Expert frames
Subtitle: scientific and policy practices of Roma classification
By: Mihai Surdu
Publisher: Central European University Press
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Budapest
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9789633861134; 9789633861141
Subjects: Census; Government policy; Classification; Stereotypes (Social psychology); Research; Public opinion; Ethnicity; Romanies; Social surveys
Description: "The book scrutinizes the scientific and expert practices of Roma classification in a historic perspective focusing on the expert discourses that gave rise to Roma-related policies in the last two decades. Epistemic communities that classify and describe Roma obey the commandments of political regimes in power, to the disciplinary research traditions and to the organizational interests. The resultant of knowledge subordination is a negative Roma public image that creates and reinforce stereotypical views held by the society at large. Case studies and thorough examples in the book show that both the census as an administrative and scientific practice, as well as policy related surveys are crafting Roma identity in an essentializing manner. The census reifies Roma by the use of mutually exclusive categories and by post-codification of data while the surveys do so by unfounded representativeness claims. Roma are relegated by the experts to several types of determinism: to a social category, to a frozen culture and to a biologized entity. The recently reemerged scholarship in Roma-related genetics imported classifications and narrations created in the fields of social sciences and contributed to circulation of bio-historical narratives that singularize, pathologize and exoticize Roma"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Epistemic and political classifications; title: Ethnicity theories and research practices; title: Disciplinary traditions in the study of Roma; title: Ethnicity inscriptions in census and surveys; title: Influencers of academic and expert discourse about Roma; title: Case studies on Roma-related discourse; title: Visual depictions of Roma in expert publications.