Vems minne är bevarat? : En postkolonial kvantitativ innehållsanalys av romers representation i svenskt arkivmaterial

Sammanfattning: This Master’s thesis is a quantitative content analysis on the representation of the Romani minority in Swedish archives. The material consists of just over 200 volumes in NAD, the Swedish National Archives Database which makes up 50 percent of the volumes regarding the Romani people. The aim of the thesis is to create a general overview on how the Romani minority is represented in the archives and how this representation varies when the archive holder is a part of the Romani minority or not. The theoretical framework is based on postcolonial theory which can briefly be described as the idea that Western colonial values lingers on and shapes Westerners view on minority cultures as something less developed, more barbaric and something fundamentally different - in the negative sense of the word - from Western culture. Thus the majority culture, in this case the Swedish, tends to - on a structural and systematic level- describe minorities in negative terminology. Hence, the thesis additionally inocorporates a slight theory testing approach as it examines weather the postcolonial theory is applicable on the representation of Romani in the Swedish archive. In order to narrow the theoretical framework the study adopts a subaltern perspective and uses Alan Ashton-Smiths research on how the Romani Culture has been colonized in European societies as well as a variety of views on how to shape a postcolonial archive. These views are merged with how the Romani culture has been colonized in Swedish context, a merger which makes up the basis for the analysis. The thesis confirms the postcolonial viewpoint as it concludes that the Swedish Romani minority is mainly represented in negative terms. It also concludes that the Romani minority on many levels are excluded from Swedish archives as the archive holder tends to be a part of majority culture as this is the case 4 out of 5 times according to this thesis’ findings. The thesis also concludes that this asymmetrical relationship regarding archive holders has a direct correlation with the generally negative representation. When archive holders from the majority culture preserves material about Romani 96 % described the Romani in a negative context and when the arhive holder themselves are Romani this figure drops to a mere 2 %.