Fire in the Dark Telling Gypsiness in North East England [Paperback]

Anthropologists who are employed to change the worlds they are researching find themselves in a potentially contradictory position. Combining the various roles and expectations involved in working with Gypsies and local government at the same time as conducting anthropological research, provides the overall perspective of this study. It is an unusual and effective balance of insightful ethnography and anthropological theory with the perspective of someone employed to carry out applied work. An effective and creative use of metaphor structures the entire work and allows complex ideas to be conveyed in an accessible way. Drawing upon traditional anthropological approaches such as kinship and story telling and engaging with the works of major social theorists such as Weber, Bourdieu and Foucault as well as the work of contemporary anthropologists, this work demonstrates the use of anthropology in understanding changing situations and in deciding how best to manage such situations.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction

• Book Structure
• Applying Anthropology

PART I: THE WASTELAND

Chapter 1. Defining the Field: People and Practice in an Indeterminate Place

• Boundaries and Meeting Places
• Boundaries and Gypsy Identity
• Schematic Understandings
• Framing Interactions
• Becoming a Person  Embodiedness
• Speaking and the Embodiment of Language
• Summation

Chapter 2. Reaching an Understanding  Methods and Analysis

• Boundaries and the Research Process
• People, Culture and Organizations
• Ethnography at Home
• The Search for the Subject Matter
• Self and Other  More Assumed Boundaries
• Engagement in the Field
• Genealogies and Kinship Charts
• Tales of Everyday Life and Conflicting Moral Frames