Session Information
Contribution
The subject matter of this paper based on long-term ethnographic research conducted by the team Doubek-Levínská-Bitnerová is the first phase of a self-constituting biographical story of a social outreach worker Alice presented against the background of relationships between the majority and the Roma minority in the Czech Republic (Doubek, Levínská, Bittnerová 2015). Alice comes from a Roma family living in an excluded area in a remote part of Western Bohemia and belonging to one of the poorest Roma communities. Despite her social and educational background (she originally completed only a special basic school and she comes from a large family with typical problems), she managed to escape the spiral of poverty and become a self-confident social outreach worker. In her life story she reveals significant influences, key events, important persons and explains how she developed the needed skills. Her story culminates with her social recognition in the role of a social outreach worker, in which she finds her identity and professional fulfilment. Roma communities in the Czech Republic are low educated, which is associated with high levels of unemployment. (Vlada CR 2014). During our research we repeatedly encountered a shared stereotype according to which Roma individuals who are employed and educated, i.e. those who have accumulated cultural capital (Bourdieu) outside of their minority have actually abandoned the community and can no longer be considered its members. A similar idea of an identity obstacle, which majority education becomes for minority members, is also presented by Ogbu (2009) in his studies about the education of African Americans. Alice shows that a specific solution to this dilemma can be found in her profession, even if this solution is not without pitfalls.
As Alice comes from a socially and culturally disadvantaged environment, we would stereotypically expect that her story would be a story of social elevation and desire for self-fulfilment. However, is it really true that her story is a story of emancipation of a Roma woman from the stereotype of the Roma woman or Roma community member? Or is it rather a story about searching for her place in the community and about self-fulfilment within her family and within the environment from which she came from?
Our theoretical approach is based on symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969), cognitive anthropology (Strauss, Quinn 2003; Shore 1996) and narratively oriented psychology (Bruner 1991) and we are interested in searching for meanings attributed by the actors to the social reality that is surrounding them and in which they live and for the meanings that they give to their life stories. According to the theoretical concepts above, the actors both embody and interpret their life stories (Chrz 2007).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bittnerova, D., Doubek, D. and M. Levinska (2011) Funkce kulturních modelů ve vzdělávání. (Function of Cultural Models in Education). Praha: FHS. Blumer, H. (1969) Symbolic interactionism – perspective and method. Englewood Clifs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Bourdieu, P. (1998) Practical reason: On the theory of action. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. Bruner, J. (1991) The Narrative Construction of Reality, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 1-21, University of Chicago Press. Chrz, V. (2007) Možnosti narativního přístupu v psychologickém výzkumu. (Possibilities of narrative approach in psychological inquiry) Praha: Psychologický ústav AVČR. David Doubek, Marketa Levínská, Dana Bittnerová. (2015) Roma as the Others. Intercultural Education, Vol. 26, Iss. 2, 2015. Pages 131-152. DOI: 10.1080/14675986.2015.1027084. Routledge, Taylor&Francis Group. ISSN 1467-5986 (Print), 1469-8439 (Online) D’Andrare (1994) Schemas and motivation. In: D’Andrare, R.G.; Strauss, C.(eds.) Human motives and cultural models. Cambridge: Cambride University Press. Freud, Z. (1962) Formulation on the two principles of mental functioning. Papers On Metapsychology and Other Works. 213-255. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Geertz, C. (2000) Interpretace kultur (The Interpretation of Cultures). Praha: Slon. Goffman, E. (1956) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Edinburg: University of Edinburgh (Social Sciences Research Centre, Monograph No. 2). Lakoff, G. (1990) Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. What categories reveal about the Mind. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press Ogbu, J.U. (2003) Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb. A Study of Academic Disengagement. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Shore, B. (1996): Culture in Mind, Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strauss, C., Quinn, N. (2003) A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vláda ČR. Zpráva o stavu romské menšiny v České republice za rok 2014 Úřad vlády ČR [online] http://www.vlada.cz/assets/ppov/zalezitosti-romske-komunity/dokumenty/Zprava-o-stavu-romske-mensiny-2014.pdf Wittgenstein, L. (1993) Filozofická zkoumání (Philosophische Untersuchungen; LF, Praha, Filosofický ústav Akademie věd ČR (Institution of Philosophy of Science Academy CR)
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.