Abstract
As the author of this prize-winning monograph notes, Roma communities are often associated with powerlessness, social stigmatization and chronic poverty, as well as limited access to healthcare, education and social welfare. By contrast, the Gabor Roma, who form the focus of Péter Berta’s book, triumphantly confound all such negative stereotypes. As I recall from my own fieldwork in villages near the Romanian town of Târgu Mureș, many Gabor families live in houses that are conspicuous for their size, extravagant use of marble and scrupulous cleanliness. A testament to their owners’ affluence and business acumen, these houses represent a source of considerable prestige within the Gabor community (p. 32).
Concentrated in parts of Transylvanian Romania, the Gabor have generally coped well with the transition from state socialism, unlike many, perhaps most, other Roma sub-groups in Romania and in Central and Eastern Europe as a whole. Traditionally tinsmiths and coppersmiths, some Gabor currently work as building contractors, while others continue to make a living as tinsmiths. However, most Gabor are now engaged in trade. Enterprising Gabor merchants import carpets and assorted goods from Turkey and other countries, travelling widely in Europe and even Russia to sell their wares (p. 6). Other Gabor focus on the domestic market, selling new and second-hand clothes, shoes, mobile phones and household goods at markets and other outlets within Romania. The Gabor have demonstrated a striking aptitude for adapting to new economic opportunities and shifting market conditions.
Like other Roma communities who have preserved much of their cultural and linguistic heritage, despite repeated assimilationist pressures, the Gabor have a sharply defined sense of their own identity. Thus, Berta records that his ‘Gabor interlocutors liked to refer to themselves as the “aristocracy of the Transylvanian Roma”’ (p. 7). Similarly, a middle-aged Gabor man, to whose village home I was taken by the family’s pastor, told me: ‘if I meet a Gypsy [from another group], I say “good morning”’. More extensive contact with non-Gabor Roma, unless in the context of specific business transactions, is considered unnecessary and even undesirable. Perhaps it is worth noting that the condescension and wariness displayed by my Gabor host, in his attitude towards members of other Roma communities, was mirrored by the pastor’s views concerning the Gabor. As we drove back to Târgu Mureș, the pastor, who belongs to the Seventh Day Adventist Church and who has many Gabor among his flock, told me of his disappointment at having been assigned to a parish with so many ‘Gypsies’.
Berta’s aim, in writing this book, has been to fill a perceived lacuna in the anthropological and sociological literature. As he explains, scholars have ‘devoted very little attention to studying the ideologies and practices through which social, economic, and political inequalities and hierarchies are organized within individual Roma ethnic populations or communities’ (p. 12). Perhaps gender might have been specifically mentioned here. As Alexandra Oprea and other Romani feminists emphasize, many inequalities and hierarchies among the Roma, particularly within traditional communities, are a consequence of oppressively patriarchal cultures. In these communities, women and girls generally enjoy lower status, possess fewer rights and have significantly less autonomy than their male counterparts, while domestic violence continues to be depressingly commonplace, reflecting the highly gendered nature of these Roma sub-groups.
In his interrogation of the cultural norms and value systems of the Gabor, Berta’s focus is on a specific category of ‘prestige objects’ – antique silver beakers and roofed tankards. As Berta explains, these objects continue to play an important, if slowly diminishing, role in Gabor culture. Silver beakers and tankards that meet certain criteria are prized by the Gabor, particularly by older, traditionally minded Gabor men, as ‘a materialization or proof of the authenticity of their Gaborness’ (p. 79), and as symbols of the owners’ wealth and standing within the community (p. 74). These prestige objects, which can change hands among the Gabor for hundreds of thousands of US dollars – far in excess of their ‘objective’ value as antiques – also represent ‘assets or reserves that can be easily converted into cash in the event of an economic crisis’ (p. 79).
In the third and final section of the book, Berta presents two case studies. One concerns the ownership history of a ‘seven-decilitre, richly gilded, trumpet-shaped, footed silver beaker’ (p. 266). The other explores the history of an antique roofed tankard that has been ‘finely fire-gilt both inside and out’, its exterior ‘bear[ing] many meticulously crafted’ decorations (p. 281). These ‘biographies’ give the reader a fascinating insight into the traditional culture and value system of the Gabor Roma and the lengths to which ambitious members of the community will go in order to acquire, or to keep, objects that confer enormous prestige on their owners.
Berta’s book, which has been praised by reviewers for its methodological sophistication, has received the American Sociological Association’s prestigious 2020 Consumers and Consumption Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award. An important and timely contribution to the scholarly literature on the Roma, Berta’s text tells us much about the pluralism and diversity that exist within Europe’s largest and perhaps least well understood ethnic minority, as well as about Roma economic strategies during the communist and post-communist eras. Through its detailed exploration of the Gabor community’s changing value system and its shifting patterns of consumption, the book highlights the cultural and ideological gulf that separates traditionally minded Roma from non-Roma, as well as older, conservative Gabor males from younger Gabor. For the latter, expensive cars and luxurious houses frequently hold greater appeal than antique silver beakers and roofed tankards (pp. 298–301). This elegantly written and absorbing book will be of interest not only to anthropologists and sociologists but also to scholars across a wide range of disciplines, particularly in the social sciences and humanities.