieved.","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"195 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41505976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2018-06-01DOI: 10.3828/RS.2018.2
Margaret H. Beissinger
{"title":"Gender, ethnicity, and education in lăutar (Romani musician) families in Romania: Personal and professional strategies for twenty-first-century life choices","authors":"Margaret H. Beissinger","doi":"10.3828/RS.2018.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2018.2","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I explore how gender, ethnic identity, and education inform career, marriage, and family in the lives of sons and daughters of lăutari (professional Romani musicians) at the intersection of traditional Romani and contemporary Romanian society. Sons are socialized to adopt the occupation of their fathers, becoming professional musicians who will support future families; they perpetuate traditional lăutar culture. While daughters are also socialized within the family to assume domestic \"female\" roles, most in my fieldwork have rejected them, deviating significantly from the traditional culture of their mothers as they pursue, instead, upward mobility and socio-economic empowerment. They are pioneering new roles for lăutar – and Romani–women. For both sons and daughters, journeys of upward mobility are distinguished by achievement and success but also by dilemmas of identity and belonging as well as tension and conflict as they reconcile traditional Romani and urban, modern Romanian lives.","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"40 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2018.2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49164600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2018-06-01DOI: 10.3828/RS.2018.3
Julieta Rotaru
{"title":"Barbu Constantinescu, the first Romanian scholar of Romani studies","authors":"Julieta Rotaru","doi":"10.3828/RS.2018.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2018.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Half a century after the first work on the Romanian Roms written by M. Kogălniceanu (1837) at the suggestion of the father of modern geography, Alexander von Humboldt, similarly, at the suggestion of a foreign scholar, the father of Romani dialectology, Franz Miklosich, a graduate of the Faculty of Theology, University of Leipzig, and Ph.D. of the same university, Barbu Constantinescu, started to learn Romani and became the first Romanian scholar in the emergent field. He was an acknowledged educationist, the first exponent of Herbatianism in Romania, and worked in many educational pioneering projects, such as the establishment of the first kindergarten, as well as the reformation of the pedagogical and theological systems of education. In the field of Romani studies, unfortunately, he could not publish all his projected work, and posterity forgot his huge effort of travelling in all counties of Wallachia and Moldavia in search of Romani settlements. He published in Bucharest, in 1877 and 1878, a dozen songs and tales in Romani of his own translation, which were duly acknowledged (e.g. by F.H. Groome in his 1899 anthology of Gypsy folk songs). However, his work, comprising hundreds of documents, was not included in a collection, though it is partially preserved in some unedited manuscripts at the Romanian Academy Library in Bucharest, which are described here for the first time, in sections § 2.1–6. The article describes the intellectual legacy left by Barbu Constantinescu in the field of Romani studies.","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"41 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2018.3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47322665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2018-06-01DOI: 10.3828/RS.2018.5
M. Mattila
{"title":"Sterilization policy and Gypsies in Finland","authors":"M. Mattila","doi":"10.3828/RS.2018.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2018.5","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines Finnish eugenic sterilization policy from 1935 to 1970 and how the nation dealt with the largest minority group in the land, the Gypsies. When the sterilization law was first created (1935) and amended (1950), it was largely thought to be a law that applied equally to everyone. Now we know that, in practice, it targeted women and the lower social classes. In light of the existing data, the article argues that the law had somewhat of an ethnic bias: Gypsy women were over-represented among those who received coercive sterilization orders, especially among those whose application for sterilization was favourably received by the Finnish Medical Board. There are also some traits that indicate that Gypsy women may have been compelled to apply for sterilization. Particularly problematic applications were those sent by female prisoners: how voluntary was such an application for sterilization when sent from prison?","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"109 - 139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2018.5","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41501095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2018-06-01DOI: 10.3828/RS.2018.4
Z. Uherek
{"title":"Czech and Slovak Romani on the Path Abroad: Migration and Human Personality","authors":"Z. Uherek","doi":"10.3828/RS.2018.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2018.4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Migration is an important catalyst for personal and community change. This text deals with the self-presentation of Romani migrants from the Czech and Slovak Republics to countries of Western Europe and further overseas. In the introduction, I briefly contextualize the issue of migration from Central Europe and characterize the actors as a settled population, i.e. as subject to the same migration laws as the majority population of the mentioned states. I then go on to explain my theoretical approach, which is based on an understanding that not all attributes of human personality can easily be transferred across state borders. I apply this notion to Roma migration and show, on the basis of empirical examples, which attributes of their personalities Roma leave behind in their original home, what they transfer abroad, and what they remake in a new environment. The text deals particularly with questions of physical bodies, property, knowledge, skills, statuses, memories, social and cultural capital, familial and relational networks, and a collective sense of belonging. Migration is understood here as a physical movement which also allows Romani families to act on their statuses, and social and cultural capital.","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"108 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2018.4","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48076661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2017-12-07DOI: 10.3828/RS.2017.8
Michael Stewart
{"title":"Nothing about us without us, or the dangers of a closed-society research paradigm","authors":"Michael Stewart","doi":"10.3828/RS.2017.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2017.8","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In recent years a number of calls have been made for a ‘new paradigm’ in Romani Studies. Sometimes referred to as ‘critical Romani Studies’, the proposed research agenda focusses on racism and its importance for Roma and Romani identity, as well as issues arising from inequalities and the structural discrimination of Roma. Drawing from post-colonial studies, feminist critique, intersectionality and ‘critical race theory’ the advocates of this approach have suggested that who speaks may be as or more important than what they have to say. In this contribution to the debate I question whether discussing issues around the ‘authority to speak’ will advance the substantive issues that ought to concern all scholars in this field, Romani and non-Romani.","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"125 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2017.8","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41339876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2017-12-01DOI: 10.3828/RS.2017.7
Y. Matras
{"title":"From Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society to Romani Studies: Purpose and essence of a modern academic platform","authors":"Y. Matras","doi":"10.3828/RS.2017.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2017.7","url":null,"abstract":"“Our journal, we trust, will thrive without self-commendation”, wrote the Editors of the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, David MacRitchie and Francis Hindes Groome, in the first issue of the journal published in July 1888. They went on to declare the aims of the journal to be “to gather new materials, to rearrange the old, and to formulate results, as little by little to approach the goal – the final solution of the Gypsy problem”. Those who today are bent on demonising the journal, what it stands for, and the society that owns it, will no doubt feast on that choice of wording, while others might cringe. But MacRitchie and Groome’s use of the phrase ‘Gypsy problem’ was not meant to describe tense relations between the Roma and majority society, nor did the expression ‘final solution’ have anything to do with regulating such relations, least of all through persecution or annihilation. Quite the opposite: In the context of the time, decades before the collocation ‘final solution of the Gypsy problem’ came to symbolise the atrocities of genocide, the pair put forward an agenda of strict enquiry, one that would contribute to knowledge and understanding, as they continue to explain in the same paragraph:","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"113 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2017.7","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41438397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2017-12-01DOI: 10.3828/RS.2017.10
D. V. Leggio, Y. Matras
{"title":"Variation and dialect levelling in the Romani dialect of Ţăndărei","authors":"D. V. Leggio, Y. Matras","doi":"10.3828/RS.2017.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2017.10","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The Kangjlari of Ţăndărei in southeastern Romania offer an interesting case study of the consolidation within just a few generations of a new Romani community, as a result of state-sponsored relocation and settlement between 1950 and 1980. We discuss the linguistic implications of the formation of this new community, drawing on language material from questionnaire elicitation and life history interviews among recent migrants now living in the UK, and supported by access to local ethnographic and archive material in the origin community. We show how a process of dialect levelling is underway in the Romani variety spoken by the Roma of Ţăndărei, which resembles cases of koineization discussed for a number of other languages in recent sociolinguistic literature. The stabilization of a particular combination of features means that the variety under discussion cannot be accommodated into current dialect classification models. This has implications for our general understanding of dialect formation in Romani. The paper also offers the very first modern, concise grammatical sketch of a Romani variety from Romania.","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"173 - 209"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2017.10","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41905807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2017-12-01DOI: 10.3828/RS.2017.9
S. Zlatanović
{"title":"Approaching preferred identity: ‘Serbian Gypsies’ in post-war Kosovo","authors":"S. Zlatanović","doi":"10.3828/RS.2017.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2017.9","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The article examines the processes of approaching preferred identity of the ‘Serbian Gypsies’ community in post-war Kosovo. The ‘Serbian Gypsies’ declare themselves as Serbs and have Serbian names and surnames. They are Orthodox Christians and speak Serbian within the community. Their practice of customs and way of life are also similar to those of the Serbs, according to descriptions received from the Serbs. To varying degrees, the Serbs within their community dispute their acquired ethnic identity, continuing to ascribe to them the identity of ‘Gypsies’. Depending on the individual views of members of the Serbian community, they are placed both as intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic others, or “betwixt and between” these categories. The boundary between these two communities is an ambiguous zone of negotiation. In a post-war context of radically changed ethnic and social circumstances, the Serbs, now finding themselves in the minority enclave situation, are gradually beginning to accept this group, which is working on remodelling its identity and becoming assimilated. The identity of the ‘Serbian Gypsies’ is still in the process of being shaped and re-shaped and limited by being categorised by the group, where they hope to become members.","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"147 - 172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2017.9","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46348674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Romani StudiesPub Date : 2017-06-29DOI: 10.3828/RS.2017.1
Jennifer L. Erickson
{"title":"Intersectionality theory and Bosnian Roma: Understanding violence and displacement","authors":"Jennifer L. Erickson","doi":"10.3828/RS.2017.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/RS.2017.1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article uses intersectional theory to explain violence against Romani women in post-war (1992–95) Bosnia-Herzegovina and the social marginalization of Bosnian Romani refugees in Fargo, North Dakota. I show how race/ethnicity, class, and gender are relational and become salient in different ways and contexts, but depend on overlapping institutional contexts and state histories to create limitations and possibilities with regards to marginalization and inclusion. Romani women in post-war Bosnia experienced high levels of violence because they were Roma, poor, and women. Understanding violence in this context meant interrogating how (post)socialism, ethnonationalism, war, and anti-Gypsy attitudes influenced Romani women specifically. Bosnian Romani refugees in Fargo were stigmatized due to racialized social practices, like early marriage and scrap metal businesses. Understanding marginalization in this context meant taking into account a history of racism against people of color in the United States, capitalism, and hegemonic expectations for refugees to assimilate into mainstream American culture.","PeriodicalId":52533,"journal":{"name":"Romani Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"1 - 28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/RS.2017.1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49359360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}