Une ethnographie réciproque : Étudier les vies roms et non-roms en collaboration

Abstract

Most academic representations of Roma women are produced by non-Roma scholars and the lives of Roma women are generally studied in isolation from those of non-Roma women. In this article we (Liria, a Gitana street seller, and Paloma, a non-Gitana anthropologist) discuss our attempt to write together a reciprocal life story —an anthropological monograph in which we explore our very different but intertwined trajectories as Spanish women. We reflect on our experiences of coming together as collaborators and friends whilst standing on different sides of academic and ethnic divides. From this dual standpoint we outline some of the challenges for a feminist analysis of the lives of Roma women, asking how they should be represented in scholarly texts, by whom, and using what kinds of approaches. We suggest that collaborations of the kind we have attempted in this article might become a model for scholarly cooperation, and perhaps even for Roma/non-Roma solidarity in the non-academic world.