| No 11
|
Roma-Gypsy Ethnicity in Eastern Europe |
| Institution |
Institute of Sociology: Bucharest, Romania |
|
Publication (Journal) |
Social Research 58 no. 4 (winter 1991): 829-44 |
| Published in |
USA, 1991 |
| Language |
English |
| Abstract |
Romanies, or Roma-Gypsies, living in Eastern Europe have been encouraged by recent political changes that appear to be fostering new experiments in the democratization of totalitarian states and homogeneous societies. However, an increase in prejudice and conflict against Romanies has occurred in reaction to the public articulation of a Roma ethnic identity. The causes of the conflict are rooted both in the social history of the Eastern European countries and in the dynamic of the communist and postcommunist societies in the region. It is suggested that the ethnogenesis of Roma identity illustrates the two dimensions of ethnopolitics described by political scientists--ethnic politics and the politics of ethnicity. In the ethnogenesis processes, Romanies are confronted with alternatives provided by the traditional models of ethnic nationalism and by the emerging models of transnational identities constructed in community and cultural terms, rather than in territorial state-based terms. |
| Discipline(s) |
sociology
, political sociology
|
| Source(s) |
case study
|