Adriana Nadia Helbig

This project theorizes the sonic worlds of impoverished Roma whose pictures fill development reports. It vocalizes their modes of being and elucidates the lived experiences of the silenced poor. Specifically, this project addresses the processes through which Roma communities engage with discourses of civil society as promoted via networks of development aid. It analyzes the repercussions of employing ethnicity as the main criteria for the distribution of development aid and shows that the “minorization” of specific segments of the population within development discourse encourages stratification within minority groups. This project contributes to broader understandings of class formation in formerly classless societies and analyzes the ways neoliberal processes shape minority identities in emerging democracies.