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Loading... Diamond Stories: Enduring Change on 47th Streetby Renee Rose Shield
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Sequestered within the heart of a cosmopolitan city is an exotic world-a place where diamonds, astronomically priced, are bought and sold on the strength of a handshake, and business disputes are resolved according to ancient Jewish principles of arbitration. Yet it is also a modern industry facing the same fundamental global changes affecting all businesses today.In Diamond Stories, Renée Rose Shield leads us into the unexamined realm of wholesale diamond traders in New York. Related to several well-respected traders, she had unprecedented access to a society normally closed to outside inquiry. Here she deftly blends her personal relationship and her anthropological training to provide an insightful exploration of this tradition-bound industry, the new challenges it faces, and the ways both industry and individuals adapt to and endure change.Shield begins with a fascinating history of diamond mining, combining the story of the De Beers cartel, the role of Jews in the trade, and the part diamonds have played both in war and liberation. Throughout, she incorporates commentary by current diamond traders. Succeeding chapters explore the evolving nature of both the global trade and the New York diamond district. Shield takes a close look at the increasingly complex ethnic makeup of the district, illuminates the rarely documented work done by women, chronicles the resilient system of arbitration, and reveals the ways in which many traders work well into their eighties and nineties. Their long lives of work, cushioned by the trade's social environment, offer hints for successful aging in general. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)381.4282Social sciences Commerce, Communications, Transportation Commerce Specific products and services Products of mineral industries GemsLC ClassificationRatingAverage: No ratings.Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
She looks at the history of the industry, how the industry works, the roles and influences of family and women in the business, how modernization is affecting the trade, etc. While the focus is on the DDC and its members, there are inevitably stories and information from around the world, especially Belgium and the Netherlands, but also Asia (especially Japan and India) and elsewhere.
While sometimes a bit repetitive, this was a really interesting read. The descriptions of and stories about the arbitration process revealed the reliance on traditions in the industry, the ways in which Jewish traditions are very much the norm in the business, and also how the trade has been forced to adapt to new ways. For example, with arbitration, the arbitrators now have to have more formal training, and lawyers are sometimes involved.
This is one of those books where I feel like I could go on and on with tidbits I picked up from reading it. There are some funny and educational stories about the diamond cutting process (how they can shatter in the process, how you can try to bring out the best features and rid of the flaws, how they can go careening across a room, how you can go into utter panic when you think you've lost one). I'd never realized how much control De Beers had on the diamond trade; how much trust there is in the exchange and sale of diamonds; how an agreement to a sale is made on the uttering of the Yiddish 'mazal und brucha' (luck and blessing'), or just 'mazal' - and that this is a binding contract. It is a business that, in the late 80s to late 90s when she did the bulk of her study, was already seeing the passing of a generation vital to the trade; it was not uncommon for some of the men (for it is still largely male dominated) - especially often orthodox or Hasidic Jews - still to be actively working in their 70s, 80s, even 90s.
Let me say, too, I've never understood the whole thing with diamonds - never been anything I felt any need to have or want. While this book didn't change that, I will see them differently. I'll think of the stories of the traders, cutters, and brokers and imagine the passing back and forth of folded envelopes as they mix examining the goods, bargaining, and schmoozing until a deal is 'mazal'.