Kristóf Szombati’s The Revolt of the Provinces is a carefully researched and compelling book that explains the rise of anti-Gypsyism in Hungary over the past decade, and, in doing so, provides broader insights into why and under what conditions rural areas become sites of racist, intergroup contention that fuel and are fueled by extreme nationalist and populist political movements. For Szombati, the key to understanding instances of anti-Roma mobilization and violence in Hungary is found in the causal relationship between “large-scale political-economic transformations and the transformation of microrelationships in rural communities” (9). This approach situates anti-Gypsyism, as well as support for populist right-wing parties and governments, as a temporally and spatially specific response to economic dislocation and feelings of abandonment by those living in certain rural areas. Szombati’s narrative, therefore, is a useful counterpoint to arguments that assume either that overt anti-Gypsyism is a constant feature of public life in mixed settlements, or that entrepreneurial elites can always manufacture anti-Roma mobilization at will. Szombati’s argument also suggests that the roots of anti-Gypsyism in Hungary and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe come more from the failure of governments to protect citizens from the vagaries of structural economic changes than from any regional pathologies.

Through his extensive ethnographic research, Szombati is able to account for when and where specific moments of anti-Gypsyism have occurred in Hungary. Much of the book focuses on the village of Gyöngyöspata located east of Budapest, an area that experienced incidents of escalating anti-Roma mobilization and violence at the end of the second decade of post-communism (2009–2010). Szombati argues that traditionally agricultural areas like Gyöngyöspata, which had an economy based primarily on vinoculture and other crops, were particularly vulnerable to economic shifts in the aftermath of regime change in 1989 and later the process of European Union accession. Local Hungarian families that suffered multiple economic dislocations due to falling prices and increased competition had to supplement their livelihoods with low-paid factory work, and they struggled to make sense of their diminishing economic and social capital. In this context, some rural Hungarians “forged narratives that made sense of the failure to realize dreams of autonomy and upward mobility by laying the blame on the local Roma, whose ‘thievishness’ and ‘scrounging’ stand opposed to their hard work” (13). Heightened intolerance and scapegoating of Roma families that lived in and near Gyöngyöspata was also triggered by local Hungarians’ perception that the center-left government in power between 2002–2010 was willing to overlook petty criminality involving Roma and to provide “undeserved” handouts as part of a platform of integration. Szombati’s argument about Gyöngyöspata, therefore, is that economic dislocation in addition to a set of government policies seen as rearranging local social and racial hierarchies created a sense of resentment against Roma and abandonment by political elites that resulted in an “appetite to tame ‘unruly’ social elements” (19).

Having shown the ways in which broader economic and political factors negatively impacted intergroup relations at the local level in the case of Gyöngyöspata, Szombati then demonstrates how relatively small, local incidents of intergroup contention became part of a larger nationalist narrative with implications for domestic politics. In Chapters 3 and 4, Szombati describes the process through which the far-right Jobbik party used these local power struggles to gain national prominence and relevance by sending in para-military groups to “defend” the local Hungarian population from the “Gypsy criminals.” The success of Jobbik’s mobilization of anti-Gypsy rhetoric on a more national scale then prompted the ruling Fidesz party to respond to this challenge from the right by incorporating aspects of Jobbik’s overtly racist discourse into the government’s vision of a “work-based society.” By using the power of the state and its control over social programs to reward “worthy” middle-class Hungarians and discipline “unworthy” elements, the ruling party was able to “retain its hold over a radicalized political center and defuse the moral panic on ‘Gypsy criminality’” (143).

Szombati’s book also contributes to our understanding of the factors that might limit the escalation and mobilization of isolated contentious incidents and contain social frictions within rural areas. He does this through a comparative exploration in Chapter 5 of a second case study focused on the town of Devecser. Similar to Gyöngyöspata, Devecser was located in a mixed rural post-agricultural area that had experienced incidents of intergroup violence during the same time period. However, unlike Gyöngyöspata, in Devecser the narrative of Gypsy criminality was resisted, and the presence of Jobbik and the Hungarian Guard was received with much less welcome by local political actors. This was in part because both Hungarian and Roma families in Devecser had more strategies available to meet the challenges of neo-liberal economic reforms, and as a result there were a number of upwardly mobile Roma families who were more embedded within the broader community. Moderate Hungarian and Roma actors had both the incentives and the personal networks necessary to work together to defuse local incidents and prevent them from becoming fodder for the racist mobilization of far-right groups.

While Szombati’s book is needlessly jargon-filled at times and might be a difficult read for those without at least some knowledge of Hungary and the broader regional context, it is a richly detailed study that makes a number of much-needed contributions to our understanding of anti-Roma politics in post-communist Europe. In particular, Szombati helps us see that what becomes more broadly framed as a generalized trend of anti-Roma exclusion and violence often stems from moments of local, contentious friction among groups who have lived for decades in close proximity, and who are at least somewhat interdependent on each other. Therefore, in order to understand the roots of anti-Gypsyism, we need to look more closely at the interaction between the local and the national, and the micro and the macro levels, in both the economic and political spheres. Szombati’s book can also be read as a lens through which to understand the factors that break down networks of interdependence and communal solidarity in rural areas and fuel anger against vulnerable groups and minorities that can then be used and manipulated by populist, nationalist political actors.