Romové jako místní obyvatelé? Přináležení, cikánství a politika prostoru ve vesnici na východním Slovensku

• Authors: Jan Ort

Title variants

EN

Roma as locals? Belonging, gypsyness, and the politics of space in an Eastern Slovak village

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

Based on long-term ethnographic research in one eastern Slovak village, this paper explores the complex issue of the role of place in the (self-)identification of Roma. Applying both a diachronic and a synchronic perspective, the author focuses on the mechanisms of the territorialisation of the Roma that led to the preservation of the historical continuity of the Romani settlement and to its territorial stigmatisation. He shows how local identification and position in the residential structure of the village studied here translated into a more enduring differentiation among Roma themselves. The author argues that crucial to understanding this process is the racialised category of 'Gypsyness', through which the Roma were singled out as 'less local'. 'Gypsyness' was also strongly associated with the space of the settlement and at the same time served as a generally accepted reason for its very existence. By setting up their own strategy of social mobility and striving to achieve full-fledged local belonging, the Roma, to a large extent, subscribed to the dominant logic of 'Gypsyness' and thus reproduced it, but they also transformed some of its characteristics, integrating it into their own understanding of their sociability in an environment of historically rooted non-Romani dominance.

Keywords

EN

Roma; eastern Slovakia; Gypsyness; local belonging; territorialisation; territorial stigmatisation; Romani settlements

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 57
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 581-608
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Jan Ort

• Sociologický časopis, redakce, Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic