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.
By:
Péter Berta
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 165mm,
Spine: 32mm
Weight: 760g
ISBN: 9781487500573
ISBN 10: 1487500572
Series: Anthropological Horizons
Pages: 390
Publication Date: 01 April 2019
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction: Translocal Communities of Practice and Multi-Sited Ethnographies Part I. Negotiating and Materializing Difference and Belonging 1. Symbolic Arenas and Trophies of the Politics of Difference 2. The Gabors’ Prestige Economy: A Translocal, Ethnicized, Informal, and Gendered Consumer Subculture 3. From Antiques to Prestige Objects: De- and Re-contextualizing Commodities from the European Antiques Market 4. Creating Symbolic and Material Patina 5. The Politics of Brokerage: Bazaar-Style Trade and Risk Management 6. Political Face-Work and Transcultural Bricolage/Hybridity: Prestige Objects in Political Discourse Part II. Contesting Consumer Subcultures: Interethnic Trade, Fake Authenticity, and Classification Struggles 7. Gabor Roma, Cărhar Roma, and the European Antiques Market: Contesting Consumer Subcultures 8. Interethnic Trade of Prestige Objects 9. Constructing, Commodifying, and Consuming Fake Authenticity 10. The Politics of Consumption: Classification Struggles, Moral Criticism, and Stereotyping Part III. Multi-Sited Commodity Ethnographies 11. Things-In-Motion: Methodological Fetishism, Multi-Sitedness, and the Biographical Method 12. Prestige Objects, Marriage Politics, and the Manipulation of Nominal Authenticity: The Biography of a Beaker, 2000-2007 13. Proprietary Contest, Business Ethics, and Conflict Management: The Biography of a Roofed Tankard, 1992-2012 Conclusion: The Post-Socialist Consumer Revolution and the Shifting Meanings of Prestige Goods
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.
Reviews for Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma
In this wonderful book, Peter Berta extends an anthropological tradition, with its roots in Malinowski, that reads circulating objects as generating both politics and status, exemplified by a keen look at the poignant situation of the Roma and a brilliant object-centered ethnography of the painful journey of post-socialist societies such as Romania. -- Arjun Appadurai, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University Nuanced, critical and sophisticated in its analysis, Materializing Difference is an exceptional ethnography. Through its fine-grained examination of the entangled trajectories of people and things, it shows how prestige goods are agentive in the social, political and economic lives of the Gabor Roma, and may be said to bring their identity as a distinct community into being. -- Paul Basu, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS, University of London
- Commended for The 2021 Society for Romanian Studies Book Prize 2021 (United States)
- Winner of 2020 ASA Consumers and Consumption Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award 2020 (United States)
