Péter Berta's Materializing Difference makes a significant contribution to our understandings of the ontology of things. Berta illustrates how antique silver beakers and roofed tankards imbue object owners in Gabor Roma communities in Transylvania, Romania with community power and prestige. Steeped in nuanced ethnographic analysis, 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.
Precious metals among a historically nomadic people were once sought for their portability, lending assurance in terms of a possession that can be traded in times of need. Materializing Difference offers an ethnographic history of this tradition and deftly tracks the changing discourse on such objects and their significance in post-socialist market economies.
The book tells the story in three parts. “Part One: Negotiating and Materializing Difference and Belonging” lays the groundwork for understanding the symbolic aspects of the Gabors’ prestige economy. In-depth fieldwork offers a richness of detail regarding Gabor patriarchal kinship structures, a key insight into broader understandings of the gendered (male) prestige building through object ownership. 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. Berta notes that the value of such objects is presently in a state of flux because younger Gabor Roma are pushing back against investing in silver antique objects, preferring to spend their money on more practical items like houses and cars.
Part Two, “Contesting Consumer Subcultures: Interethnic Trade, Fake Authenticity, and Classification Struggles” offers an ethnographic account of commodity exchange between Gabor Roma and the Cárhar Roma. Berta analyzes the creation of symbolic and material value of beakers and roofed tankards through their association with previous owners. He chronicles local beliefs regarding objects as an extension of the self. The antique silver objects are imbued with an identity that is steeped in the history of previous owners. This prestige is then imparted to the new owner and reflected in the sale price. Prestige-object aesthetics also come into play particularly as it relates to the condition, size and shape of the object, the age and quality of the silver, and the decorations. Berta explains that the sale of such objects is brokered through a cenzar, an entrepreneur, who coordinates sale transactions, the majority of which take place between Gabor and Cárhar Roma.
Since the book is written primarily from the point of view of Gabor Roma, it is not explicitly clear what value such silver antiquities have among the Cárhar, especially when we consider that both Gabor and Cárhar are experiencing similar post-socialist material-conscious shifts and Gabor youths are opting to not engage in silver antiquities purchases. Berta acknowledges that such deals are steeped in uncertainty due to difficulties in price conversions from purchases made in the 1960s and 70s in socialist Romania with the leu, the fluctuating Euro, and the USD, as well as because of inflation in Romania's post-socialist market economy. He states that it is acceptable to sell a beaker or tankard at a price much higher than its value, effectively misleading the seller into spending more money on the object than it is worth. He clarifies that this is most common in inter-ethnic sales and the groups prefer to keep the prestige objects in their communities. As Gabor Roma tend to use Cárhar Roma creditors to take out loans to pay for their antique silver purchases, however, the framework of money, commodity exchange, and trust frames the interactions between both groups.
Berta draws on extensive materials to reiterate the central importance of the beakers and tankards among the Gabor Roma. He notes that Hungarian-language songs about horses serve as metaphors for the descriptions of antique silver objects. The borrowing of songs from outside Gabor Roma communities to describe internal political power and prestige offers insights into the cultural processes through which objects are imbued with the type of significance that provides their owners with such sought-after status and power. Perhaps the most significant part of the book is “Part Three: Multi-Sited Commodity Ethnographies,” which offers a theoretically-dense and ethnographically-thick description of the “post-socialist careers of beaker and tankard” (265). The author uses the term “multi-sited commodity ethnography” to describe his “methodological focus on tracking commodities-in-motion and their often transnational and transcultural—biographies or social lives” (265). Titled, “The Biography of a Beaker, 2000–2007” and “The Biography of a Roofed Tankard, 1992–2012,” Part Three's key chapters steep us in the details of the processes of value assessment, loan application, credit approval, and sale of the antique silver objects. The captivating stories lend insights into the deeply-significant histories of such objects for their owners, their families, and their communities. They also provide some context for present-day object-focused material(ist) post-socialist displays of status as they relate to Roma masculine identity, status, and political power. Berta provides new ways of analyzing such identity processes and offers a critical framework for analyzing networks of exchange. The complexities of exchange, particularly in light of changing economic contexts, shows that, on the one hand, Gabor elders are fearful that their economies of prestige surrounding antique silver objects will fall by the wayside with the new generations. On the other hand, they are relieved to sell their antique silver objects to Cárhar Roma whose desires to purchase them lay assurances for the maintaining of Gabor Roma ways of being. As Berta explains, Gabor Roma critique Cárhar Roma for their more traditional ways of life, but value their adherence to traditional values regarding their role in helping maintain the antique silver object economy and its cultural capital of power and prestige.
The absence of Roma women's voices from the text as a whole asks the reader to assume a tacit acceptance of the economic exchanges among Gabor and Cárhar wives and female kin. The lack of female perspectives on such transactions offer more questions than answers. In such contexts, women's voices are often relegated to the private sphere and might not be as easily accessible in the context of ethnographic analysis conducted by a male ethnographer in a traditional setting. Yet the last section, in which Berta acknowledges the changing attitudes towards investments in antique silver objects among younger Roma, offers openings for such discussions. Perhaps, in future publications, the author will address the changing nature of the beaker and tankard-validating patriarchal frames that have guided the lives of older generations whose life experiences are highlighted in this book.
In sum, Materializing Difference is a refreshing contribution to east European studies and Romani Studies in particular. Moving away from the usual paradigms of nationalism, ethnic identity, language, and cultural expression, Berta manages to contribute to discussions on all of the above-mentioned fronts, but does so by interweaving complex centuries-old narratives with the help of transnationally-mobile inanimate objects. The book moves deftly from rural village contexts in Romania to the European antiquities market and international sellers' houses like Sotheby's to show that the value placed on objects is culturally, socially, and politically mediated. The buying and selling of prestige is not at all limited to Gabor and Cárhar Roma in Romania. This book will resonate with anyone who has ever purchased anything to legitimize one's self-worth, power, status, and prestige.
