Nouveaux Riches Research Articles

Stephan Malinowski. Nazis and Nobles: The History of a Misalliance.

The relationship between Nazism and the German aristocracy tends to be drawn in one of two ways, each verging on caricature—lionization of the heroic, noble resistance fighters behind the July bomb plot, or caustic castigation of the be-monocled Junkers and the Cabinet of Barons who smoothed Hitler’s road to power. Stephan Malinowski’s Nazis and Nobles steers an admirably nuanced middle way between these simplistic poles of wholesale absolution or demonization. The key question Malinowski seeks to answer throughout the book runs as follows: How could a noble caste that valued tradition and aristocratic leadership so highly join forces socially and ideologically with a lower middle-class, ostensibly egalitarian far-right movement? Each of the work’s five chapters then addresses a different piece of this puzzle. The first chapter, “Defining ‘Nobility,’” explores various aspects of the German aristocratic habitus: concern for one’s land, leadership, bloodlines, praise of the countryside, and contempt for intellectualism, capitalism, and the toxicity of urban living, including middle-class wealth and ostentation. These latter bugbears were associated above all with antisemitic stereotypes and exaggerated distaste for nouveaux riches or so-called “clinking goats” (Klirrziegen), bourgeois women who dared to adorn themselves with ostentatious jewelry. All of these ideological elements could potentially be redefined in a völkisch vein even if their roots lay in mainstream conservative rather than radical right-wing soil. Chapter 2, “The Apocalypse and Beyond,” then reveals the extent to which many aristocrats saw Germany’s “November Revolution” in 1918 as heralding the utter collapse of their world of wealth and privilege, as well as rendering monarchism moot after Kaiser Wilhelm’s “shameful” flight to the Netherlands. Many aristocrats even believed that Wilhelm should have been forced to die “honourably” at the enemy’s hands, with plans having been made toward the war’s end to effect this very eventuality. The dissolution of royal courts, Upper Houses, the Army (a preferred haunt for lesser noble sons of little brain), and aristocratic bodies such as the Prussian Heraldry Office, along with the swift descent of many nobles into what they considered to be utter penury (some were “forced” into work as tutors or taxi-drivers) led to increasing radicalization, especially among the genuinely impoverished ranks of the Prussian minor nobility. For every noble who might frown at a classified ad such as “Stony-broke devil, aristocrat, seeks filthy rich angel for marriage,” vowing to cast its author into social darkness, there were others who might seek to follow its lead. The fates of female aristocrats are tellingly delineated too: A significant number became increasingly politicized in tandem with their enforced independence from familial expectations and the certainties of arranged marriage.

Demand reduction campaigns for the illegal wildlife trade in authoritarian Vietnam: Ungrounded environmentalism

The demand side of illegal wildlife trade (IWT) has received increasing academic, media, and policy attention for its powerful potential to address the biodiversity extinction crisis. The article contributes to this emerging literature by analysing demand reduction campaigns for illegally traded wildlife in Vietnam, a country that has been named and shamed by transnational conservation elites as one of key perpetrators of species loss across Africa. Conspicuous consumption of ‘rare’ and ‘prestige’ wildlife by the wealthy and nouveaux riches of Vietnam has been identified as a principal factor threatening the survival of many wild species. Accordingly/not surprisingly, significant amounts of donor and government money have been channelled to consumer-targeted interventions and campaigns in that country.My study shows that these campaigns have limited effects because they are a form of ‘ungrounded’ environmentalism. The article advances the scholarly debate on IWT demand reduction interventions by demonstrating that the ungrounded environmentalism typical of these campaigns is problematic and risks deepening historical stereotypes and cultural misrepresentations. As social beings, consumers are deeply embedded within long-standing socio-cultural, political and institutional contexts, therefore it is essential that consumer-targeted campaigns are be informed and underpinned by these dynamics, especially in authoritarian contexts such as Vietnam. The article offers a novel theoretical contribution to literature on environmental politics by focusing on the conceptual lens of ‘ungrounded’ environmentalism to demand-side campaigning, and testing its utility by applying it to the specific case of Vietnam.

Portraits and Identity: “Roman” and “Elite” in the Late Antique Villas of Aquitania

This article examines late antique marble portraits from three Roman villas in Aquitania (southwestern France). These objects are striking evidence for a vibrant, Theodosian-era (r. 379–95 CE) portrait tradition, which contrasts with the absence of contemporary portraiture elsewhere in the western provinces. This raises questions about the motivations and identities of the patrons, which I investigate by approaching the portrait as a tool for the construction and navigation of “elite” and “Roman” identities. Such claims were politically charged in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, which witnessed the admission of outsiders (the nouveaux riches and “barbarians” like the Visigoths) into high society.

“Clandestine Nouveaux Riches” of the Leningrad Economic Region during the Khrushchev Thaw

“Clandestine Nouveaux Riches” of the Leningrad Economic Region during the Khrushchev Thaw

Is Ugliness Only Skin Deep?: Middle English Gawain Romances and the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’

Monstrous figures in the Gawain romances are representations of medieval nouveaux riches. In Chaucer, the monster bifurcates into the Wife of Bath and the loathly lady of her tale. Gawain romances seem to indicate that ugliness is only skin deep; Chaucer seems to suggest that ugliness runs a bit deeper.

A Rule of Natural Disasters Coming to Rebalance Unjust Development and Irresponsibility-Laws of Physics Explain the Trope of “Divine Retribution” against the “Nouveaux Riches”

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, fireballs are here discussed with, again, explanation on why fireballs obey to strict physical rules and demonstration that they are among other things the definitive explanation of the collapse of the Maya civilization in what was actually a sudden obliteration by a cluster of fireballs. Extractive development (what has been defined already by Acemoglu and Robinson) is what natural disasters come to rebalance ; extractive development leads to over-accumulation of typically weighty resources in a small area where they disrupt the crust and also represent particularly attractive beacons for fireballs. This is carefully demonstrated over a wide range of time with many examples.

MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS of the NOUVEAUX RICHES and the CULTURAL CONSTITUTION of the GLOBAL MIDDLE CLASS

The article offers a distinctive account of how the nouveaux riches serve as an anchor for a range of upper- middle- class ambivalences and anxieties associated with transformations of capitalism and shifting global hierarchies. Reflecting the long- term association of middle- class symbolic boundaries with notions of refinement and respectability, it examines how the discourse of civility shapes how the nouveaux riches are represented to the upper middle class, identifying a number of recurrent media frames and narrative tropes related to vulgarity, civility, and order. The author argues that these representations play a central role in the reproduction of the Western professional middle class, and in the cultural constitution of a global middle class — professional, affluent, urban, and affiliated by an aesthetic regime of civility that transcends national borders. The findings underline the significance of representations of the new super- rich as devices through which the media accomplish the global circulation of an upper- middle- class repertoire of cultural capital, which is used both to police shifting class boundaries and to establish a legitimate preserve for univorous snobbishness.

The Literati’s Polyphonic Answers to Social Changes in Late Imperial China

The article aims to rethink the pluralistic intellectual currents and social changes of the last centuries in China: How literati reacted to the historical changes, the economic developments, the collapse of the hierarchical order, and the social mobility from the end of the Ming to the middle of the Qing dynasty. Urbanisation, the great silver inflow, the acceleration of trade, and social mobility raised new challenges to the orthodox view of the world and to Neo-Confucian norms. These new attitudes of the Chinese literati—which can be inferred both from literary and philosophical works—uncover new attitudes in the mental structure of the intellectual strata of the time. In the history of ideas we notice a progressive detachment from the orthodox view of the conflictual relationship between principle and desires, especially in the ambit of the Taizhou school. The elaboration of a new anthropological mindset aimed at the rehabilitation of passions and desires culminated with Li Zhi. This trend went on in the Qing period, from Wang Fuzhi to Dai Zhen. In literature, a similar trend, the so-called “cult of qing ,” can be found with the moral justification of emotion-desire (establishing emotion as a genuine and active source of virtue), and with the vitalistic identification of emotions as the source of life and reproduction. Another indication of change is the challenge of common and accepted truisms through the praise of “folly” in real life situations and literary works: To be “crazy” and “foolish” became a sign of distinction among certain intellectual circles, in contrast with the pedant orthodox scholars and officials and the vulgar nouveaux riches . The unconventional character of the anti-hero Baoyu is emblematic, with his aversion for any kind of official ceremony and convention, his abnormal sensibility and impractical and naive mentality, and his consciousness of being different from others. The crisis of the established ladder of values can be seen in the exaltation of “amoral” wisdom and in the presentation of various dimensions of love, from the idealistic sentiment of “the talented student and the beautiful girl” to the metaphysical passion that overcomes death, and to the minimalist concept of “love is like food” in a carpe diem perspective. And finally another challenge is exemplified by Yuan Mei’s reflections on the concept of Heavenly Mandate, retribution, human responsibility, and historical constructions by resorting to “abnormal” phenomena to uncover the absurdity of reality and unconscious imagery. His questions testify the polyphonic debates of the late imperial China, besides established conventions and Neo-Confucian orthodoxy.

The American President: From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, by William E. Leuchtenburg

Reviewed by: Stephen J. Randall, University of CalgaryThe American President is a striking example of the best of traditional political history, written by one of its leading practitioners. Leuchtenburg in his 95th year has provided readers of American history with a brilliantly argued, thoroughly researched, and elegantly written overview and penetrating analysis of the ways in which the American presidency has evolved since the end of the nineteenth century, and the contributions (or lack of same) which from Theodore Roosevelt to William Jefferson Clinton have made to the office. Other scholars have provided outstanding studies of individual presidents, but there is no equal to the detailed synthesis which Leuchtenburg has written of the 17 men who occupied the office between 1901 and the end of the Clinton presidency. It is particularly auspicious that the volume ends with Bill Clinton, since at the time of writing this review Hillary Rodham Clinton has just failed to be elected as the first woman to hold the presidential office.Leuchtenburg makes a compelling case that an analysis of is an effective way to understand American history. In his words: twentieth-century America was significantly shaped by its presidents (xiv). Many social and economic historians might dissent from the argument that themselves are such significant factors in shaping history, but such differences among historians do not detract from the excellence of the arguments presented in this volume.Leuchtenburg's treatment of the is balanced, judicious, and critical where criticism is warranted. His main focus is on the two Roosevelts, Harry Truman, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton. Franklin Roosevelt's remarkable tenure in office warrants 100 pages of analysis, as do Reagan's and Clinton's. Leuchtenburg presents Theodore Roosevelt as the first of the modern presidents, a man who as president had a Hegelian conception of the primacy of the state (37), and used the office as a bully pulpit to advance his goals and vision. He had a patrician's disdain for the nouveaux riches of his generation, but it was his determination to ensure that the executive office had primacy that greatly determined his efforts to curtail the power of business. Roosevelt's vigorous use of presidential power further influenced Woodrow Wilson's evolving perception of the office. Wilson brought innovation to the office, including addressing joint sessions of Congress and, initially at least, holding press conferences. Although he preferred domestic to foreign affairs, he demonstrated a willingness to use American military power, and like Roosevelt before him, projected American power and prestige abroad. He anticipated the later interpretation of the Supreme Court in US v. Curtiss Wright: that in the area of foreign policy the power of the president was virtually unlimited. It has been in foreign policy and national security that presidential power came to be exercised most dramatically in the course of the century.Leuchtenburg passes lightly over the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover years, portraying their approach to the presidency and its powers as a regression to a pre-Theodore Roosevelt generation. The stock market crash and the deepening depression which brought Franklin Roosevelt to office in 1933, however, marked a dramatic advancement in the way in which the president used his office, from mobilizing public opinion through fireside chats, flooding Congress with legislative initiatives in the first hundred days, or--less nobly--trying unsuccessfully to pack the Supreme Court in order to advance his legislative agenda. …

For Art’s Sake: The Aesthetic Movement in Print & Beyond, 1870–1890: The Grolier Club of New YorkJanuary 25–March 11, 2017CatalogueFor Art’s Sake: The Aesthetic Movement in Print & Beyond, 1870–1890Eric HolzenbergNew York: The Grolier Club, 2017.136 pp.; 146 color ills.Paper over board $50ISBN 9781605830643

For Art’s Sake: The Aesthetic Movement in Print &amp; Beyond, 1870–1890: The Grolier Club of New YorkJanuary 25–March 11, 2017Catalogue<i>For Art’s Sake: The Aesthetic Movement in Print &amp; Beyond, 1870–1890</i>Eric HolzenbergNew York: The Grolier Club, 2017.136 pp.; 146 color ills.Paper over board $50ISBN 9781605830643

Erratum to: Old money, the nouveaux riches and Brunhilde’s marriage strategy

Erratum to: Old money, the nouveaux riches and Brunhilde’s marriage strategy

The Eighth Vibration. Asmara and Dek’emhare, Cities of Work, Cities of Leisure

The case of Asmara was emblematic. In 1934 Asmara had a population of about 3,500 Italians and 12,000 Africans. In 1939 Italians had risen to 48,000 whilst Africans were 36,000. In just five years the total population had increased fivefold, whilst the proportion between Italians and indigenous people had been reversed. This was an unprecedented phenomenon, determined by the economic importance of the city as a logistic base for the war. Asmara became the financial hub of the new Italian empire, where all major Italian companies had opened branches, as well as the seat of hundreds of new business enterprises born after the conquest of Ethiopia. Social life in Asmara was pulsating just like that of any other European town. During the day the heart of the city throbbed with business, both in the street markets and in the new Italian districts, where the offices of trading and industrial companies could be found. At night, social life moved to the ever expanding number of entertainment and leisure facilities. New dancehalls, restaurants and bars were being opened everywhere. The working men’s clubs and numerous sports and recreational societies, supported by local government and by the PNF, organised the colonists’ free time. In Eritrea, near the strategic hubs where companies and the army had located their logistic bases, new urban agglomerates rose from scratch, such as Dek’emhare and Nefasit, with plenty of restaurants and clubs, patronised by military personnel, workers and by the Italian nouveaux riches who, as Indro Montanelli denounced in his book “XX Battaglione Eritrea” (20th Eritrean Battalion) lived a upper-class lifestyle, which went against the Fascist imperial ethos, thus betraying the ideal purpose of the African wars.

Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık by Orhan Pamuk

the street, Ildi will at last “fly off” to a tiny flat on a bypass near the city center. With Nomi leaving flowers in a communal Swiss graveyard to commemorate Mamika and their vanished homeland, she embraces a future that yokes her present to her past. Michele Levy North Carolina A&T University Orhan Pamuk. Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık. Istanbul. Yapı Kredi Yayınları. 2014. isbn 9789750830884 Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s ninth novel, Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık (A Strangeness in My Mind, forthcoming in English translation in fall 2015 from Knopf) chronicles the life of an eccentric street vendor, Mevlut, whose enduring passion is to sell the long-forgotten Ottoman drink boza in Istanbul. “I will sell boza until the end of time!” declares the protagonist of this bildungsroman who lives in the strangest of times and in the strangest of love stories. Narrated by multiple characters, between 1969 and 2012, the novel explores Pamuk’s persisting questions about solitude, belonging, happiness, and poverty. Unlike his Museum of Innocence (2009; see WLT, March 2010, 67) or Snow (2004; see WLT, Jan. 2005, 109), however, this novel shows little interest in the East/West question, and for the first time Pamuk narrates his beloved Istanbul primarily though the eyes of a workingclass Anatolian. Although somewhat reminiscent of the poet Ka in Snow, Mevlut is not one of Pamuk’s typical middle-class Istanbulites. Severed from his village in Konya and his mother at age twelve, he has to join his father and uncle in Istanbul. Tormented by long work hours and loneliness, he finds himself amid the military coups of 1971 and 1980, Kurdish and Alawite conflict, nationalist extremism, and, above all, with a bitter father. When he is finally saved by the love of Samiha, a girl he meets once at a wedding and writes love letters to for three years, he is tricked by his cousin into eloping with the wrong girl, Samiha’s older sister, Rayiha. All this time, Mevlut confesses that he harbors a “strangeness in his mind,” evoking a line from Wordsworth’s The Prelude. Pamuk’s tender and compassionate narration describes an inborn strangeness in Mevlut—which is at the heart of the novel—but this condition is equally forged by the transformations of late-twentiethcentury Turkey. Uneducated and without capital—like most immigrants in Istanbul —he works odd jobs as a parking lot security officer, ice cream seller, rice vendor , lottery inventor, and debt collector. Although Turkey gets more politically and economically divided in the 1980s, Mevlut declares his independence and lacks any form of class consciousness. A Strangeness in My Mind is imbued with ornate insights into the changing urban landscape of Istanbul and economic character of Turkey: the birth of chain restaurants, supermarkets, malls, factories, bottled drinks, mass-produced foods, the emergence of real-estate moguls, a skyline in Istanbul, the enclosures of the shantytowns , the economic consequences of military coups, and the rise of the nouveaux riches. Amid this dizzyingly rapid change, Mevlut remains as outdated yet unchanged as the boza he sells, missing opportunities for entrepreneurship and apathetic to becoming a wage earner. He treads the streets of Istanbul, catering to the palates of a few dedicated boza drinkers, devoid of material longings, comfortable in his solitude, like a dervish. His voyeuristic tendencies , spiritual wanderings, enigmatic naïveté, and indifference to materiality make Mevlut a subject of mockery among his opportunist friends. But this strangeness also shields him from the tyranny of time and ambition. His bohemian habits might be perplexing, his career choices inexplicable, yet, undoubtedly, he is one of the most sui generis, unforgettable characters in Pamuk’s oeuvre. Iclal Cetin SUNY at Fredonia Doron Rabinovici. Elsewhere. Tess Lewis, tr. London. Haus (University of Chicago Press, distr.). 2014. isbn 9781908323491 For a writer born in Israel, living in Austria , and writing in German, it is not surprising that themes such as Jewish identity World Literature in Review 116 wlt may / august 2015 ...

Elsewhere by Doron Rabinovici

the street, Ildi will at last “fly off” to a tiny flat on a bypass near the city center. With Nomi leaving flowers in a communal Swiss graveyard to commemorate Mamika and their vanished homeland, she embraces a future that yokes her present to her past. Michele Levy North Carolina A&T University Orhan Pamuk. Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık. Istanbul. Yapı Kredi Yayınları. 2014. isbn 9789750830884 Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s ninth novel, Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık (A Strangeness in My Mind, forthcoming in English translation in fall 2015 from Knopf) chronicles the life of an eccentric street vendor, Mevlut, whose enduring passion is to sell the long-forgotten Ottoman drink boza in Istanbul. “I will sell boza until the end of time!” declares the protagonist of this bildungsroman who lives in the strangest of times and in the strangest of love stories. Narrated by multiple characters, between 1969 and 2012, the novel explores Pamuk’s persisting questions about solitude, belonging, happiness, and poverty. Unlike his Museum of Innocence (2009; see WLT, March 2010, 67) or Snow (2004; see WLT, Jan. 2005, 109), however, this novel shows little interest in the East/West question, and for the first time Pamuk narrates his beloved Istanbul primarily though the eyes of a workingclass Anatolian. Although somewhat reminiscent of the poet Ka in Snow, Mevlut is not one of Pamuk’s typical middle-class Istanbulites. Severed from his village in Konya and his mother at age twelve, he has to join his father and uncle in Istanbul. Tormented by long work hours and loneliness, he finds himself amid the military coups of 1971 and 1980, Kurdish and Alawite conflict, nationalist extremism, and, above all, with a bitter father. When he is finally saved by the love of Samiha, a girl he meets once at a wedding and writes love letters to for three years, he is tricked by his cousin into eloping with the wrong girl, Samiha’s older sister, Rayiha. All this time, Mevlut confesses that he harbors a “strangeness in his mind,” evoking a line from Wordsworth’s The Prelude. Pamuk’s tender and compassionate narration describes an inborn strangeness in Mevlut—which is at the heart of the novel—but this condition is equally forged by the transformations of late-twentiethcentury Turkey. Uneducated and without capital—like most immigrants in Istanbul —he works odd jobs as a parking lot security officer, ice cream seller, rice vendor , lottery inventor, and debt collector. Although Turkey gets more politically and economically divided in the 1980s, Mevlut declares his independence and lacks any form of class consciousness. A Strangeness in My Mind is imbued with ornate insights into the changing urban landscape of Istanbul and economic character of Turkey: the birth of chain restaurants, supermarkets, malls, factories, bottled drinks, mass-produced foods, the emergence of real-estate moguls, a skyline in Istanbul, the enclosures of the shantytowns , the economic consequences of military coups, and the rise of the nouveaux riches. Amid this dizzyingly rapid change, Mevlut remains as outdated yet unchanged as the boza he sells, missing opportunities for entrepreneurship and apathetic to becoming a wage earner. He treads the streets of Istanbul, catering to the palates of a few dedicated boza drinkers, devoid of material longings, comfortable in his solitude, like a dervish. His voyeuristic tendencies , spiritual wanderings, enigmatic naïveté, and indifference to materiality make Mevlut a subject of mockery among his opportunist friends. But this strangeness also shields him from the tyranny of time and ambition. His bohemian habits might be perplexing, his career choices inexplicable, yet, undoubtedly, he is one of the most sui generis, unforgettable characters in Pamuk’s oeuvre. Iclal Cetin SUNY at Fredonia Doron Rabinovici. Elsewhere. Tess Lewis, tr. London. Haus (University of Chicago Press, distr.). 2014. isbn 9781908323491 For a writer born in Israel, living in Austria , and writing in German, it is not surprising that themes such as Jewish identity World Literature in Review 116 wlt may / august 2015 and belonging remain central to his existence . What is unanticipated, however, is the consistency with which Doron Rabinovici proves able to counter gaiety with solemnity, calamity with cheerfulness, and displacement with inclusion. The uncanny ability to...

Vietnam’s Second Revolution

Vietnam’s Second Revolution

Old Money, the Nouveaux Riches and Brunhilde's Marriage Strategy

A woman assessing the wealth of a potential husband may observe some, but not all, of his wealth. She may screen, leading to status consumption and wasteful gift giving. The screening activity is costly not only for the potential husband, but also for the woman, as it reduces the wealth of the man she may marry. A sound observable financial background ('old money') benefits the candidate but also the woman, and reduces wasteful status consumption spending. Also, aging and attractiveness of the woman affect the equilibrium conspicuous spending pattern.

Old Money, the Nouveaux Riches and Brunhilde's Marriage Strategy

A woman assessing the wealth of a potential husband may observe some, but not all, of his wealth. She may screen, leading to status consumption and wasteful gift giving. The screening activity is costly not only for the potential husband, but also for the woman, as it reduces the wealth of the man she may marry. A sound observable financial background ('old money') benefits the candidate but also the woman, and reduces wasteful status consumption spending. Also, aging and attractiveness of the woman affect the equilibrium conspicuous spending pattern.

Rublëvka: Gabbia dorata per russi di lusso

The attention is focused on the cultural and semiotic significance of the area called Rublevka in the outskirts of Moscow. Since the past centuries emperors and dignitaries settled in the woods and on the hills west of the capital because of the clean air and the beauty of the landscape. Soviet party members built their dachas in the same area, confirming the idea of prestige and exclusivness of the territory. In the mid Nineties, just after the fall of the Soviet Union, the so called “new Russian” (nouveaux riches) started to have luxury mansion built along the former Tsar road, nowadays called Rublevka. Moving from the concept of heterotopia, elaborated by Michel Foucault, as space of otherness, which is neither here nor there, that is simultaneously physical and mental, the article investigates the dream of the new Russian leading class of a “paradise” far from the crowd, from the proletarian memories of housing problems in the Soviet Union and the reason why the “aura” of the territory remains the same in spite of historical and social changes. House and mansions were surrounded by high walls and protected by constant patrolling and security cameras. No socialization was intended, and no permeability was allowed. In the last years the traffic jams, caused by security reasons connected with the transit of political leaders (including Putin and Medvedev), are slowly changing the situation. Show business people and entrepreneurs are leaving the area which is turning from a heterotopia into a “super-place”, filled with super markets, luxury stores, infra structures that convinced the pioneers of paradise-settlement that Italian or British countryside is more reliable and more exclusive, and that the outskirts of Moscow are no longer capable of offering “sanctuary” in spite of their secular tradition of prestige.

Chutes &amp; Ladders: Middle Class in Motion

Chutes &amp; Ladders: Middle Class in Motion

Music, Dance, and Behaviour in a New form of Expressive Culture: The RomanianManea

The popular music landscape of Romania today is dominated by themanea.It appeared in the late 1960s as a form of symbolic opposition by the Romani communities from the slums of the big cities on the Danube to their exclusion from Romanian society. In timemaneabecame an expression of implicit protest by ordinary people from any ethnic background. In the 1970s and 1980s, it gradually penetrated into cities and villages. After 1990, themaneaspread throughout the entire country and is now the favourite music of many teenagers, young people, and the nouveaux riches of the transition period, comprising together about one third of the population. The power of themaneaarises from the dominant role it plays in public and private events, such as weddings, baptisms, funerals, anniversaries, and all kinds of parties organized in restaurants and clubs, as well as from the high visibility it receives on private TV channels, the Internet, commercial CDs and DVDs, concerts, and shows.