Paper short abstract:

Too often Gypsy, Roma or Traveller perspectives are distorted. Relevant anthropological studies are plagiarised or ignored by the populist media. Yet ethnographic text and film offer rare, grounded insights, while nuanced examination of outsider policies has the potential for conflict resolution.

Paper long abstract:

The Gypsies, Roma or Travellers have been simultaneously exoticised or persecuted. Too often their perspective is distorted or obliterated. Malinowski's plea to examine the 'imponderabilia of everyday life' is ignored in favour of sensationalist voyeurism, alongside the criminalisation of peoples traditionally associated with service nomadism and the informal economy. Individual non-Gypsies or Gajes from the media glitterati, with neither respect for nor knowledge of social science practice, have plagiarised anthropologists' work, presuming that ethnography is mere reportage. Alternatively, as in the TV series 'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding', castigated by one Gypsy woman as a 'mockumentary', insights from anthropological texts were entirely ignored. Anthropology's pioneering 'observational' filming tradition was misappropriated and distorted. By contrast, social anthropology's core tradition of long-term participant observation offers insider perspectives and the testimony of individual voices. Such ethnography, emerging from mutual trust, has been open to rare and illuminating filming. Simultaneously, intensive engagement with these most persecuted of minorities may lead to a critical and nuanced re-examination of outsider representations and policies. Such grounded knowledge of interrelations has the potential for productive, as opposed to counter-productive, resolution of constructed and avoidable conflicts.