Staging Citizenship - (Dance and Performance Studies) by Ioana Szeman (Paperback)

About the Book

• The book shows the connections between the cultural and social dimensions of citizenship and, focusing on the Roma, demonstrates "why culture matters" in contemporary debates about exclusion, nationalism and national, European and minority belonging in post-1989 Europe.
• It draws on long-term fieldwork with Roma communities and shows the impact of Roma representations and self-representations (including in music and dance performances, television soaps, political debates and discourses and in society more generally) on the experiences and perceptions of Roma minority belonging and citizenship.
• It uses performance to illuminate how different Roma experience citizenship or its lack: from everyday encounters analysed through a performance lens, to music, dance and public performances, through which Roma claim citizenship and belonging.
• Using an intersectional lens, the book highlights the diversity of Roma experiences and demonstrates how transnational politics, including Romania's EU membership, and neoliberal policies have influenced the construction of Roma identities.

Book Synopsis

• The book shows the connections between the cultural and social dimensions of citizenship and, focusing on the Roma, demonstrates "why culture matters" in contemporary debates about exclusion, nationalism and national, European and minority belonging in post-1989 Europe.
• It draws on long-term fieldwork with Roma communities and shows the impact of Roma representations and self-representations (including in music and dance performances, television soaps, political debates and discourses and in society more generally) on the experiences and perceptions of Roma minority belonging and citizenship.
• It uses performance to illuminate how different Roma experience citizenship or its lack: from everyday encounters analysed through a performance lens, to music, dance and public performances, through which Roma claim citizenship and belonging.
• Using an intersectional lens, the book highlights the diversity of Roma experiences and demonstrates how transnational politics, including Romania's EU membership, and neoliberal policies have influenced the construction of Roma identities.

Review Quotes

"Staging Citizenship should be considered required reading for anthropologists and media students working on minority identity in Eastern Europe and the Balkans today. Szeman manages to accommodate both readability and impressive detail into a relatively short book. Each thematic section empowers the reader with the tools to understand the next, and despite each chapter working as a self-contained study in its own right, the real strength of Staging Citizenship is in its ethnographic comprehensiveness." - Südosteuropa

"Staging Citizenship is a major contribution to studies of performance and belonging within subaltern communities that resonates far beyond the borders of Romania, as Roma in other post-communist and, in many cases, recently admitted EU member states in Eastern Europe likewise continue to experience gaps of actual citizenship. Szeman provides a powerful message about (the denial of) Romani rights; her findings are original, incisive and nuanced." - Feminist Review

"The contribution of this book can be valuable for readers in different disciplines of the social sciences and humanities, in particular those interested in empirically-based cultural analyses of east European Roma or those willing to contemplate issues of the cultural recognition of subaltern populations on the ethicized, nationalized, and globalized cultural scenes through this analysis that uses the angle of performance studies." - Slavic Review

"The book is written in an a clear and enjoyable prose, the concepts introduced are well chosen and enlighten the analytical work." - Játék-Tér

"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

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.