Nationalism without Borders: The Romani Nationalist Movement in a Comparative Analysis with Gellner, Hroch, Bauer and Öcalan
Abstract
In the year of 2001 the Romani Nationalist Movement proclaimed through the Declaration of a Roma Nation one of its mains features: the aim to create a Nation without borders, one that could embrace all the Gypsies/Roma people in the whole world. Since then it became clear this characteristic that does not fit totally in the theories of some scholars, as Gellner and Hroch.
Even though some circumstances described for these authors can be found within the Roma movement - for instance the efforts of an intelligentsia behind the movement and a will to rewrite the history of the people -, these two scholars agree that a nationalist movement targets the creation of a state. Thus, in the Romani case, it is necessary bring together at least two different thoughts, both of them related with the concerns on minorities.
The Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer wrote in the beginning of the twentieth century, and developed the Principle of Personality, looking for improve the situation of the several different ethnicities who used to live within the Austro-Hungarian Empire borders. Also, the activist Abdullah Öcalan, targeting improve the situation of the Kurdish people in the middle-east, developed the concept of Democratic Confederalism.
Summarizing, this presentation aims put these four views in comparison, trying to find a hermeneutical key upon the Romani Nationalist Movement, pointing out the relation between the Movement and the reorganization of the Gypsy memories into a Romani history. Important to stress, this thoughts are part of a PhD research in progress developed by Douglas Neander Sambati - under supervision of Nicolas Maslowski -, at the program in Historical Sociology at the Charles University in Prague, named "Historical Sociology of the Romani Nationalist Movement: Foundations, Developments, Conflicts and Challenges".