Abstract

Based on over a decade of fieldwork conducted with urban Roma, Staging Citizenship offers a powerful new perspective on one of the European Union’s most marginal and disenfranchised communities. Focusing on “performance” broadly conceived, it follows members of a squatter’s settlement in Transylvania as they navigate precarious circumstances in a postsocialist state. Through accounts of music and dance performances, media representations, activism, and interactions with both non-governmental organizations and state agencies, author Ioana Szeman grounds broad themes of political economy, citizenship, resistance, and neoliberalism in her subjects’ remarkably varied lives and experiences.

“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

Ioana Szeman is Principal Lecturer 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. She is a member of the Feminist Review editorial collective.