The aim of this chapter is to provide an interpretative framework for scapegoating anti-Roma rhetoric and over-policing throughout Europe, targeting a minority group which is already disproportionally affected by virus. The case study is situated in the context of the American ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, as well as current debates on conceptualising and operationalising race and ethnicity, ethno-racial disparities in the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as various forms of penal populism and nationalism, and shows that the virus exacerbates social inequalities. The chapter begins with outlining the social science context of the inquiry. The points of reference include conceptualising and operationalising race, ethnicity and membership in national groups/communities, in particular in the field of medicine; the discursive and institutional framework of populism, in particular penal populism and penal nationalism; and mapping out four distinct ways in how the virus may affect certain groups incommensurately and lead to systemic and institutional discrimination. This is followed by an overview of the status of Roma in Europe. The subsequent section provides a case study of Hungary for conceptualising the Roma at the intersection of a racial, cultural or socio-economic minority, as well as an overview of populist policing strategies. The final section shows how Roma have been targeted by populist political rhetoric and securitising law enforcement in lieu of the pandemic.

The Social Science Context

The social science context of anti-Roma rhetoric and over-policing members of the Roma community throughout Europe (and Central-Eastern Europe in particular) is manifold. The first section is aimed at dissecting and providing an overview.

Black Lives Matter vs. Roma Lives Matter

There is a significant interest in analysing the recent uprise of the Black Lives Matter movement in lieu of the COVID-19 crisis (McCrudden, 2020), highlighting how institutional discrimination within and beyond law enforcement disproportionately burdens African Americans and augments the impact of the pandemic. Patterns of social marginalisation and institutional discrimination in the criminal justice system and in particular within the operation of the law enforcement machinery are parallel in lieu of the African American and the European Roma community. However, unlike in the case of African Americans, as the fifth section will show, the spread of the COVID-19 virus brought a surge in targeted anti-Roma rhetoric and scapegoating, often coupled with disproportionate law enforcement action enforcing social distancing and lockdown measures.

The present reflections face a challenge: to present historical insights whose trajectories have long been known. The dark spots at issue – colonial, fascist and totalitarian violence – are preserved in historical memory and are activated on a case-by-case basis, for learning occasions or communal commemoration. So what is the point of reconstructing them in the context of a philosophical enquiry?

In the present case, the choice of viewing history is in question. Of all the questions that besiege consciousness in the face of extreme violence, one task needs to be named: Can we transfer the history of the past into a form of narration that comes close to the claim of historical meaning-making? On closer examination, the history of violence breaks down into myriads of ‘small’ but significant stories that are sometimes handed down and sometimes forgotten. From this ground of singular experience, an overarching structure could be conceived that does not encompass all individual episodes, but describes a horizon of the historical in which all individuals can find themselves.

This horizon brings to light something that is novel and remarkable: the narrative competence of a historically enlightened consciousness. This competence includes questions to history that every generation must ask anew: how outbreaks of violence occurred and what explanations one has at hand; how inexplicable and incomprehensible situations of violence could unfold and how they affected the psyche of contemporaries, not least the questioning desire not to repeat the transgressions of the past.

In other words, it is moral concepts of historical consciousness that give validity to the talk of narrative competence. However, one must add: the difficulty is not the complete clarification of the past, but the confrontation with the dark and unfathomable of human relations of violence. One must try to put the past into a narrative form and at the same time acknowledge that these stories are filled with voids. The entanglement in the history of violence and the stuttering of the course of history must be considered at all times.

Nevertheless, it makes sense to link the transitions between the centuries with the claim of historical meaning-making. In the same way that individuals communicate about their past and want to tell their own history, the twentieth century could be described in terms of its history.

My name is Alexa.

First, it was Alexandra, then Sandra, then Sandy. I was born in 1955 and adopted from an orphanage in Greece by Greek American parents, Bess and Jim Maros, around 1959. Those four years in between my birth and adoption are lost to me, and yet they have shaped much of the person I am today. Much of my life has been spent searching for people who looked like me, felt like me, worried as much as me. I longed to belong to a family and a place I did not know. I was always trying to “fit in” and was continually disappointed at how often I did not. Why didn’t I?

In the Beginning

I landed in Chicago, Illinois, not speaking a word of English. My adoptive mother traveled with me from Athens and later told me that on the plane I apparently hit it off with a little Italian boy my age. We didn’t share a language, but enjoyed playing together. I was always glad my mom shared that little tidbit with me. In fact, any little memory she had about my adoption and insights into my young life, prior to coming to America, were always like rare gems, which I diligently pursued, held on to, and hoarded. I always wanted to learn more about who I was before becoming Sandy, the adopted daughter of Bess and Jim, who lived about 40 minutes from downtown Chicago on a tidy little block in one of the first planned suburbs in the United States. It was a place called Park Forest.

On Feeling Different and Early Fears

Being adopted means many different things to people, whether you are an adoptee or not. For me, it meant feeling just a little bit different from day one. I came to a place where I wouldn’t eat the food because it wasn’t familiar, let alone comforting. I didn’t speak the language and found out quickly that kids made fun of you if you were different from them in any way. That went double for not speaking “American.” It won’t surprise you to learn that once I was able to cobble together some English, my parents could hardly squeeze a word of Greek out of me.

Introduction

It is no secret that social interaction was Erving Goffman’s abiding sociological concern. His first major article, “On Face-Work,” opened with the statement: “Every person lives in a world of social encounters, involving him either in face-to-face or mediated contact with other participants” (Goffman 1967, 5). At the end of his first book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman (1959, 254) reminded readers that it addressed not “aspects of theatre that creep into everyday life” but rather “the structure of social encounters […] those entities in social life that come into being whenever persons enter one another’s immediate physical presence.” Subsequent books confirmed that social interaction, conceptualized in his original and highly distinctive manner, lay at the heart of Goffman’s sociological attention. Yet to many readers, the title he gave to his posthumously published Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association (ASA) must have seemed novel: “The Interaction Order” (Goffman 1983). The concept of interaction order built on the widespread recognition of his preoccupation with social interaction while at the same time it added something new. It emphasized how interaction, those practices occurring in “environments in which two or more individuals are physically in one another’s response presence” were socially organized in distinctive ways. The interaction order was a “domain” of inquiry that stood alongside kinds of social order—the economic order, the legal order, and so forth—routinely embraced by the sociological gaze. To the many readers of his eleven books and numerous academic articles, interaction order would have been a new term, though not to those few who were familiar with the concluding chapter of Goffman’s (1953) doctoral dissertation. The overall aim of the Address was “to sum up the case for treating the interaction order as a substantive domain in its own right” (Goffman 1983, 2).

Goffman was a sociologist whose writings attracted fascination and puzzlement in equal measure. For readers seeking meaning and motive in the work of Goffman, his posthumously published “The Interaction Order” (Goffman 1983) exercises a special claim. It was a paper completed in the knowledge that its author might not live to see its publication.

The twentieth century holds many titles that emphasise the extraordinary. It was a century of totalitarianism, but also one of betrayal, an age of extremes and the incomprehensible. Betrayed, that is, at the mercy of unrestrained violence, were not only the people themselves but also, as it were, the idea of the human being. For up to a certain point, one could weigh oneself in an unfounded security of an inner connection between people. As is well known, such certainties were knocked out of hand in that century.

Many situations, many images, motifs and sources can be named for this experience of unbounded violence, which now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, requires new forms of transmission.

History is like a river that carries people along. They were not allowed to shape their own history, but had to live through it as a great experience. Individual events can be taken from this stream of history that makes one think.

One of these stories leads to the so-called odyssey of the St Louis. This was an ordinary passenger ship. The route led from Hamburg to Cuba, later back to Antwerp. The passengers were all German Jews who wanted to escape the threat of the Nazi regime in May 1939. The odyssey initially took the occupants to Havana Bay, but the Cuban government did not allow the ship to dock at the pier due to changes in visa regulations. Only 29 passengers were allowed to disembark. The rest remained at the mercy of the American and Canadian authorities. Roosevelt refused to allow the ship to dock on the American coast in June 1939, and Canadian prime minister King also issued a refusal.

The odyssey ended, despite all efforts to the contrary, in Europe, in Antwerp. From here, the odyssey continued to Belgium, the Netherlands, France, to areas that, as is well known, shortly afterwards became part of the National Socialists’ sphere of control. Few refugees made it to Great Britain, 254 of the passengers died in the Holocaust. The odyssey of the St Louis is one of the stories of the twentieth century that has been captured in film and literature (Ther, 2018; Ogilvie/Miller, 2006).

It has become impossible to ignore the organized mass adoptions of Greek children to the USA during the two decades that followed the end of the Greek Civil War of 1946–1949. This movement must be characterized less as a byproduct of the Greek Civil War and more as a Cold War phenomenon, when Greek agency, let alone children’s agency, was at a historic low—and U.S. demands marked a new postwar high. This mass adoption phenomenon, which involved some 4,000 children, has been contested, denied, or grossly exaggerated. Recently, however, this controversial subject has also been studied and documented.

We have now arrived at that critical junction where the debate can and must broaden and draw in many more interlocutors. The debate must be led by the Greek-born adopted persons themselves, who are finding each other via social media and communicate more frequently and more productively than ever before.

That is why the collection that you have picked up is so important: it is the first anthology of Greek adoption stories written by Greek international adoptees and compiled by the scholar and journalist Mary Cardaras, herself a Greek-to-American adoptee. This book is nothing short of a path-breaking initiative, given that no previous collection of such Greek adoptee stories, written by the people themselves, exists anywhere, whether in Greece or in the English-speaking world. These stories then strike home the experience of international adoption, whose impact is lifelong but is not properly measured, let alone acknowledged.

Remarkably, more than half a century after the voyage of no return, the voices of the adoptees who “lived it,” as the Greeks would say, have yet to be heard. But times have changed dramatically since 1949, and the voices of international adoptees from anywhere living just about everywhere have only grown louder.

Secularization theory once held paradigmatic status in the study of religion and modernity—a prominence due in part to the sophistication with which it was articulated by the eminent sociologist Peter L. Berger. But in one of the most famous scholarly turnabouts in academic history, in the 1990s, Berger renounced his adherence to secularization theory and began developing an argument that a theory of pluralization should decisively displace secularization theory as the paradigm for understanding religion. Berger laid out the contours of this theory in a number of places, including the 2012 Society article “Further Thoughts on Religion and Modernity,” and in his 2014 book, The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age. The theory is bold and important, not only because of the empirical claims it makes about religious resilience, but because of its normative dimensions and implications.

The Empirical Claim

Contra secularization theory, Berger (2012, 313) argued that “modernity does not necessarily produce a decline of religion.” However, modernity “does necessarily produce a deepening process of pluralization—a historically unprecedented situation in which more and more people live amid competing beliefs, values, and lifestyles.” Berger further specified the modern situation vis-à-vis religion as consisting of two pluralisms. By two pluralisms Berger meant that (1) there is increasing diversity of religious communities living in the same society, and (2) there is at the same time a complex and critically important interaction between these religious communities and a powerful secular discourse—“a default secular discourse [that] co-exists with a plurality of religious discourses, both in society and in consciousness.”

The Normative Dimension

The outcome of successfully managed pluralism is, according to Berger (2014, 1), “a social situation in which people with different ethnicities, worldviews, and moralities live together peacefully and interact with each other amicably.”

In this chapter, I offer reflections on the important implications and enduring questions that Berger’s pluralist thought suggests vis-à-vis the American sociopolitical, religious, and legal experience. The American case is inevitably an important one in any discussion of modernization, religion, secularization, and pluralization. It was America, after all, that was always the most obvious problem for secularization theory.

County Galway

Ardrahan, Kilmacduagh Diocese

Commentary

The Catholic parish of Ardrahan was in Kilmacduagh diocese at the time of the Death Census. The Catholic parish was coextensive with the civil parish of the same name. Its population was reported in the statutory censuses at 3,805 in 1831, and 4,191 in 1841 (about 1,000 more than the 3,200 inhabitants that Revd Quin estimated for his parish in 1847). This implies a rate of increase of about 1 per cent per year between 1831 and 1841. In 1841, 44 per cent of the housing was classified as fourth class and the female illiteracy rate was 81 per cent. These two measures of poverty and disadvantage are included in this and later commentaries to give a rough indication of living standards in the localities. It should be noted, however, that it is not always possible to map data precisely from civil parishes, as in the population censuses, on to Catholic parishes. This qualification is unlikely to make much difference in practice to the patterns of literacy or housing quality locally.

Patrick Bodkin Quin had long-standing connections with Ardrahan. Arriving from Peterswell parish, he had been parish priest of Ardrahan from at least as early as 1834, when he is recorded as contributing £1 to the O’Connell annuity that year. He farmed locally, was a supporter of the Repeal Association, was a prominent advocate of Catholic rights, and was a member of the Ardrahan Relief Committee during Black ‘47, when he signed a memorial to the Lord Lieutenant protesting at the temporary termination of Public Works (the memorial is replicated below). It seems reasonable, therefore, to infer that his knowledge of the locality was extensive, and he was a prime candidate to report on Famine deaths in the area. Quin did not live long beyond the submission of his report, for in early September 1847 the Galway Mercury announced his death:

We sincerely regret to be obliged to state, that another of the venerated Priesthood of Ireland has fallen a victim to that most dreadful malady, fever, and yielded up his soul into the hands of his Creator, on the morning of Sunday last [29 August].

Peter Berger wrote about a remarkable range of subjects in the course of his long career. But there were some key themes to which he returned time and again, with variations and refinements. One of those themes is the inevitability of what he called “plurality,” that is the existence of multiple religions and worldviews in modern, liberal societies, and the challenges they posed not only to religious institutions but to social and political ones as well. He explained why the dynamics of modern, liberal society created an imperative to choose. Plurality and choice generated some characteristic challenges to institutions and characteristic dilemmas for the individual. Berger explored these challenges and dilemmas with great perspicacity during the five decades that separated his early The Precarious Vision: A Sociologist Looks at Social Fictions and Christian Faith (1961) from his late In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions without Becoming a Fanatic (2009, written with his Dutch colleague, Anton Zijderveld) and The Many Altars of Modernity: Toward a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age (2014). Berger’s analyses of these processes and dilemmas remain as insightful as when he first formulated them over half a century ago. They are arguably more relevant than ever for understanding contemporary cultural and political dynamics.

One of the key conceptual coinages with which Berger explored these issues was his notion of “plausibility structures.” The idea, in a nutshell, is this: to the extent that knowledge is socially constructed or conditioned, what counts as plausible “knowledge” depends on social context. A key function of institutions such as religions, political parties, and professional milieus is to render certain ideas into premises, that is, to make them taken for granted, and to render other ideas inadmissible or unthinkable. One of Berger’s favorite examples was the notion of “natural law,” which is taken for granted as true, rational, and universal in Roman Catholic circles, but is often regarded with skepticism outside of such circles. (Berger often repeated this example, and many others, across the decades.

Introduction

Erving Goffman wrote relatively little about his own methods of work (Manning 1992, 142; Becker 2003, 660; Jacobsen and Kristiansen 2015, 41), and virtually nothing about social research methodology more generally, at one point suggesting that this could only amount to “rationalizations” (Goffman 1989, 124). He seems to have rejected the idea that fieldwork relied on specialized techniques, as well as discussion of “paradigms” ( Goffman 1981b; Verhoeven 1993). Nevertheless, he did provide a fairly detailed account of his Shetland Islands’ fieldwork in his PhD dissertation (Goffman 1953a) and offered some indications about his orientation in two interviews (Verhoeven 1983; Winkin 1984), as well as replying to criticism at one point (Denzin and Keller 1981; Goffman 1981b). There was at least one other occasion when he was induced to talk publicly about method, and what he said was secretly recorded and published after his death (Goffman 1989). A reasonably clear sense of his distinctive orientation can be gleaned from these sources, as well as from his substantive work; though they leave some significant issues unresolved (Manning 1992, chapter 7; Jacobsen and Kristiansen 2015; Manning 2016).

Of course, Goffman’s reluctance to talk about methodology has not stopped commentators writing about this aspect of his work. Indeed, while what he produced has been widely admired, his methods have often been criticized (see Williams 1988). These criticisms have varied considerably in character, coming from diverse directions: from those appealing to a traditional conception of the form ethnographies should take; from commentators relying on a positivistic conception of science; from proponents of grounded theory; and from conversation analysts. This reflects the fact that Goffman’s work highlights significant methodological tensions within social science, ones that are (if anything) even more challenging today than they were at the time he was writing.

In this chapter, we revisit the issue of Goffman’s methods, beginning with a look at the sorts of data he employed, and the uses to which he put these— in particular, the pursuit of comparative analysis to identify formal features in the social organization of interpersonal interaction.

Learning Objectives

• • Learn the importance of alternatives in negotiation

• • Understand the importance of listening

• • Explore techniques for effective listening

• • Learn about the importance of power and how to enhance it

• • Understand how to say “No” in a productive way

Opening Profile: Walmart Vendors

Walmart vendors are trained to treat their vendors in a variety of ways, depending on where you fit in their plan. This case shares the story of a vendor called Sarah who negotiated a win-win outcome with Walmart. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, sold $514.4 billion worth of goods in 2019. A partnership with Walmart is either the Holy Grail or the kiss of death, given the organization’s single-minded focus on EDLP (everyday low pricing) and its ability to make or break suppliers. However, one’s perspective may make a difference.

Sarah Talley (owner of Frey Farms) acquired a deep understanding of the Walmart culture while finding “new money” in the supply chain through innovative tactics.

For example, Frey Farms used school buses ($1,500 each) instead of tractors ($12,000 each) as a cheaper and faster way to transport melons to the warehouse.

Talley also was skillful at negotiating a coveted co-management supplier agreement with Walmart, showing how Frey Farms could share the responsibility of managing inventory levels and sales and ultimately save customers’ money while improving their own margins.

Sarah Talley’s key negotiation principles:

When you have a problem, when there’s something you engage in with Walmart that requires agreement so that it becomes a negotiation, the first advice is to think in partnership terms and really focus on a common goal, for example, getting costs out and asking questions. Don’t make demands or statements. Rather ask if you can do this better. If the relationship with Walmart is truly a partnership, negotiation to resolve differences should focus on long-term mutual partnership gains.

Don’t spend time griping. Be problem solvers instead. Approach Walmart by saying, “Let’s work together and drive costs down and product it so much cheaper you don’t have to replace me because if you work with me I could do it better.”

Introduction: New Pedagogy for Digital Human Subjects Research

Ethics in human subjects research, whether in medical or social sciences, has been a key topic in researchers’ training for decades in the United States and United Kingdom (UK). In the United States, the history of IRBs in evaluating and overseeing the conduct of ethical human subjects research has its roots in legislation. The 1974 National Research Act was signed into law after a series of congressional hearings on human subjects research and gained greater momentum in response to the Tuskegee syphilis study (Chadwick, 1997). In the UK the processes have been more decentralised with research ethics committees distributed across research sectors and universities, but since the early 2000s there have been greater efforts to develop national standards for both biomedical and social science human subjects research in the UK. While these standards are world leading, world-leading, and many developing countries are adopting their own human subjects research frameworks based on them, the advent of widespread digital data collection presents new challenges for researchers and educators to address in ethics and research protocol pedagogy. This is especially true when research is being done in and with vulnerable subjects in developing countries.

How we address this question has implications for general society as well as academic research. Complex power relations emerge in this space between a university’s IRB’s conception of ethical human subjects research and a technology’s terms of use, including those between the researcher and participant, and the researcher and software company. As the nature of research adapts and incorporates technological changes, the IRB will increasingly be the facility that mediates the power of different actors in a digital human subjects research process to make sure research participants are protected.

Increasingly, the interface between digital research and peoples’ daily online behaviour is blurring. When we, for example, use Twitter, it is possible that this mundane activity is producing data that can be used by a researcher. This type of relationship would be governed by a platform’s terms of use, to which a researcher who uses Twitter or social media data must conform.

Learning Objectives

• • To understand what is culture and how does it impact negotiations

• • Evaluate the differential impact of cross-cultural negotiations on outcomes

• • Understand the role of communication in negotiations

• • Get familiar with self-serving biases in cross-cultural negotiations

• • Evaluate how emotions shape outcomes of negotiations

Opening Profile: The Free Trade Agreement between Canada and United States

On October 3, 1987, the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was signed by representatives of Canada and the United States after two strenuous years of intense negotiations. Canada could be described as a medium-sized economy. Its population is one-tenth the size of the United States, which is considered an economic superpower in comparison. More than 75 percent of its exports go to the United States making the United States Canada’s prime trading partner. By contrast, the United States was exporting less than 20 percent of its products to Canada.

A Royal Commission concluded that Canada’s only means to achieve this stability was to engage in an open free trade partnership with the United States.

The problem was that the United States wasn’t especially interested in such a free trade partnership agreement.

The first step that Canada took was in the form of preparation by developing a succinct plan. A chief negotiator, Simon Reisman, was appointed by the Canadian prime minister himself. He established an ad-hoc organization called the trade negotiations office which reported directly to the Canadian Government Cabinet and had access to the highest levels of bureaucracy. It established in no uncertain terms their negotiation goals and objectives which included a strong dispute resolution mechanism that the Canadians felt was vitally important to their success.

In contrast, the United States did not consider the FTA to be especially important and let Canada do all the initial work. The only reason why the US Congress even considered the FTA proposal was that they liked the idea of a bilateral approach to trade and were tired of the previous mechanism that failed to settle a host of trade dispute irritants between the two countries known as GATT.

Strong differences in interests and approaches dogged the negotiations.

The botanical image that so transfixed the Irish public in the autumn-winter of 1845 was that of the putrefying tuber. The sense of foreboding and despair this inspired was captured in a contemporary oil painting – ‘The discovery of the Potato Blight’ – by the Cork-born artist, Daniel McDonald (1821–53). It has graced the cover of several histories of the Irish Famine. Yet the image of the mess of potatoes was symptomatic of a deeper malaise, of a social system that accommodated runaway population increase, leaving its people vulnerable to harvest failure. George Nicholls’ hastily compiled reports on a Poor Law for Ireland in 1838 spoke of a ‘reckless disregard of the future’. Weak landlordism, which might be seen as a consequence, though not a necessary consequence of seventeenth-century colonialism, had accepted or acquiesced in the proliferation of cottier and labouring households, most notably in mountainous localities and west of the Shannon. Strong landlordism would have meant a more interventionist ruling class exercising tighter control over household formation, accompanied by periodic evictions of squatters and smallholders as market conditions changed. To take a nearby comparator, this would have meant a tenurial regime more akin to that of Scotland where landlords were vigilant in controlling access to land and housing. This had a ruthless edge, so the Scottish historical alternative had its downside, particularly in the shorter term. .