Abstract
The study deals with the prestige economy of a Transylvanian Roma ethnic subgroup known as the Gabors. It highlights how these Roma construct prestige items and symbols of ethnic identity by de- and re-contextualisation, that is, by commodity fetishism and symbolic re-creation of silver beakers and tankards purchased from non-Roma antique dealers, auction houses, museums etc. Focusing on a transitional period of the ‘social history’ of these objects, it analyses how the Gabors attach to them a new cultural identity (elite register of consumption of material goods) and new social identities (symbols of ethnic and patrilineal identity). These processes of ‘symbolic alchemy’ of objects play a significant role in the construction and materialisation of ethnic identity among the Gabors.
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