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Based on over a decade of fieldwork conducted with urban Roma, Staging Citizenship offers a powerful new perspective on one of the European Union's most marginal and disenfranchised communities. Focusing on "performance" broadly conceived, it follows members of a squatter's settlement in Transylvania as they navigate precarious circumstances in a postsocialist state. Through accounts of music and dance performances, media representations, activism, and interactions with both non-governmental organizations and state agencies, author Ioana Szeman grounds broad themes of political economy, citizenship, resistance, and neoliberalism in her subjects' remarkably varied lives and experiences.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Ackknowledgements
Introduction Chapter 1. 'We Will Build a Beautiful Future Together': NGO Historiography, Roma Culture and Monoethnic Nationalism
Chapter 2. Living in the Citizenship Gap: Roma and the Permanent State of Emergency in Pod
Chapter 3. Too Poor to Have Culture? The Politics of Authenticity in Roma NGO Training
Chapter 4. Performing Bollywood: Young Roma Dance Cultural Citizenship
Chapter 5. Consuming Exoticism/Reimagining Citizenship: Romanian Nationalism and Roma Counterpublics on Romanian Television
Chapter 6. The Ambivalence of Success: Roma Musicians and the Citizenship Gap in Romania
Conclusion: Unlearning the Forgetting
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Ioana Szeman is Reader in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. Her articles have appeared in books and journals, including
Theatre Research International,
New Theatre Quarterly,
TDR, and
Performance Research. She is a member of the
Feminist Review editorial collective.
Summary
Based on over a decade of fieldwork conducted with urban Roma, Staging Citizenship offers a powerful new perspective on one of the European Union’s most marginal and disenfranchised communities. Focusing on “performance” broadly conceived, it follows members of a squatter’s settlement in Transylvania as they navigate precarious circumstances in a postsocialist state. Through accounts of music and dance performances, media representations, activism, and interactions with both non-governmental organizations and state agencies, author Ioana Szeman grounds broad themes of political economy, citizenship, resistance, and neoliberalism in her subjects’ remarkably varied lives and experiences.
Additional text
“Readers expecting to find ‘colorful dancing Roma’ might find this study disappointing at first. But those who follow Ioana Szeman’s narrative—which encompasses fairs, dance performances, NGO training sessions, television programs, and an entire community inhabiting a garbage dump—will discover a much more nuanced, complex, and reality-based portrayal of Romani life.” · Sonia Tamar Seeman, University of Texas, Austin
“This book analyzes the social position and cultural representation of Roma in post-socialist Europe in a thoroughly original way. Few studies have so eloquently demonstrated ‘why culture matters’ in contemporary debates about exclusion, nationalism, and European minorities.” · Huub van Baar, Justus Liebig University Giessen
