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All Change!: Romani Studies Through Romani Eyes
Offering new perspectives on the Romani experience, this volume investigates the culture’s origins, history, and identity. Written by leading Romani scholars, this authoritative account considers various topics, including how linguistics has clarified the origins of the Roma, how Gypsies have been classified in Russian research, and how the history of the Gypsy diaspora has shaped Romani culture. Arguing for the exploration of personal and family histories, this study delves into the newly emergent Romani academic community and takes heed of its reflections and reassessments of previous ideas surrounding Romani life.
- GenresNonfiction
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 11, 2013
I watched a few minutes of My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding in a hotel room and thought, "There has got to be more to it than this." So I was pleased to discover this collection of essays from a symposium in which nearly all the scholars were of Romani heritage. It starts with an overview of the scholarship around the origins of Romani people and language (there are no solid conclusions yet). Then there were several chapters on the history of the people in Turkey and Russia. The last set of essays had to do with more personal and complex questions of identity. I found these the most interesting and helpful for my purposes in reading the book, but were also good reflections on the nature of identity and belonging in general. As someone who knew nothing about this field, these essays made me interested in reading some longer monographs now that I have a general sense of the literature.
December 12, 2019
I was looking forward for this book and was quite disappointed in the end.
It started mixed already with the text by Ian Hancock, which is not surprising as it is Ian Hancock. To give an example: What is it with Hancock and not acknowledging his European ancestry? Has the guy ever looked into a mirror? No way are all of his ancestors from "India." But he acts like he does. And his writings can be annoying on social issues but his chapter on language and history and origin of the Romani were so far interesting. And I wonder whether there is any connection with this possibly military connection of some of the ancestors of the Romani and the later often military occupation of Sinti in the German speaking area.
Typically for Hancock, sometimes he can be really confusing. I remember him speaking of a single Romani identity but here he straight up says that the population has been a composite from the start and was back than occupationally rather than ethnically, that the basic identity and language was acquired in the Byzantine Empire, and the migration into Europe was by several waves with no true shared identity.
Over time he transfers into full blown victim and double standard mode. Not only does he ignore that several Romani ethnicities also find the Vlax Romani custom of arranged early-teen marriage reprehensible (the beforementioned Sinti do), he downright ignores the criticism of the practice in India and against that in prior European royal marriages. In each cases the criticism clearly exists but he claims that only Romani are criticized for it.
This gets so bad, that he ends in full blown victim and we must defend ourselves against "them" mode. You can see this by the way he talks but also in the way that he mentions only anecdotes when it comes to non-Romani speaking for Romani and no data and no examples of Romani emancipation... which is odd, since he mentioned the Sinti, who in 2010 already had several German-wide organizations.
Of course since these are from different authors. Another one, unlike Hancock, considers Rom, Dom and Lomlar the same people, and it was ironically to read this and think of how Erdogan claimed the superiority of Turkey by claiming that they don't discriminate against Roma while this here tells an entirely different story.
But I am also not so sure about some of this. You see, even though I do agree with one author about the nature of ever-changing identity and reasoning, considering that he gave an example were a man straight up had given him two different names and two different live and family stories, I do wonder whether the author isn't just excusing lying and spreading falsehoods."
Luckily, this had gotten a bit better afterwards and he talks mainly about his dislike of others defining his "gypsy identity" and so on, but this still feels like way too much talk, way more than is necessary.
With another author I thought that he was a tad naive about the Black Panthers.
We also get the old “India as the motherland” here, but why should Roma accept India as their motherland? Their "ethnic" identity did not form there. It was formed in Europe and the Byzantine Empire.
And I have the suspicion that this one author who allegedly wants to write about the history of Roma in Russia is more concerned with finding some mythic Romani homeland. I don't think he could take it if it turns out that there is none, respectively that there is a homeland, the one he lives in. And his chapter was exactly what I feared I would get to hear from this Le Bas guy the moment he mentioned his interest in Jewish history. He only mentioned the Roman power and so suggests that prior to 70 AD most Jews lived in Judea, when in fact, most lived outside of it and had done so for a very long time. Even the BBC show Rome already mentioned Jews in Rome and that one played when Julius Cesar was still alive.
And this guy and other English Romani like him will be so disappointed when they realize that India will never welcome them. In fact, if you ask me, this guy dislikes being from England and is blind to the danger a movement like Zionism can bring; a strengthening of antigypsiism, not safety from it, as such a movement needs racism to thrive.
And how he got from diaspora to notions of gypsy purity I have no idea.
And I know that persecution exists, but this here sounds as if they took it as their identity. So no matter how low it gets it will never seem to get lower for them.
One of the later authors was the worst of them all here. If this guy hadn't turned out to have "gypsy" ancestry he would have latched on to something else to address his alleged always felt feeling of estrangement which he seems to assign to his ancestry. Which is pretty racist if you ask me. You can feel estrangement for all sorts of reasons over time. And you can modify your memory, very easily.
The Afterword and his talk of why he is against Roma unification and what they should rather focus on was a bit of a saving grace for this book, but not enough.
It started mixed already with the text by Ian Hancock, which is not surprising as it is Ian Hancock. To give an example: What is it with Hancock and not acknowledging his European ancestry? Has the guy ever looked into a mirror? No way are all of his ancestors from "India." But he acts like he does. And his writings can be annoying on social issues but his chapter on language and history and origin of the Romani were so far interesting. And I wonder whether there is any connection with this possibly military connection of some of the ancestors of the Romani and the later often military occupation of Sinti in the German speaking area.
Typically for Hancock, sometimes he can be really confusing. I remember him speaking of a single Romani identity but here he straight up says that the population has been a composite from the start and was back than occupationally rather than ethnically, that the basic identity and language was acquired in the Byzantine Empire, and the migration into Europe was by several waves with no true shared identity.
Over time he transfers into full blown victim and double standard mode. Not only does he ignore that several Romani ethnicities also find the Vlax Romani custom of arranged early-teen marriage reprehensible (the beforementioned Sinti do), he downright ignores the criticism of the practice in India and against that in prior European royal marriages. In each cases the criticism clearly exists but he claims that only Romani are criticized for it.
This gets so bad, that he ends in full blown victim and we must defend ourselves against "them" mode. You can see this by the way he talks but also in the way that he mentions only anecdotes when it comes to non-Romani speaking for Romani and no data and no examples of Romani emancipation... which is odd, since he mentioned the Sinti, who in 2010 already had several German-wide organizations.
Of course since these are from different authors. Another one, unlike Hancock, considers Rom, Dom and Lomlar the same people, and it was ironically to read this and think of how Erdogan claimed the superiority of Turkey by claiming that they don't discriminate against Roma while this here tells an entirely different story.
But I am also not so sure about some of this. You see, even though I do agree with one author about the nature of ever-changing identity and reasoning, considering that he gave an example were a man straight up had given him two different names and two different live and family stories, I do wonder whether the author isn't just excusing lying and spreading falsehoods."
Luckily, this had gotten a bit better afterwards and he talks mainly about his dislike of others defining his "gypsy identity" and so on, but this still feels like way too much talk, way more than is necessary.
With another author I thought that he was a tad naive about the Black Panthers.
We also get the old “India as the motherland” here, but why should Roma accept India as their motherland? Their "ethnic" identity did not form there. It was formed in Europe and the Byzantine Empire.
And I have the suspicion that this one author who allegedly wants to write about the history of Roma in Russia is more concerned with finding some mythic Romani homeland. I don't think he could take it if it turns out that there is none, respectively that there is a homeland, the one he lives in. And his chapter was exactly what I feared I would get to hear from this Le Bas guy the moment he mentioned his interest in Jewish history. He only mentioned the Roman power and so suggests that prior to 70 AD most Jews lived in Judea, when in fact, most lived outside of it and had done so for a very long time. Even the BBC show Rome already mentioned Jews in Rome and that one played when Julius Cesar was still alive.
And this guy and other English Romani like him will be so disappointed when they realize that India will never welcome them. In fact, if you ask me, this guy dislikes being from England and is blind to the danger a movement like Zionism can bring; a strengthening of antigypsiism, not safety from it, as such a movement needs racism to thrive.
And how he got from diaspora to notions of gypsy purity I have no idea.
And I know that persecution exists, but this here sounds as if they took it as their identity. So no matter how low it gets it will never seem to get lower for them.
One of the later authors was the worst of them all here. If this guy hadn't turned out to have "gypsy" ancestry he would have latched on to something else to address his alleged always felt feeling of estrangement which he seems to assign to his ancestry. Which is pretty racist if you ask me. You can feel estrangement for all sorts of reasons over time. And you can modify your memory, very easily.
The Afterword and his talk of why he is against Roma unification and what they should rather focus on was a bit of a saving grace for this book, but not enough.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews