Abstract
Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma is a masterful study of consumer culture, ethnicity, and economic transformation among the Gabor Roma ethnic group in post-socialist Romania. Author Péter Berta draws on two decades of ethnographic research spanning distinct Gabor Roma settlements, villages settled by the Cărhar Roma, and occasional forays into Hungarian antiques markets. Building on Rogers Brubaker’s processual understanding of ethnicity, the concept of “community of practice,” and seminal work in economic anthropology by Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff, this book provides a multidimensional view of Gabor Roma marital alliances, status dynamics, consumer culture, interethnic contact, and economic transformation.
The author focuses on how antique silver beakers and roofed tankards mediate, shape, and transform social relationships among the Gabor Roma as well as the Cărhar Roma, with whom the Gabor frequently trade. Berta shows that among Roma men, silver beakers (and to a lesser extent tankards) are prized possessions that help cement political and social influence, shape marital alliances, and store economic value. Cultural expectations drive the acquisition, transfer through inheritance, and purchase of these decorative items. Silver objects serve as media through which the Gabor acquire power, status, and identity; reinforce Gabor identity across time; and crystallize distinct patterns of pricing, aesthetics, and cultural values between the Gabor, Cărhar, and non-Roma populations.
The book is divided into three sections, the first of which includes six chapters focused on the meanings and uses of silver objects, trade practices, and political discourse among the Roma. Chapter One details the Gabor focus on patrilines as a source of status, the use of family alliances via arranged marriages to improve a family’s status, and ethical standards designed to maintain social harmony amid intense status competition.
Chapter Two explores silver objects’ transfer through inheritance and sale as a result of their “patina-based” prestige. The Gabors price these objects based on the prestige of previous owners and signs of wear. Prices among the Gabor are many times higher than these items’ cost in auctions or antiques markets. Gabor men prefer to retain these objects within the family. While these items fetch a very high price among the Gabor, most owners prefer to keep them because their sale is a source of shame. Chapter Three focuses on how Gabor Roma “decontextualize” beakers and tankards acquired through antiques markets or churches by giving them individual names, favoring different aesthetic characteristics than those emphasized in art history or auctions, and creating a Gabor ownership history for these objects.
Chapter Four expands on the Gabors’ preferred aesthetic attributes for beakers and tankards, including decorations (flowers, animals, monarchs), size (smaller than one liter), shape, and signs of wear. Chapter Five focuses on Gabors’ use of brokers to buy and sell silver items to help determine the object’s market value, authenticity, current market conditions, and to advocate on the buyer’s or seller’s behalf. Brokers’ culturally specific knowledge of the Gabor, negotiating skills, reputation, and understanding of market conditions allow them to reduce market uncertainty and risk for clients. Chapter Six focuses on public political speech. The Gabor use “linguistic indirectness” to avoid socially disapproved boasting while making speeches or singing songs at public events. Speakers may use the metaphor of “horses” to offer oblique reference to silver objects they acquired. Linguistic indirectness serves to maintain social harmony amid status competition.
Part Two includes four chapters focused on interethnic trade. Chapter Seven highlights different aesthetic values and practices among art historians and antiques dealers, Gabor Roma, and Cărhar Roma. Art historians and antiques dealers value beakers’ and tankards’ material properties but do share Gabor aesthetic preferences. Additionally. they sell these items at much lower prices than do the Gabor. In contrast to the Gabor, who value material patina (physical features and decorations) and symbolic patina (prestige based on Gabor ownership history), the Cărhar emphasize an object’s physical attributes. Additionally, they prefer beakers and tankards that are larger and less ornately decorated than do the Gabor. However, Cărhar men will pay a hefty price for an object based on its market value among the Gabor, which, in turn, depends on its symbolic patina. Unlike the Gabor, the Cărhar also deposit silver objects as a “security” with the family of their daughter’s fiancée as part of some marital alliances, which may lead to inter-family disputes.
Chapter Eight describes Gabor men’s sale of silver beakers and tankards to Cărhar men. Gabor owners may face criticism within their community for parting with a silver object, sales among the Gabor may lead to long-term disputes and entanglements, some objects’ material features are more appealing to the Cărhar, and Gabor men have acquired consumer goods like cars and homes since the 1989 economic transition and thus may need to liquidate their assets to resolve financial difficulties. Consequently, silver objects tend to flow from Gabor to Cărhar individuals.
Chapter Nine describe Gabor traders’ fraudulent efforts to sell objects purchased in non-Roma antiques markets at a premium to Cărhar buyers and creditors as well as non-Roma creditors. These traders attempt to hide their ethnic identity when purchasing these goods at antiques markets (as sellers know the market value of these goods among the Gabor) and emphasize their ethnic identity when they alter these goods (making them look old or worn) as well as invent a Gabor ownership history to inflate their sale price to Cărhar or non-Roma buyers.
The final chapter in this section explores the mutual stereotypes between Gabor and Cărhar based on their consumer behavior. The Gabors view themselves as cosmopolitan because they purchase western goods and see Cărhars as backward because they live more austere lives, earn money by begging, and prize silver objects above other consumer goods. In contrast, the Cărhars see themselves as purists who focus on silver objects to cement their ethnic identity and view the Gabor as careless spenders who are obsessed with meaningless luxuries. These mutual stereotypes are efforts to manage shame and stigma as the Gabor regret having to sell silver objects and the Cărhar seek to minimize stigma from the non-Roma majority regarding their austere lifestyle.
The third section includes three chapters focused on the movement of silver objects across families and communities and the conclusion examining how prestige object trade has changed since Romania’s 1989 market opening. Chapter Eleven revisits Arjun Appadurai’s focus on “things-in-motion” as a means of studying how objects travel across communities and acquire meaning in the process. The author suggests that “object biographies” allow researchers to see how the movement of objects shapes processes of identity construction. Such research is best deployed through George Marcus’s idea of “multi-sited ethnography,” which allows researchers to follow the paths of people and objects.
Chapters Twelve and Thirteen are case studies of a single beaker and tankard, respectively, as they move between owners and creditors. Each case study offers a dizzying portrait of how these objects are entangled in relationships and disputes between families and business partners, the intense competition for control over these prized objects, and the cultural and ethical considerations governing transactions.
The conclusion argues that since 1989, there has been a generational shift in the appreciation of silver beakers and tankards. Younger adults seek status through other commodities like homes and cars, thus restricting resources available to purchase expensive silver objects. This shift to “western consumerism” reflects the changing economic context resulting from Romania’s 1989 market opening. Under communism, the Gabor could store value in these objects in the context of a frequently devalued currency; and because they are small and portable, they could be easily hidden so that authorities would not confiscate them (they are inconspicuous, in contrast to homes). Given the market opening, it is much easier to earn money and acquire western consumer goods as silver objects are in short supply and extremely expensive (their value among the Gabor and Cărhar ranges from USD $10,000 to $1.2 million). Nonetheless, wealthier, older Gabor continue to value and seek to acquire these prestige objects.
Throughout this theoretically informed, empirically rich study, Berta offers a portrait of a unique consumer subculture in which ownership, exchange, and discourses about prestige objects serve to reproduce and reinforce ethnic identity, largely in parallel to the non-Roma economy. The Gabor Romas’ distinctive aesthetic values, cultural norms governing ownership and exchange, and business ethics beautifully illustrate the embeddedness of economic life in societies and cultures. Students of consumer culture, economic sociology, economic and cultural anthropology, and ethnicity have much to learn from this unique study.