The Time Of The Gypsies (Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination) [Hardcover]

Michael Stewart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0813331986 | ISBN-13: 978-0813331980

Until 1989 it was official Communist policy in eastern Europe to absorb Gypsies into the “ruling” working class. Since 1989, the Gypsies have become the scapegoat of postcommunism. More Gypsies have had their houses burned and have been killed in racist attacks in the first six postcommunist years than in all the time since World War II. Today the Gypsies have taken the place of the Jews, feared when poor and isolated in ghettos and hated even more than their skill as traders has brought them unaccustomed wealth and entry to walks of life previously forbidden to them.The Time of the Gypsies is about the refusal of one group of Gypsies—the Rom—to abandon their way of life and accept assimilation into the majority population. It is a story about the sources of cultural diversity in modern industrial society and about the fear and hatred that such social and cultural difference may give rise to. The core of the book, based on the author’s eighteen months of observation of daily life in a Gypsy settlement, describes the cultivation, celebration, and reinvention of cultural difference and diversity by a people deemed by their “social superiors” to be too stupid and uncivilized to have a culture at all.The author, who is the only journalist to have lived in a community of eastern European Gypsies and learned their language, takes the reader on the journey of discovery that he himself made. The answer to seemingly trivial puzzles, such as why the visiting Gypsy woman sits on the author’s hat, all become part of the explanation of how this unique people, without a homeland but unlike any other diaspora population with no dream of a homeland, has sustained itself.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Anthropologist Stewart, a research fellow at the London School of Economics, conducted fieldwork among the Gypsies of Harangos, Hungary, in the 1980s. Focusing primarily on the economic life of one Roma settlement, Stewart also addresses broader questions: Why are Gypsies perceived by others as threatening? How has their way of life survived despite relentless persecution and, in the case of the Harangos Gypsies, Communist policies of assimilating them into the working class? He argues convincingly that the differences between mainstream and Gypsy cultures are more the result of social and economic marginalization than of the Gypsies' non-European origin. This theory and Stewart's interesting analyses of horse-trading, purity beliefs, and song traditions are grounded in a lively and sympathetic documentary of Gypsy life in a small community. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.?Judy Sierra, Eugene, Ore.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Michael Stewart received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and is currently a reporter with the BBC.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (April 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813331986
• ISBN-13: 978-0813331980
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,754,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book for understanding the Rom as people, April 24, 2000

By 

Fenevad - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Time Of The Gypsies (Studies in the Ethnograpic Imagination) (Paperback)

I have just finished reading The Time of the Gypsies with great interest. I lived in Hungary for two years and my knowledge of the Hungarian Gypsies (Rom) was based entirely on a Magyar perspective. After returning to the US I read Angus Fraser's book The Gypsies, which was a good introduction to contemporary Western scholarship concerning the Rom.

What Fraser's book left out was an understanding of how the Rom viewed themselves and how their self-concept was defined. The present volume fills that gap. It has caused me to consider the varying viewpoints of Magyars and Rom and how conflicting viewpoints lead to radically different interpretations of the economic and social activities of the Rom. Many stories I heard from Magyars now "make sense" because I can see what the other side of the story was.

The Time of the Gypsies does an excellent job of showing the very real roots of conflicts between Rom and other people without either vilifying or romanticising either side. Although not aimed at mending the rifts between the Rom and non-Rom the book does an excellent job of promoting the mutual understanding and recognition that is needed to prevent further discord.