Us and them
what categories reveal about Roma and non-Roma in the Czech republic
pp. 599-623
in: Paul Smeyers, David Bridges, Nicholas C. Burbules, Morwenna Griffiths (eds), International handbook of interpretation in educational research, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
The text is an outcome of the ethnographic research focusing on the education of Roma children in Czech Republic. The approach of Czech Republic towards Roma students, especially the practice of educating Roma in segregated practical schools has been criticized by EU. The text focuses on the problem of categorization and interpretation of the very "object" – the Roma minority. The categorization is not purely logical construction, but involves hidden agenda, various academic, politic concepts, elements of praxis and it has consequences for category as such. The text shows how the ethnographic research developed and how researchers' point of view was changed under empirical and theoretical experiences. The distributive model of culture (Schwartz T, Where is the culture? Personality as the distributive locus of culture. In: Spindler GP (ed) The making of psychological anthropology. University of California Press, Berkeley, pp 419–441, 1978), the cognitive concept of the schema of the cognitive anthropology (Strauss C, Quinn N, A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003), Lakoff's categorization (Lakoff J, Women, fire and dangerous things. What categories reveal about the mind. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990) are the main theoretical inspirations for data analysis and interpretation. While dealing with the intricacies of the Roma category in the field we tried to pursue so called Rashomon strategy (Rodsedth 1998) as related both to data collection and construction of theory.