Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference

Relative Strangers examines how memory, intergenerational transmission, and kinship work together to sustain ethnic difference among Romani people in Palestine and Jordan, challenging transposing models of pluralism from European and American experiences.

Format: Hardback
Length: 192 pages
Publication date: 28 January 2025
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Relative Strangers: An Ethnographic Portrait of Romani Life in Palestine
Arpan Roy's book Relative Strangers sheds light on Romani life in Palestine by examining how memory, intergenerational transmission, and kinship work together. Roy presents an ethnographic portrait of Dom Romani communities living between Palestine and Jordan, focusing on everyday life in working-class neighborhoods and under conditions of perpetual war and instability. The book explores how Doms are able to sustain ethnic difference through kinship, even when public performances of difference are no longer emphasized. Roy draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Amman to make a case for such alterity for Romani people and other groups in the region.

The book analyses intimate ethnographic scenes through anthropological theories of kinship, psychoanalysis, social theory from the Global South, and more. It reveals how alterity in the Middle East does not adhere to rigid identitarian categories. Ultimately, Relative Strangers demonstrates the inadequacy of transposing models of pluralism centred on European and American experiences of minoritization onto other contexts.

The book highlights the importance of understanding the complexities of Romani life in Palestine and the challenges faced by the community. It provides a valuable contribution to the field of Romani studies and sheds light on the experiences of marginalized communities in the region.

Weight: 1g
Dimension: 229 x 152 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781487558710