Introduction -- The eternal quest for roots -- From belly dancers to thieves -- Uncrossable boundaries? -- Identity negotiation : ignoring, passing, changing, and exchanging -- Underground world : crime in the blood and secret language -- Matriarchy and bride price : Ghagar traditions? -- Conclusions : the fragmented construction of Egyptians gypsies
Summary
In Gypsies in Contemporary Egypt sociologist Alexandra Parrs draws on two years of fieldwork to explore how Dom identities are constructed, negotiated, and contested in the specifically Egyptian national context. With an eye to the pitfalls and evolution of scholarly work on the vastly more studied European Roma, she traces the scattered representations of Egyptian Dom, from accounts of them by nineteenth-century European Orientalists to their portrayal in Egyptian cinema as belly dancers in the 1950s and beggars and thieves more recently
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-223) and index
