Materializing Difference

Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity Among Romanian Roma

AvPéter Berta

Inbunden, Engelska, 2019

Del i serien Anthropological Horizons

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Beskrivning

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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2019-04-01
Mått:165 x 235 x 32 mm
Vikt:760 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Anthropological Horizons
Antal sidor:390
Förlag:University of Toronto Press
ISBN:9781487500573
Utmärkelser:Commended for The 2021 Society for Romanian Studies Book Prize 2021 (United States)

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Mer om författaren

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.

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction: Translocal Communities of Practice and Multi-Sited EthnographiesPart I. Negotiating and Materializing Difference and Belonging1. Symbolic Arenas and Trophies of the Politics of Difference2. The Gabors’ Prestige Economy: A Translocal, Ethnicized, Informal, and Gendered Consumer Subculture3. From Antiques to Prestige Objects: De- and Re-contextualizing Commodities from the European Antiques Market4. Creating Symbolic and Material Patina5. The Politics of Brokerage: Bazaar-Style Trade and Risk Management6. Political Face-Work and Transcultural Bricolage/Hybridity: Prestige Objects in Political DiscoursePart II. Contesting Consumer Subcultures: Interethnic Trade, Fake Authenticity, and Classification Struggles7. Gabor Roma, Cărhar Roma, and the European Antiques Market: Contesting Consumer Subcultures8. Interethnic Trade of Prestige Objects9. Constructing, Commodifying, and Consuming Fake Authenticity10. The Politics of Consumption: Classification Struggles, Moral Criticism, and StereotypingPart III. Multi-Sited Commodity Ethnographies11. Things-In-Motion: Methodological Fetishism, Multi-Sitedness, and the Biographical Method12. Prestige Objects, Marriage Politics, and the Manipulation of Nominal Authenticity: The Biography of a Beaker, 2000-200713. Proprietary Contest, Business Ethics, and Conflict Management: The Biography of a Roofed Tankard, 1992-2012Conclusion: The Post-Socialist Consumer Revolution and the Shifting Meanings of Prestige Goods