Materializing Difference reveals the inner dynamics of the complex relations and interactions between objects and subjects and investigates how these relations and interactions contribute to the construction, materialization, and reformulation of social, economic, and political identities, boundaries, and differences.

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, C¿rhar 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.