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Irrespective of the level of analysis, identity remains a vague concept, slippery, and insufficiently elaborated and defined. Be it individual or collective, ethnical or social, local or general, regional (e.g. the EU) or global, identity is a recurrent subject in political debates. Situated on the edge of history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and psychology it increasingly becomes a leading paradigm in the area of social sciences. Starting from the broader European perspective

Literary and cultural images, once considered marginal to the main currents of political and institutional development in southeastern Europe, have been accorded much greater importance by scholars in recent years. In this volume Alex Drace-Francis brings together over fifteen years of work on the topic of representations of Romania and Romanians. Crossing the East-West divide, the book studies both external images of the country and people, and domestically-generated representations of Europe and 'the West'. It draws on material in a wide range of languages and offers a long-term view, providing a nuanced and historically-grounded contribution to the lively debates over Balkanism, Orientalism and identities in Romania and in Europe as a whole.

The traditions of invention. Representations of the Romanian peasant from ancient stereotype to modern symbol -- A provincial imperialist and a curious account of Wallachia: Ignaz von Born -- "At ten minutes past two, I gazed ecstatically on both lighthouses": -- Time, self and object in early Romanian travel texts -- "Like a member of a free nation, he spoke without shame": foreign travellers as a trope in Romanian cultural tradition -- Dinicu Golescu's Account of my travels (1826): Eurotopia as manifesto -- National ideology between lyrics and metaphysics: the political writings of Mihai Eminescu -- Ion Luca Caragiale: the tall tale of the Romanian nation -- Eugen Ionescu's Selves, 1934-60 -- Beyond the land of green plums: Romanian language and culture in Herta -- Muller's work -- Sex, lies and stereotypes: images of Romania in British literature 1945-2000 -- Paradoxes of occidentalism: on travel and travel writing in Ceausescu's Romania

This article reports on findings from the first stage of a longer study of the realities of offending in Romania, which has the highest incarceration rate in Europe. The main goals of the research were to make an accurate estimate of the number of Rroma (Gypsy) men in Romanian prisons and to identify their socio‐cultural characteristics and criminality. The information from this study will be used to help facilitate the work of the developing probation service in Romania and the social integration of Rroma offenders. It should also inform a crime reduction strategy in Romania and hopefully, the social inclusion policies of the European Commission, Romania and its accession neighbours all having large Rroma communities.