The name is absent

Appendix 1

times of celebration, while many inhabitants of the compound are intoxicated, there are
always a number of others who are sober and very excited to discuss the event.

In sum, the productive research relationship I enjoy with the Roma would not
have been possible without my prior experience at the camp, nor would MERIA be able
to operate successfully. MERIA has allowed me to do fieldwork with both informal and
less accessible formal Greek consultants while providing a solution for the major
difficulties facing anthropologists conducting research among Greek Roma: it has
allowed Roma a venue where they can voice and seek solutions to the problems they face
every day; MERIA has allowed me the space to both avoid Roma resistance strategies
based on my prior relationship, and to study them and overcome them as they arise
occasionally based on the organization's credentials and my experience; and finally
MERIA has neutralized the censure and exclusion one typically experiences from the
mainstream Athens population when they discover one works also with Roma. Yet in
addition to these benefits, running this organization has provided another advantage that I
wish to consider presently.

Accessing and Understanding Codes, Flows, and Change in the Field

MERIA has provided a platform from where I can examine specific issues from a
perspective perhaps unavailable to many other researchers. Recall the concept of poetics;
that is, studying local meaning through close examination of narrative and performance
(Herzfeld 1988: xv, 10). Narrative and performance are observable phenomena, but how
does one become participatory at the level of unobservable phenomena? How can
participant observation be reconceived so that one may study the myriad forces shaping

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