Romani Studies

Wearing Gypsy Identity in a Gábor Gypsy Community in Tîrgu Mures

The article is based on research conducted in Tîrgu Mures, Romania, among a Vlax Gypsy group, the Gábors. I was struck by the Gábors' characteristic dress codes and the significance they attach to them. As one elderly man emphasised: "We haven't changed our dress, not at all [. . .] for the Gábors, this is ancient and has existed since there are Gábors . . ." This initial impression inspired me to write the present article, in which I begin with a brief outline of the method used, after which...

Performing the Border of Child Labour: Roma Working Children

The article explores the social, cultural and economical processes that lead Roma children into labour and their own interpretations of the value and risks of working. Based on qualitative research in several Roma communities in Romania the article analyses the different family strategies in coping with the economic difficulties of transition and the place of children in this process. The article is interested in the relationship between children and family, school and community and attempts ...

The Culture of Crime Examining Representations of Irish Travelers in Traveller and the Riches

Irish Travelers are frequently equated with crime. This culture-of-crime stereotype is reproduced through media culture. In this article I will analyze the 1997 film Traveller and the first season of the 2007 television series The Riches to see how the criminal stigma is repeatedly (re) ascribed to Irish Travelers. I identify two cultural discourses in Traveller. First, the "culture as practice" discourse grants admission to a cultural group based on what one does. Second, the "culture as nat...

General and Applied Romani Linguistics: Proceedings From the 6th International Conference On Romani Linguistics

Essential to the new model is the idea that membership in a dialect group is not absolute, but rather relative to the specific linguistic features, with the whole network of dialects forming dialect continua. [...] the article provides a new solid theoretical framework for researching and discussing the dialects of Romani (the framework has since been applied, for instance, in Tenser 2008).

Zigeunerpaläste. Die Architektur Der Roma in Rumänien

For Graef the Gypsy palace is a public building, not in the sense that it is open to everybody, but in contrast to the European model of the nuclear family's private house; "private" in the Roma context is an "unacceptable concept for the self-identification of the individual" (p. 125). [...] there remain some unanswered questions, such as "Why have the Gypsy palaces become so prominent while no architect has ever reflected on the architectural language of the Kalderash tends or the Roma car...

The Roma: A Minority in Europe. Historical, Political and Social Perspectives

Zimmermann s point of departure is an unfortunate debate driven by several academics, including in particular the historian Guenter Lewy, who appear intent on reserving the terms "Holocaust" and or "genocide" for the treatment of Jews during World War IL Zimmermann begins his intervention into this discussion with the seemingly unpromising start of seeking to compare the treatment of Jews, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war - seemingly unpromising because Jews and Roma/Gypsies had been compo...

Exploring Gypsiness. Power, Exchange and Interdependence in a Transylvanian Village

The strongest parts of the book are, in my view, the analyses of the exchange relations, economic interdependence and social relations between the Rom Gypsy and the Romanian peasant worlds within the village and the wider local area. Very interesting is, for example, the discussion of the ways in which the annual arrival of clothes and other luxury goods brought by a Western European NGO influences the mutual relations and power structure between the Romanian villagers and the hamlet Roma, o...

The Gypsy Caravan. From Real Roma to Imaginary Gypsies in Western Music and Film

[...] Malvinni's thesis is that "Gypsy music [...] is not simply a musical style, nor another exoticism [...], but a consciousness of the communicative essence of music" (p. ix). [...] Gypsiness appears natural as an outlet of emotion, passion and even seduction, delivering a popular motif where Gypsies represent the "noble savages" and their music functions as a bridge to the innocent and lost world of the primitive.