O epistemološki izbiri: Gypsy Studies kot slovenska državotvorna veda

Analysing Slovenian sociological production of knowledge about the Romani people, the article problematises the question of epistemological choice in studying social reality. These studies can serve as a case study in examining the complex yet systematised relationship between the changes in social reality and the academic discourse. As an object of inquiry, the Romani people have been introduced in the Slovenian academic discourse after Slovenia’s independence and particularly during the period of the accession to the European Union, when Romani people have been granted the status of an ethnic minority. The prevailing studies, which are primarily based in cultural studies, call, together with minority law, for an improvement of the situation of Romani communities, starting with ending discrimination. However, the discourse on the Romani people as an underprivileged minority cannot reflect on the presuppositions of its own practice. Hence, by identifying the normative discourse of the nation-state with the analytical discourse, and by approaching ethnic groups as givens, it works against the very position that it tries to defend; by unknowingly supporting neoliberal policies, it contributes to the reproduction of the existent relations of inequality