Before You Bring a Pogrom: Between the Experience of Ethnographic Fieldwork in Roma Communities and Anthropological Scientific Text

Abstract

This article is based on the long-term ethnographic field research (2011-2016) among Bergitka Roma in Carpathian Villages, an engaged ethnography in a non-profit organization offering Roma integration services and in-depth interviews with main political actors responsible for the adaptation of Polish strategy of Roma integration. The difficulties of introducing Roma integration are essential for understanding the state of the current policy supporting Roma communities. A considerable number of scientific publications in recent years focus on the “pragmatic” dilemmas of new ways of developing cultural “democratic” change within the Roma communities and improving the quality of Roma/ non-Roma ties. The meaning of the activities referred to here, as “Roma’s integration” is different for particular actors, possessing diverse intentions, experience, interests and ideas about the rationality of this type of activity. The author argue that the anthropologists should be ready to challenge the general sense of practices of helping as a product of concrete social epistemology.

However, in ethnographic practices it sometimes may seems difficult from the moral point of view. In the following he uses the distinction between the concepts of “thick” and “thin” moral convictions which was proposed by Kwame A. Appiah in his conception of “cosmopolitan ethics”.