Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
In my city I was known, also among people of my age, because I had
built a new house, I was working nearby… I was like… happy…
In his speech, Rexhi put himself at the centre of the narration: he was discussing
political events of the past, but related them to his life, work and
family, following the evolution of his own life without the need for questions.
Not all interviewees could express themselves so easily, however,
and there seemed to be a generational difference in conversation, at least
among the Romany. Adult women and men were able to construct a rigidly
linear narrative with which they were able to follow their own discourse
and goals (also adding an element which seemed to be a degree of selfreflection).
Members of the youngest generation, on the other hand,
expressed themselves mainly through a fragmented narration, with short
answers to the questions asked of them, requiring frequent intervention.
There are two main reasons that might account for this difference, both of
which require further investigation. A first reason might be found in the
fundamental transformations in Kosovar Roma culture, given the stimuli
of mass media communications, of migration and of the so-called “global
culture”. Another possible explanation is the specific way in which the
younger people had experienced the conflicts of the last few years.
The first point leads us to what has been called the “uniformization of cultural
consumption” (Liégeois, 1994: 103), a change mostly due to the
influence of television. In all of my interviews with Roma subjects, watching
satellite television was listed as a common pastime. While these pages
are insufficient to analyse this important detail, some proposals might be
made. It might be said, first, that the spread of satellite television introduces
visual images in cultures that have traditionally relied on verbal
communication. A change in narration is therefore one obvious consequence
of this novelty. These changes remind us of the comparison that
oral historians have made in Italy, between the generation of 1968, and the
generation which lived to see the reign of fascism. In this case, according
to studies, the narrative quality of the younger generation was much more
fragmented, due to factors such as changes in education, school, and the
arrival of visual media. Further, the images appearing on the televisions of
these younger Romany are not produced within their culture, but from the
exterior (most common were the German, Italian and Turkish programmes).
We do not know of any programme created, even in part, by
any Rom or Romany. Unbalanced power relationships between the
Romany and the world thus have re-emerged once again, only this time,
the challenge has travelled to the global arena of mass communication.
In his narrative Lytfi seemed to compile all of these processes, releasing
his words of self-representation without room for concern or resistance:
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