Aims of the workshop

In this workshop we intend to examine various ways in which the Roma population engaged in as a response to policies of social and economic modernization in various countries from Southeast Europe. Following James C. Scott (1985; 2013) the workshop highlights different forms of daily resistance against the state policies of economic and social control and invites discussions and exchange of opinions. We engage James Scott’s approach to social resistance not as open conflicts but rather as „Brechtian-or Schweikian-forms of class struggle”. This type of resistance „require[s] little or no coordination or planning; they make use of implicit understandings and informal networks; they often represent a form of individual self-help; they typically avoid any direct, symbolic confrontation with authority” (Scott 1985: xvi).

The refuse to be incorporated into the new nation-states and their modernization policies roller-machine includes not only those small practices of disobedience, theft, dissimulation and refuse to work but also fleeing in areas which the state reaches harder (Scott 2009). We oppose that all criminal activities of some Roma are part of the so called “art of not being governed” (Scott 2009), and we invite to reflect whether the same criminal activities conducted by majority population should be interpreted in same way.

The “high modernist state” (Scott 1998) through its policies of economic modernization, tried hard to settle those populations who moved around in order to transform them into “reliable” citizens who pay taxes, can be conscripted, and are accountable for a modern way of life. The modern state is the state which has improved its means and tactics of surveillance of the population. From mid-1800s until the postsocialist regimes, the states in
Southeast Europe adopted different tactics to settle down and control the Roma people’s economic activities. These tactics included moving entire villages from the wetland areas to lowlands where they were more easily controlled in early 1900s or communist policies of sedentarization in villages and cities in the 1950s and 1960s. The state practices of transforming Roma people into loyal citizens met the resistance of a population which experienced hundreds of years of social marginalization, exclusion and poverty. We contend that the Roma population’s resistance to state’s policies takes place rather in the way Scott describes, but the question is in which degree they are representative for whole Roma community and invites discussions on various forms of Roma integration.

Outcomes

The tangible and immediate outcomes of the workshops are:

• Publication: A selection of the contributions will be published in the Journal of the Institute of South East Studies, Romanian Academy, an international peer-reviewed journal.
• Research networks: As apart of ongoing collaboration with the Institute of South East Studies, Romanian Academy, a research project funding application with this theme will be developed by researchers from Swedish and the other institutions.

Organisation

The organising committee consists of two members from Södertörn University, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES): Julieta Rotaru (Research Leader in Romani Studies), and David Gaunt (Professor emeritus), and two researchers from the Institute for South East Studies, Romanian Academy: Stefan Dorondel and Stellu Serban.

Literature cited in the text

Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Scott, James C. 2013. Decoding Subaltern Politics. Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics. London and New York: Routledge.