Public talk by
Antonio Montañés
Antonio Montañés
Gypsy rebellion? A sociocultural analysis of leadership, NGOs and activism among Spanish gitanos
Wednesday, March 11th, 5 - 6.30 pm
Room ACE 2, ground floor, Rowan House, north campus, Maynooth
(SE corner of north campus, between Education House and Auxilia building)
Organised by the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism, Maynooth
Why does a historically
stigmatized and family-oriented ethnic minority that is pushed to the margins of
social life decide to engage in politics and civil society? How do they manage
to carry out such an a priori countercultural task? What kinds of cultural repertories
and narratives bridge this historical gap? What challenges and paradoxes do
they face and what trends do we find?
In this talk, the author
will explore the impact that sociological context (such as extensive
urbanization and the end of the Franco era) and external agents (such as the
Catholic Church and other State-oriented institutions) had on the birth of gitano associationism and its struggle for
institutional recognition. In addition, the author will focus
on the powerful and monopolistic position of NGOs on gitano civil society, the drastic reconfiguration of social
leadership following decades of extreme social changes, and the recent evolution
of gitano collective action, informed
by the emergence of new and critical ethnic autonomous agents (feminism, LGTB).
About the author:
Antonio Montañés is FPI Junior
Researcher at the Department of Sociology V of Complutense University of Madrid and
Marie Curie RA at Maynooth University. He has been appointed a Visiting
Scholar at the University of Saint Andrews (UK), University of Aberdeen (UK) and Universidad
Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain). He has
won several honourable mentions based on excellence in scholarship from the
Autonomous Community of Madrid Higher Education Council and Spanish Government.
Admission free, all welcome
