Power on the Move: Adivasi and Roma Accessing Social Justice

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Based on intensive ethnographic work in Romania and India conducted over six years, this book traces the struggle for social justice in Roma and Adivasi communities. Throughout centuries of persecution and marginalization, the Roma and Adivasi have been viewed as both victims and fighters, as royals and paupers, beasts and gods, and lately have been challenging the political and social order by defying the status quo. Different from commonly held suppositions that assume most marginalized and mobile communities typically resist the state and engage in hostile acts to undermine its authority, Power on the Move shows how these groups are willing to become full members. By utilizing different means, such as protests, sit-ins and grass roots organizing, they aim to gain the attention of the state (national and international), hoping to reach inclusion and access social justice.

Reviews

Dragomirs brilliant and timely book explores factors influencing how communities who are on the move, namely Roma in Romania and Narikuravar in India, struggle for justice. Dragomirs powerful account is based on extensive research and breaks new ground in our understanding of how marginalized communities negotiate issues of power, rights and recognition. It is careful to centre the voice of Roma and Narikuravar people whilst drawing important comparative lessons on the realization of justice. * Aidan McGgarry, Loughborough University, UK, and author of Romaphobia *
Combining critical social sciences, ethnography and history to analyse comparatively the manner in which power is articulated in societies as physically apart as the Narikkuravas of Tamil Nadu India and Roma of Europe particularly of Romania, Cristina-Ioana Dragomir weaves nuanced texture of the struggles to forge a future for the people on the move. This is a compelling analysis of the communities that also share certain shared histories, although articulated differently. Their histories and struggles cut across national boundaries, political economies and state systems asking fundamental questions in the search for liberative politics and identities. This book will remain essential reading for comparative cross cultural critical social analysis. It also raises new questions about our understanding of social justice across cultures in the twenty first century. * Sanal Mohan, author of Modernity of Slavery, Mahatma Gandhi University, India *
An engaging, complex work, Power on the Move: Adivasi and Roma Accessing Social Justice, is a rare and excellent repository covering marginalization, racialization, feminist theories of power, informing us about longstanding, historical structural forms of oppression of the Adivasi and Roma people. A beautifully written text, ethnographically united with a theory of culturally based resistance. * Terry Williams, New School University, USA, and author of "Soft City" *
Homogenizing and naming peoples stamped as inferior Others constituted a typical feature of colonial conduct. Gypsies is the label white Europeans have used within and beyond Europe to stamp the Roma and the Narikuravars, two peoples with different histories, languages, and cultures, living on different continents. Power on the Move tells their stories, distinctly centering ethnographic vignettes, histories, and realities of the Roma people in Romania and the Narikuravar people in India. This book is original, engaging, and necessary, particularly in probing racist labels and policies and their history, weight, and functions in maintaining power and human hierarchies. * Margareta Matache, Harvard University, USA *
Cristina-Ioana Dragomirs beautifully-written political anthropology of Roma social justice attitudes and practices across two continents will almost certainly become an instant classic. It represents a remarkable feat of field work in two very different countries, Romania and India, among people who share a common cultural heritage. This stunning and original comparison will forge new paths in multiple social science disciplines. * Mitchell Orenstein, University of Pennsylvania, USA *
Grounded in rich ethnographies from Tamil Nadu and Romania, this work is critical for students of comparative human rights and social justice. * Nidhi Trehan, Institute of Social Science (ISS), New Delhi, India *

Author Bio

Cristina-Ioana Dragomir is a Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. Previously she taught at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University, USA and consulted with the United Nations.