University of Toronto Press Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma (Anthropological Horizons)

How do objects mediate human relationships, and possess their own social and political agency? What role does material culture – such as prestige consumption as well as commodity aesthetics, biographies, and ownership histories – play in the production of social and political identities, differences, and hierarchies? How do (informal) consumer subcultures of collectors organize and manage themselves? Drawing on theories from anthropology and sociology, specifically material culture, consumption, museum, ethnicity, and post-socialist studies, Materializing Difference addresses these questions via analysis of the practices and ideologies connected to Gabor Roma beakers and roofed tankards made of antique silver. The consumer subculture organized around these objects – defined as ethnicized and gendered prestige goods by the Gabor Roma living in Romania – is a contemporary, second-hand culture based on patina-oriented consumption. Materializing Difference reveals the inner dynamics of the complex relationships and interactions between objects (silver beakers and roofed tankards) and subjects (Romanian Roma) and investigates how these relationships and interactions contribute to the construction, materialization, and reformulation of social, economic, and political identities, boundaries, and differences. It also discusses how, after 1989, the political transformation in Romania led to the emergence of a new, post-socialist consumer sensitivity among the Gabor Roma, and how this sensitivity reshaped the pre-regime-change patterns, meanings, and value preferences of prestige consumption. Review "This is a welcome publication and should be read by scholars beyond Romani studies, such as those interested in consumption and notions of value in contemporary Europe. It provides a case study of a unique prestige economy and reveals the creativity through which Roma forge their place among the non-Roma in Eastern Europe." - Martin Fotta - Europe Now Journal, April 2020 "Materializing Difference highlights how objects function as family heirlooms, as markers of status, and, as markers of identity. Pushing against an all-too-common narrative of Roma victimhood and poverty, Berta chronicles the financial exchanges that mark the sale and purchase of such objects whose prices range from two hundred thousand to 1.2 million USD. Drawing the readers deep into the world of Roma patriarchal norms, Berta sheds light on complex financial negotiations and power differentials among object owners, potential buyers, sellers, and transaction intermediaries." - Adriana Helbig - Slavic Review About the Author Péter Berta is an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, a Visiting Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London, and a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.