Abstract
This book maps out the history of the linguistic and social practices directed at the Roma during the communist period and explains how contemporary Czech society has come to understand the Romani population in terms of inherited social, medical and juridical ideas. Rather than focusing on the Roma as the object of analysis, the book problematizes assumed notions of "Gypsiness" and "Czechness" in mainstream society by highlighting the role of a number of different socialist discourses in constructing images of the Roma as socially deviant and abnormal.
By uncovering the lines of continuity in the intersections of ethnic discrimination, social deviance and citizenship from the 1950s to the collapse of communism, this book comes to terms with a variety of questions that have not been so far adequately addressed in the literature.