The political economy of family life among Romanian Roma: re-discovering politics in economy-related family-level decision-making processes (introduction to the theme section)

The contemporary omnipresence of political economy as an analytical framework or perspective

Political economy as an analytical framework or perspective has not lost its academic significance, popularity, or explanatory power since the turn of the millennium. For example, analysis of the complex impact of political goals, opportunities, and constraints on economic agency, decisions, and processes has been a focus of attention for researchers who have wondered how the COVID-19 epidemic intertwined with structural racism (Bailey and Moon 2020; Bump et al. 2021), mass hysteria (Bagus, Peña-Ramos, and Sánchez-Bayón 2021), drug and alcohol regulation (Redford and Dills 2021), or economic and health costs and policy responses (Boettke and Powell 2021; Kaplan, Lefler, and Zilberman 2022).

Other research projects have used the political economy perspective to gain a more nuanced understanding of the reasons, dynamics, and consequences of violence against women (Alsaba and Kapilashrami 2016; True 2012), the intertwining of gender, class, and development in women’s entrepreneurship initiatives (Roberts and Mir Zulfiqar 2019), the operation of a feminist political economy of time (Mezzadri and Majumder 2022), or the emergence and impact of transnational business feminism (Roberts 2015).

Some researchers have applied the analytical framework of political economy to investigate how energy transitions take place at the global or regional level (e.g. decarbonization; Michael, and Steckel 2022; Baker, Newell, and Phillips 2014; Honegger and Reiner 2018; Lachapelle, MacNeil, and Paterson 2017; Newell 2019; Newell and Mulvaney 2013), as well as how the management of basic sources of energy such as oil, gas or hydroelectricity works (Aïssaoui 2001; Dolphin et al. 2020; Sovacool and Walter 2019); how to develop sustainable climate-smart agriculture (Newell and Taylor 2018), climate adaptation (Sovacool, Linnér, and Goodsite 2015), and agroecology (van der Ploeg 2021); and how the interaction between politics and economics affects deforestation (Burgess et al. 2012), land use (Hyötyläinen and Beauregard 2022), expropriation (Diermeier, Egorov, and Konstantin 2017), and decisions and strategies used in natural disaster recovery (Neumayer, Plümper, and Barthel 2014; Sovacool, Tan-Mullins, and Abrahamse 2018).

Certain research projects have focused on phenomena and analysed them through the lens of political economy, such as the Euro crisis (Copelovitch, Frieden, and Walter 2016), bitcoin (Hendrickson, Hogan, and Luther 2016), taxation systems (Kiser and Karceski 2017), public debt (Battaglini, Nunnari, and Palfrey 2020), the health financing and spending landscape in the countries of the Global South (Jakovljevic et al. 2021), the role of microfinance in managing poverty (Mader 2015), trade agreements (Facchini, Silva, and Willmann 2021), or trade policy preferences based on occupation characteristics (Owen and Johnston 2017). In investigating economic processes, trends, and markets, the analytical framework of political economy is also often invoked – researchers have examined, for example, repo markets (Gabor 2016), creative industries (Lee 2017), mortgage markets (Aalbers 2012), global production networks (Smith et al. 2014), pension reforms (Rein and Schmähl 2004), and the euro area’s sovereign debt crisis (Howarth and Quaglia 2015). Other researchers have sought to answer how a political economy perspective can contribute in the context of a workplace to a deeper understanding of phenomena such as workplace injuries, labour employment decisions, or the “visibilizing process” of managers (Barnetson 2010; Gu et al. 2020; Leclercq-Vandelannoitte 2021).

The explanatory power of political economy has been proven to be a useful tool in the investigation of political phenomena and practices such as party network organization and development (Auerbach 2016), elections (Collier and Vicente 2012; Duggan and Martinelli 2017), NGO activity (Springman 2022), liberal democracy (Mukand and Rodrik 2020), clientelism (Robinson and Verdier 2013), the relationship between policy concessions and aid (de Mesquita and Smith 2009), or military-Islamist state building (Verhoeven 2015). In the study of populism in particular, the analytical frame or horizon of political economy is often applied. To name just a few examples, Toplišek (2020) used the examples of Hungary and Poland to illustrate the functioning of populist rule in post-crisis Europe; Guriev and Papaioannou (2022) synthesized the global literature on the recent rise of populism; and Stankov (2021) explored “the interplay between identity, the economy and inequality to explain the dynamics of populist votes since the beginning of the 20th century.”

Other investigations have focused on the notions of inter- or transnationality, using the interpretive lens of political economy to answer the questions of how international relations (Cohen 2021; Gilpin and Gilpin 2016), non-Western migration regimes (Urinboyev and Eraliev 2022), integration in the European Union (Harrop 2000) or the European monetary unification (Frieden and Eichengreen 2001) are organized; how the United Nations Security Council works (Vreeland and Dreher 2014), and what opportunities and constraints characterize regional peacemaking (Ripsman and Lobell 2016), urban heritage tourism and tourism development (Bianchi 2018; Su, Bramwell, and Whalley 2018; Yrigoy 2023).

Some of the research projects dealing with the subtle and multi-level interplay and interconnectedness of politics and economy have attempted to map abilities, emotions, conditions, or attitudes such as attention (Pedersen, Albris, and Seaver 2021), hope and fear (Andrews 1999), antitrust (Ghosal and Stennek 2007), fortune and misfortune (Timcke 2023), heteronormativity (Nguyen 2023), or car dependence (Mattioli et al. 2020).

Use of the analytical framework of political economy has also proven fruitful in interpreting and deepening our understanding of phenomena such as food system reforms (De Schutter 2017) and food security (Otero, Pechlaner, and Gürcan 2013), homeownership and housing (Bartha 2011, 2012; Kohl 2020), slums (Fox 2014), unfinished development projects (Williams 2017), systemic destruction or waste (Kadri 2023), science, technology, and innovation (Sun and Cao 2023), digital ecosystems (Kitsing 2021; Nieborg, Helmond, and Plantin 2019), local cinema (Rajala, Lindblom, and Stocchetti 2020), gambling (Bedford 2021), or linguistic cleavages (Desmet, Ortuño-Ortín, and Wacziarg 2012).

Finally, some studies have attempted a theoretical reconceptualization of the concept of political economy or a comparative overview of its historical transformations: Ribera Fumaz (2009) highlighted the importance of the role and impact of culture when arguing for the added value associated with the introduction of the concept of “cultural political economy” (see Sum and Jessop 2013; Ngai-Ling et al. 2013); Bhambra (2021) examined how colonialism and post-colonialism have affected the dominant interpretations of political economy and their usage; and Helleiner (2023) undertook a mapping of the global roots of political economy.

The need to rehabilitate micro-contexts: re-discovering politics in economy-related decision-making in family life

A critique of the predominance of macro-contexts in political economy research

A characteristic feature of research projects using the political economy approach is that researchers usually adopt a macro perspective when defining the analytical focus – i.e. they typically identify larger social or economic units (state, social class, country-level economic sector or market, and so on) as the analytical context. The predominance of macro perspectives tends to distract attention from the key fact that the intertwining, interaction, and interdependence of the realms of politics and economy often also fundamentally determine the decisions and processes in micro-contexts such as networks of extended kin, the family, or marriage. Contemporary investigations are reluctant to apply the analytical framework of political economy to micro-contexts such as family life or marriage, not only because of the historical circumstances of the emergence of political economy as a term and analytical tool, that is, the asymmetry in question is due not only to the particularities of the origin and development of this concept. A significant role in the emergence and persistence of this asymmetry is likely to be played by the overt or implicit concern that the acknowledgment, highlighting, and interpretation of the fact that economic decisions and processes relating to family life are in many contexts also determined by political considerations (goals, desires, plans) can easily give the impression of de-humanizing, de-personalizing, and de-emotionalizing subjects and human relations.

Re-discovering politics in economy-related family-level decision-making: the political economy of marriage payments

The significant impact of political considerations on economic agency, plans, and decisions in micro-contexts can convincingly be illustrated, for example, by the analysis of family decision-making processes related to the creation, maintenance, and dissolution of marriage in arranged marriage cultures – for example, among the Gabor Roma living in Romania. This Roma population is characterized by an ethnicised interpretation and practice of politics, which permeates and determines many spheres of everyday life. The individuals, families, and patrilines involved in it seek to accumulate ethnicised prestige and fame in relation to each other in symbolic arenas of Gabor Roma politics, such as the accumulation of economic capital (with special emphasis on successes achieved in the competitive collection of silver beakers and roofed tankards made of antique silver), the prestige hierarchies of Gabor Roma patrilines, the distribution of relational capital within the Gabor Roma ethnic population, as well as the Gabor Roma ethics of sociability (respectability).

The members of this Roma ethnic population are characterized by arranged marriages, patrilocality, and ethnic endogamy – the spouse is chosen, and the wedding is arranged under the parents’ direction and supervision. Along with the marriage of the young couple, a marital alliance is formed between the parent couples. In an ideal case, a marital alliance is a relationship based on intense political, social, and economic cooperation and a moral obligation of mutual help – that is, it creates the possibility to perform, reproduce, and enhance social closeness. The parents’ marital considerations are not concentrated primarily on their child’s individual desires and preferences or the personal characteristics of their child’s potential spouses but on the political, social, and economic situation of the potential spouses’ families. When choosing the most attractive family from among potential candidates, the parents consider many aspects – for example, the families’ political success and renown, their economic status, and their relationship to the Gabor Roma ethics of managing social relations and interactions (respectability). In other words, while the young Gabor Roma people concentrate mainly on the potential marriage partner’s personal attributes, their parents assess primarily the political, economic, and social situation of the potential marriage partners’ families, as well as the history of earlier interfamily relationships.

The political meaning and significance of marital alliances are rooted not only in the economic importance of the money changing hands in connection with marriage – marriage payments and secret cash gifts – but also in the fact that the process of selecting a co-father-in-law and negotiating the amount of the marriage payment provides a series of opportunities to manipulate and reproduce political and social relations between individuals, families, and patrilines.¹ Choosing a co-father-in-law from among potential candidates may be a strategic means, for instance, of demonstrating social closeness and reinforcing solidarity between families, furthering upward social mobility and increasing renown, reproducing or enhancing status distance, finding a political supporter, and managing interfamily political or economic conflicts.

For Gabor Roma, parental or family-level decision-making on partner selection, marriage, and divorce are complex processes in which a range of political, economic, social, and other considerations are usually interlinked and interact. An excellent example of how the parents’ political desires, plans, and constraints can have a significant influence on the economic decisions related to their child’s marriage is the case of marriage payments and secret cash gifts of substantial value (the latter are given by the parent couple in order to facilitate the acceptance of their own marriage offer); in short, the politics of marriage payments.

As I have already pointed out, one of the most important symbolic arenas of Gabor Roma politics is the politics of marriage, which is manifested, among other things, in the fact that when choosing their child’s future spouse, the parents usually take into special account the political success of the families of potential spouses and strive to ensure that the future spouse of their child comes from a family that is as successful as possible in Roma politics. For this reason, there is often intense competition to marry into politically successful families in this Roma ethnic population.

For a Gabor Roma parent couple, there are a number of tools available that can help them to ensure that the family they find politically the most attractive will accept their marriage offer so that they can gain more or less reputation profit through success in the ethnic marriage market. The most important of these instruments is the politics of marriage payment and secret cash gifts of substantial value.

The aforementioned politics among the Gabor Roma can be seen, among other things, in the fact that the bargaining power of the parent couples in determining the amount of the marriage payment offered as part of the dowry is significantly influenced by their success – in general, and relative to each other – in Roma politics. The agreement on the amount of the marriage payment is often preceded by a lengthy, sometimes contentious, negotiation process, where the interpretation and discussion of differences between the families’ political performance and success is a frequent discursive activity.

Upward-aspiring wife-giving families of lower social prestige but with considerable wealth often get their marriage offer to be the winner by promising a large marriage payment with their daughter, and if the family they have chosen receives one or more promising marriage offers from elsewhere in the meantime, they try to outbid their competitor(s) in the ethnic marriage market by raising their own marriage payment offer (even several times). A wife-giving family can also facilitate the acceptance of its own marriage offer by secretly giving cash gifts of substantial value to the selected wife-taking family, instead of or in addition to increasing the marriage payment.

If a well-to-do family seeking upward social mobility wants to marry off its own son, it can encourage the wife-giving family, which is more successful in Roma politics and has a higher social prestige, to accept the marriage offer by declaring that it is willing to accept even a modest, symbolic marriage payment, or by secretly informing the selected wife-giving family that it does not want a marriage payment at all. In these cases, it is not uncommon for the wife-taking family of lower social prestige to secretly return even this symbolic marriage payment to the wife’s family after the marriage ceremony. It also happens that, irrespective of the fate of the marriage payment, the wife-taking family tries to convince the more prestigious and politically successful wife-giving family to consider its marriage offer as the most attractive one by secretly giving it cash gifts.

The multiple intertwining and complex interactions of the realms of politics and economy can also be observed in the case of politically more influential and famous families. When a politically more successful, wife-taking family with higher social status yields to the lure of a large marriage payment offered by an upward-aspiring parent couple (usually because of their own financial difficulties), they also note that, in the case of the marriage in question, they are foregoing political prestige – indeed, they are exposing themselves to face-threatening rumours that they may be in financial difficulty otherwise they would not have married their son to a wife coming from a “low-ranking” family. The greater or lesser shame and loss of face associated with the acceptance of a marriage offer from an upward-aspiring family of modest social prestige are compensated by the fact that the large marriage payment (and the cash gifts secretly given) contribute to stabilizing the wife-taking family’s financial position and, through this, to the wife-taking family’s ability to maintain its position within Roma politics as a whole.

The financial difficulties of many of the high-ranking, politically successful, wife-giving families also encourage them to accept marriage offers from upwardly mobile, wealthy but low-ranking families. In exchange for having to pay only a symbolic marriage payment (or none at all), i.e. to save some or all of the marriage payment, the wife-giving family also has to reckon with foregoing political prestige and the face-threatening rumours mentioned in the previous paragraph.

The cases referred to by the Gabor Roma with the term “paying for shame” are also striking examples of the impact of political considerations on economic decisions related to marriage. In some cases, the husband’s family is subjected to a political provocation by the wife’s family (political rumours leading to reputational damage, and so on), which threatens to cause a serious loss of face, and to which the husband’s family reacts by (considering) sending the wife back to her parents, either temporarily or permanently, i.e. by suspending or dissolving the marriage. If the wife’s family acknowledges its own responsibility and insists on maintaining the marriage and the marital alliance, in some cases it will be given the opportunity to “pay” for the reputational damage caused to the husband’s family, i.e. to compensate and restore the damaged relationship between the two families by means of a cash gift, thus creating the conditions for the young people’s marriage and the marital alliance to continue.

The political determination of family-level decision-making on marriage payment is also well documented in the case of divorce. Among the Gabor Roma, almost all divorces occur in the young people’s teenage years or early twenties and almost all of them are arranged; in other words, these practices are primarily directed, supervised, and authenticated by the parents. A wide variety of political reasons can lead to divorce and termination of the marital alliance – for example, a serious political conflict between the parent couples that makes it impossible to restore harmonious cooperation between the families, or a parent couple receiving a more favourable, politically more promising marriage offer from a third family shortly after the marriage of their child.

The decision to dissolve the marriage of a young couple by one of the parent couples inevitably involves decisions about the fate of the marriage payment handed over at the time of the marriage. Disputes and conflicts between families over the repayment of the marriage payment are quite common among the Gabor Roma. Although Roma Gabor ethics of sociability require that in the event of divorce, the full amount of the marriage payment is to be repaid, the wife-taking family sometimes decides to repay only part of the marriage payment or to refuse to repay the whole marriage payment i.e. to “eat” it, at the risk of causing inter-family conflict. In most cases, the reason for “eating” the marriage payment is that the ex-husband’s family has already spent it and is unable to repay it because of financial difficulties. In other cases, the primary motivation for not repaying the marriage payment is the financial insecurity and money hungriness of the ex-husband’s family, and the secondary motivation is the belief that the ex-wife’s family will not have the political or other means to enforce the repayment of the marriage payment. (In the latter cases, it is typically the politically more influential parent couple with higher social prestige who decides to “eat” the marriage payment.) The political conflicts, desires, and differences behind the divorce therefore can have a direct and significant impact on family-level economic decisions concerning the fate of the marriage payment and, through them, on the subsequent development of the relationship between the parent couples of the divorced young persons. This is especially true in cases where the marriage and the marital alliance have been dissolved because the attractiveness of a new marriage offer from a third party is not only due to the political prestige of the newly emerging potential co-father-in-law but also because the amount of the marriage payment promised by the third party exceeds the marriage payment received in the recently concluded marriage (On the political economy of dowry in other social contexts, see also Anitha, Yalamarty, and Roy 2018; Anukriti, Kwon, and Prakash 2022; Babua and Babub 2011; Begum 2014; Belur et al. 2014; Devi 1994; Hackett 2011; Jeyaseelan et al. 2015; Naved and Persson 2010; Payton 2019; Rastogi and Therly 2006; Rew, Gangoli, and Gill 2013; Roy, Anitha, and Yalamarty 2019; Sharma et al. 2005)

The preceding paragraphs on the role, significance, and dynamics of the political economy of marriage payments in the context of Gabor Roma social life have clearly demonstrated that research using the analytical lens of political economy should pay much more attention to the micro-contexts of human relationships than it has done so far. In other words, a major shift in the problem-sensitivity of political economy research towards a “rehabilitation” or “re-discovery” of micro-contexts would be more than useful. A deeper understanding of the mechanisms, logic, and dynamics of Gabor Roma family life, for example, as the example of marriage payments shows, is inconceivable without a detailed investigation of the ongoing and intense interplay and interdependence between the realms of politics and economy, and of the complex web of consequences that can be traced back to this interplay and interdependence. The political economy of family life as an analytical perspective, however, can contribute effectively not only to a more nuanced and reliable mapping of partner selection, marriage, family formation, and the dissolution of the marriage and family. It can also be of considerable help in analysing intergenerational dynamics, decision-making, conflict, and conflict management as well as the distribution of economic resources within the family (see, for example, the processes of inheritance or divorce), and can facilitate the interpretation of how the politics of networks of extended kin operates.

The contributions

Szabó’s article investigates the subtle relationship between (ethnic) identity politics and economic success in a Hungarian-speaking Roma community in a Szekler village (Transylvania, Romania). The article outlines how the growing economic success and profitability of basket weaving led a segment of the local Roma community to partially reformulate their major narratives on ethnic and local identity and descent in order to deepen or create symbolic boundaries between themselves as well as other local Roma and the Hungarian majority society. Szabó’s analysis shows how traditional family histories are reshaped by marginalizing and “silencing” narratives that link the members of this upward-aspiring group of local Roma to Hungarian ancestors and relatives and by tracing back the emergence of their own group as a separate social unit as well as its economic prosperity to their own special attitude towards work ethic, education, and religious life. The article demonstrates convincingly how the struggle for a new ethnic and local identity almost necessarily leads to a liminal social position where this upward-aspiring group of local Roma is continuously constrained to balance between the old narratives, values, and visions of ethnic belonging, kinship, and descent on the one hand and the new ones on the other. The author not only shows the main characteristics of this in-betweenness and explains the causes and consequences of the deployment of various group formation strategies and processes (such as reconceptualizing family and local histories and reframing and repositioning ethnic belonging) but also pays special attention to the dynamics characterizing these strategies and processes. Szabó’s analysis is an excellent example of how politics and the economy mutually shape each other, that is, how a significant change in economic conditions can lead to the emergence of (identity) political ambitions and projects which then have a significant impact on future economic plans, decisions, and processes.

Berta’s article investigates how the accumulation of wealth – with a special focus on competitive luxury consumption centred around beakers and roofed tankards made of antique silver – and marriage politics, that is, two symbolic arenas of Gabor Roma politics are interconnected and interact with each other. Using a marital biographical approach, the article highlights how and why the politics of marriage payments can shape economic and political agency, plans, relations, actions, and processes in this Roma ethnic population living in Romania. While providing a detailed analysis of the establishment and dissolution of an engagement of historical significance among the Gabor Roma, the author demonstrates how political ambitions and desires may influence family-level strategy-building and decision-making concerning economic issues in connection with partner choice, marriage, and divorce. On the other hand, the article highlights how and why changing economic circumstances – indebtedness, accumulation of capital, and so on – can contribute to the reconceptualization and recalibration of individual and family-level political plans, strategies, and identity projects. The analysis argues that the symbolic arenas of politics characterizing the Gabor Roma ethnic population should not be viewed in isolation from each other, since their parallel existence can be described primarily with such categories as dynamic interaction and interdependence as well as the fluidity, flexibility, and permeability of the boundaries between them. The article also demonstrates why a marital biographical perspective – based on categories such as processuality, dynamism, relatedness, and context-sensitivity – is well suited to provide a nuanced insight into how the political economy of family life works in various ethnographic settings.

Gamella and Muntean’s article focuses on a Roma group the members of which have moved from Romania to over sixteen countries in Western Europe and North America in the post-socialist period. The authors’ investigation is based on a long-term collaborative ethnography that made possible the detailed reconstruction and interpretation of 807 unions formed between 1938 and 2021. The article concentrates on the analysis of multilevel and complex relationships between marriage, family life, and reproductive regimes and shows how and why transnational family networks of Romanian Roma can prosper and work in global social contexts. The authors insightfully demonstrate that the reproduction or reformulation of family ties and intimacy in these transnational settings is inconceivable without the intensive use of new digital technologies. Gamella and Muntean pay special attention to the investigation of why intergenerational conflicts arise in relation to partner selection and marriage, by what means they can be managed and resolved, and what kind of social, political, and economic consequences can be attributed to them. The authors not only show how the institution of patriarchy and related intergenerational power asymmetry are challenged increasingly often by young Roma people but also explain the role and significance of “marriage transactions” in establishing social ties and relationships between individuals as well as families. The article is also a great example of how the realms of politics and the economy intertwine, shape, and explain each other in (transnational) contexts of family life as well as why the political economy of family formation and dissolution deserves more attention than it has recently received from historians, economists, anthropologists, and sociologists.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Péter Berta

Péter Berta is an interdisciplinary social scientist focusing on Central and Eastern Europe, especially Romania and Hungary. He specializes in material culture studies, consumption studies, law and society (the politics of arranged/forced marriage and divorce), and Romani studies. He is a senior research fellow at Budapest Business School (Dept. of International Trade and Logistics) and an honorary research associate at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. His monograph Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma won the 2020 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption Section of the American Sociological Association and received an honourable mention from the committee for the 2021 Society for Romanian Studies Book Prize. He is the founding editor of the book series The Politics of Marriage and Gender: Global Issues in Local Contexts (Rutgers University Press). The volume he edited, Arranged Marriage: The Politics of Tradition, Resistance, and Change, was published in 2023 by Rutgers University Press. His current research focuses on the global politics of arranged and forced divorce situated at the intersections of gender, violence against women and children, power, law, and religion.

Notes

1. The most important element of the dowry is the marriage payment, which usually ranges from USD10,000 to USD30,000 in the case of well-to-do families.