Who Are Our Gypsy Neighbors? A Metamodern Reassessment

Abstract

This essay revisits and substantially expands the author’s 1972 pamphlet “Who Are Our Gypsy Neighbors?” originally prepared for the Los Angeles
County Commission on Human Relations. Adopting a metamodern scholarly stance — one that oscillates between modernist sincerity and
postmodern self-awareness — the reassessment situates more than half a century of Romani-American scholarship within evolving frameworks of
methodology, ethics, and self-representation. It offers a comparative intellectual portrait of four foundational scholars — David J. Nemeth, Matt and
Sheila Salo, Anne Sutherland, and Marlene Sway — whose fieldwork-based monographs defined the contours of American Romani studies between
the 1970s and 1990s. It then integrates Carol Miller’s memoir-ethnography Lola’s Luck (2009) as a bridge toward more reflexive and intimate modes
of ethnographic practice. The essay concludes by arguing for a metamodern Romani studies that centers Romani voices, holds sincerity and critique
in productive tension, and treats scholarly engagement as an ongoing conversation rather than a settled description.