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Help and Order. Cultural Models in Help Providing Professions

Publication at Faculty of Education |
2015

Abstract

The book is an original monograph based on ethnographic research of the help that is provided to socially excluded people, particularly Roma. It consists of two interconnected parts.

The first part is concerned with the theory of "distantiation" as the problem of reflection of inferior status of socially excluded Roma in the context of the notion of racism, colonization and marginalization on the background of the genesis of the schema - cultural model of the "gypsy". The second part is a study of conceptual models, used by helping profession in the context of desegregation and marginalization overcoming.

It analyzes three distinctive, mutually exclusive core schemas that we call "generators of the logic of help" (GLP) - "systematic", "liberal" and "love". These GLP's are "logics" that permeate various situations and influence other concepts.

They contain typical scenarios of help and success and failure, image of needy person and so forth. Each GLP answers differently the basic set of four questions: Who identifies the person i need, how large number of persons the help must cover, when the attempt of help can be considered a success and why the remaining GLP's are "wrong logics".

Besides that they contain specific "theories of Roma culture" and a concept of the overarching story of the society that we call "transitology". In the ending, we study the resistances that members of both majority and minority develop against desegregation activities.