ROMANI PEOPLE AS OBJECT AND SUBJECT OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

The special issue of Romani Studies entitled Romani people as object and subject of scientific inquiry: Scientification of Roma or RomaNization of science? brings forward innovative approaches to critically revise the most disseminated epistemic platforms for studying the past and the presence of Romani people. This collection should be accepted as a step to overcoming the contemporary epistemic crisis in studying minorities which stems from opposition of two extremes, namely, relegating the specifics of social groups on the margins of research interest to avoid the risk of essentialization and privileging the voices of those on periphery as the exclusively endowed with the right to produce knowledge. Instead struggling with this clearly false dilemma, we offer the range of highly contextualized cases of epistemic neglect or injustice that Romani people expose and the strategies to reestablish justice in producing knowledge regarding this group. Aligned with understanding justice as a dialogue process, the contributors focus on different social segments of Romani peoples life. The article by A. Ostendorf examines the vacuum of critical discursive practices regarding the history of Roma in the United States. The article discusses interventions, including those by Ostendorf herself, aimed at challenging this state of neglect and inattention. These acts of academic activism integrate critical historicization with dialogic approaches to other scholars. In his article, M. Fotta brings his analytical lens into focus on the case of racializing Romani people through ascribing them responsibility for spreading trachoma. Through this analysis, the readers can follow the vicissitudes of public health expertise as an agent and structure of relational racialization in regard to the Romani people. K. Sidiropulu-Janku and J. Obrovsk bring together a historicized view on practicing authenticity among Roma whose families moved to the Czech lands after World War II with the contemporary challenges of self-acceptance among Romani mothers. The authors introduce the main strategies employed by Romani women for producing knowledge about their experience in the face of covert and overt racism. P. Egri, Z. Beck, and A. Bkay move beyond producing knowledge as a science and focus on fashion as a realm for producing, challenging, and fitting identities. In their piece, Fashion and Pilgrimage Discourses Constructing Romani Identity, they retell history of the fashion house Romani Design and its particular focus on the figure of the Virgin Mary. V. Shmidt and Ch. Donohue challenge the idea that the development and the dissemination of scientific knowledge about Roma can be understood as Eastern or Western. Instead, they argue that the classical division between science and pseudo-science has the potential to fuel scientific racism and political and social exclusion across the globe.