Appears in Capitalism Nature Socialism 34:3
Introduction
Not every useful or valuable thing is a commodity; commodities must have an objectifiable economic value. Commodities can be tangible goods or resources or intangible services, data, ideas, or even space (virtual or real) (Mezzadra and Neilson 2017) that are fully or partially fungible, or mutually exchangeable, and that can be bought and sold. Tangible and intangible entities are converted into products that can be sold in a market; the process, is called commodification[1] (Marx [(1867) 1990]); and the commodification process of gem-resources is particularly intriguing.
In global markets, the commodification and exchange process is extremely complex (Marx and Engels 1986). Contemporary global capitalism depends on the management and governance of products, like minerals, from extraction to use and it needs enormous amounts of capital. Only those who can make such large-scale investments – transnational corporate capitalists and business conglomerates – dominate neoliberal markets and govern and manage this contemporary phase of capitalism (Harman 2010). Commodification has an immensely negative social impact, and it manifests through closely related processes of “alienation,” or human estrangement, and “commodity fetishism,” as a form of reification[2] (Marx [(1867) 1990]). “Fetishism” in the anthropological sense refers to sinister (or even godly) magical power inherent in an inanimate object. In the practice of fetishism, the object is reified and deified (Pietz 1985, 1987, 1988); such ascription of agency-hood, reification, deification, and “totemic power” is evident in the commodification, production, and trade of gem-stones and diamonds.
“Extractive capitalism” is the export of primary commodities – mineral and natural resources and agricultural products – instead of manufactured products (Petras 2013). Petras (2013) used the term in the context of Latin America, particularly Brazil where it ensued under the neoliberal Cardoso regime, and it intensified under the leftist neoextractivists that came to power in 2002. The extractivist nature of capital has been observed in many governments: longstanding and new, democratic and liberal, communists and conservative right-wing. However, in the case of the neoextractivist left regimes of Latin America such as Brazil, Venezuela, and Chile, the extracted wealth under communist regime was initially spent mostly on improving the quality of life through social expenditure and the distribution of wealth aimed at social welfare and equity (Veltmeyer 2016). Such as support pro-poor policies, including through conditional cash transfers, investment in infrastructure, regional integration, and a return to state-led economic and social development schemes (Fitz 2014). These aspects of rural transformation and equity are absent under the neoliberal authoritarian governments that have risen recently in Latin America and worldwide (North and Grinspun 2016). As it hardly needs the democratic consensus for any decision making, it enables and eases the deployment of neoliberal regulations (Slobodian 2018; Peck and Theodore 2019), and extractivism and extractive capitalism play a special role (Adaman, Arsel, and Akbulut 2019) in association with the state, whose functions and practices borders upon “criminality” (Harris-White and Michelutti 2019).
In its widest form of applicability, extractive capital affords the economy leverage only in the short term; it is not sustainable, and eventually it is extremely debilitating for health, labour, and the ecology (Gago and Mezzadra 2017), which brings in its wake violence and destruction (Durante, Kröger, and LaFleur 2021).
However, in this paper, I discuss the mining and commodification of gem-stones and diamonds – a specific, literal dimension of extractive capitalism.
Capitalism within a neoliberal context, combined with predatory extractive industries and state support, always produces a surplus population of dispossessed and depeasantised labour, who move seasonally as a strategy of livelihood diversification between agriculture and mining (Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2016). If they are completely de-agrarianised, they bid to manage their liminal life by shifting permanently to mining (Banchirigah and Hilson 2010). They extract minerals mostly from their own commons or from government-owned land through informal (and/or “illegal”) activities and sell these minerals in informal markets. These minerals go through long supply chains and end up in retail. A tiny number of these people work in large-scale mining projects as daily wage labours sub-contracted by labour contractors (Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2018). Lahiri-Dutt (2018) calls the rural proletariat who mine, mostly informally, part-time or full-time “extractive peasants.” Most are environmental refugees alienated from their land who have moved to self-exploitation of their labour and ecology in the process of negotiating with neoliberal capital to get the most out of their labour and commons till the corporate land grab snatches it from them. Many of these informal mining activities operate at the fringe of corporate extractivist enterprises, such as large-scale mines, or places where formal mining has not yet begun – with or without proper documentation (Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2021). These artisanal mines are some-times owned or leased by extractive peasants, or they work mostly as daily wage labours on other informal mines such as in Gem mines of Kalahandi in Odisha (Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2016).
Verbrugge’s work (2015, 1024) on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in the Philippines illustrates that informal mining increasingly can be seen as a “product of a transition away from capital-intensive large-scale mining to a flexible regime of accumulation built around the exploitation of informal ASM labour.” This is a new capitalist logic of flexible accumulation “which casualises and informalises labour, and accumulates capital on the back of this cheap reserve pool of informal labour” (Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2018, 96).
In this paper the argument is, mainly, conceptual; I discuss, analyse, and critically expand on the various dimensions of the Marxist theories of value and commodity and its various derivatives, synthesise my discussion with other disciplinary and cross-disciplinary theoretical perspectives, and apply it to understand gemstone mining and trade.
I argue that diamonds and gemstones are made “pricey or expensive” through value addition – a process that spans mining, processing, retail sale, and consumption. The stones are imbued with stories, narratives, and histories through advertisement, and their demand and supply manipulated; this discursive process transforms diamonds and gemstones into seductive, powerful, and desirable commodities – a “fetish.” The stones fetch exorbitant prices in retail markets, but the labourers who mine, sort, and polish these are paid little; the labour cost constitutes a negligible fraction of the retail price. The process of commodification masks their role; as it does the extractive practices that wreck the ecology and impair the health of local populations – and the conflict, aggression, violence, and civil war– usually brought about by the ownership and control of mining and commodity spaces, have particularly debilitating effect under neoliberal extractive regimes and regulations.
To present a comprehensive perspective, and with the appropriate evidence, I have gleaned the empirical examples and cases from secondary sources; mainly, the scholarly literature, and a few journalistic accounts and trade publications. To supplement this secondary data, I draw on my own fieldwork experience in South Asia and Southeast Asia – on a few inter-views with gem miners and traders and on observations from the field.
Extractive Capitalism and the Gemstone Supply Chain
Global neoliberal extractive capital is composed of companies and entrepreneurs that create a supply chain of natural products and resources from various parts of the world to a centre, where these products and resources are sorted, packaged, value-added, and sold. Tsing (2009) terms it “supply chain capitalism” and says that its recent rise has been driven by the commodification of natural resources, labour, and extractive capitalism. The supply chain form of neoliberal capitalism can accommodate spatiotemporal and cultural heterogeneity and simultaneously outsource labour because it works through a globally available pool of informal labour. In these globalised times, the state–industry relation is altered, and the strategy of a remote, off-shore operation that avoids local labour and employment lets multinational companies avoid the responsibility of labour exploitation and ecological damage that they cause indirectly through the long supply chain of informal labour.
The supply chain is vast; it cannot be fully governed, and it seamlessly accommodates practices that are formal, informal, and semiformal (and sometimes partly illegal). Tsing (2015) uses the notion of supply chain capitalism in the context of collecting and selling Matsutake mushrooms in Japan; Matsutake mushrooms are a rare natural product and cannot be produced in agricultural farms, and their identity (and value) as a gift and as a commodity in the long supply chain vacillate.
Supply chain capitalism causes and encourages self-exploitation – or over-work of self and family labour and exploitation of the commons and environment, in the name of encouraging entrepreneurship and selling the dreams of self-sufficiency – and “super-exploitation.” Self-exploitation is a variety of super-exploitation and these are sometimes indistinguishable; therefore, it is not easy to comprehend and conceptualise “alienation” in these contexts (Tsing 2009).
Likewise, mining communities consider minerals, resources, and gem-stones as god’s/nature’s “gift” to them; they do not see these as artificial “commodities” they can mine and become rich off (Lahiri-Dutt and Roy Chowdhury 2018). They see mining not as an ecologically debilitating act but as an opportunity for diversifying livelihoods (Bryceson and Jønsson 2010). Alienation exists, but it is not apparent and it cannot be taken for granted. As these informal mining communities are not completely “disenchanted,” as would happen with alienation, because they see themselves as treasure or gem-resource hunters and entrepreneurs, and find zeal and value in that work even in the face of dispossession (Lahiri-Dutt and Roy Chowdhury 2018).
Globally, the mining of coloured gemstones is mostly informal, and the entire value and supply chain is fragmented, not centrally governed in the absence of large conglomerate houses that could monopolise the trade3 (Cross, van der Wal, and de Haan 2010). For diamonds, however, mining, value addition, supply, and marketing is centralised, and it is controlled by states and large extractive conglomerates such as De Beers, Rio Tinto, Lucapa, and Alrosa (Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2019). Many formal
and informal individual players and groups operate in the gemstone market and also a small number of coloured gemstone retailing companies such as Tiffany & Co but gem mining is generally done informally by various individuals and groups (Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2018). In Madagascar, Sierra Leone, India, Myanmar, Thailand, and Brazil many extractive peasants self-exploit their labour and dig on their commons or government land for a pittance to make gemstones and diamonds available. The notion of supply chain capitalism therefore perfectly analyses the capitalist production model of coloured gem-stones and the informal diamond mining and supply also.
The gemstone and diamond extractive industries are being reorganised into transnational supply chains; and all the spaces of production, ecology, and built environments are being slowly integrated functionally into a single system. Arboleda (2020) draws on Marx to argue that the extractive industries should be understood as interrelated systems, or “circuits,” of extraction – productive, commodity, and money – each having its own contradictions and crises.
The raw stone is extracted from the mining space in the productive circuit. Labourers and artisans add value to it in the commodity circuit. If a large mining company dematerialises its production shares in gems (such as in diamonds), it creates a money circuit. Here, I discuss mainly commodity circuits, their social context, and the discursive value addition of diamonds and gemstones.
“Speculative Commodities”: Valuing Gem Resources
In their raw form, gemstones or diamonds have almost no “use value” except some industrial-specific usages (Taylor 2005). When cut and polished in lapidaries they have aesthetic value when used as jewellery. In the jewellery industry, novel and spectacular goods and services are designed and produced, packaged, and advertised as “interpellations” (Althusser [1972) 2001] 1972) 2001) that attract and seduce the consumers.
Though gemstones and diamonds are widely advertised as good investments, but their fungibility is dubious and resale or exchange value question-able – barring for exceptional pieces (generally above 1 carat in case of diamond, and the price increases geometrically per carat) and those set in valuable metal jewellery – unlike metals such as gold or silver whose value is standardised and regulated globally by bullion standards. Once you buy a diamond or a gemstone, it is almost impossible to sell it back for a higher price or even the same price.[4]
Diamonds are valued in the market and trading world (an economic valuation for determining price) by carat (size/weight), cut (cutting and polishing), clarity (internally clear or flawless or not), and colour (completely white diamonds are valued more but sometimes diamonds of rare colours are exceptionally priced). Diamonds are also valued by their “fire” (coloured sparkle that you see when light is thrown on it), “brilliance” (the colourless light it emits), and “scintillation” (the flashes of light a diamond emits when held under the light and moved) (Fried 2020). Only specialists and experts with technical knowledge understand these characteristics and perform these tests, and only corporate gem and jewellery retailers sell certified pieces, but no two experts ever evaluate a diamond identically. Most of the market operates without these standardisations, knowledge, certification, or information, and buyers rarely know of these specifics. Therefore, reselling diamonds is difficult.[5]
Gemstones, too, are evaluated by carat, cut, and colour; but each gemstone is unique and standardising their prices is extremely difficult. Many gem-stones look identical, but are of different chemical composition. Only experts can identify and certify these gemstones, and buyers can easily be duped into buying a Rubellite instead of a Ruby, for instance, or a peridot instead of an emerald,[6] or they may be sold low-quality stones enhanced by colour and heating or that has been produced in the lab synthetically.[7] The market for coloured gemstones is mostly informal, and its supply chain is long; and that raises the cost at each successive step without adding any value, except for cutting and polishing (Cross, van der Wal, and de Haan 2010). Even determining the value of the most narrowly and specifically defined gemstones is uncertain because they are “non-homogeneous commodities”–each piece is unique and there are no two identical or equivalent pieces. Their market price depends on demand, much of which is manufactured artificially, and on supply, which also is manipulated. Their valuation differs by specialist and price varies in market, and that is why diamonds and gemstones can never be a good asset and can be called “speculative commodities” (Watkins 2020).
To protect, preserve, or enhance its value, an object can be moved in and out of the commodity state throughout its use life. Simultaneously, a previously preserved object that has gained value through its absence from the commodity pathway can be commoditised by re-entering it into the pathway. That is “commodity pathway diversion” (Appadurai 1986). Rather than seeing an object through the dualism of gift and commodity, we need to see how it moves between the restricted and non-restricted spheres of exchange[8]; we must focus not on the object but on the social con-texts in which those exchanges take place and which render “meanings” to those objects and value of various kinds.
Therefore, Appadurai argues “Commodities, like persons, have social lives” that needs to be studied and to understand this we must analyse “things in motion”, the pathways that can trace the full lifecycle of a com-modity (Appadurai 1986, 3). Commodities are not things but phases in the entire lifetime of a thing. Through commodity pathway diversion, new pathways are forged and an object acquires values of various kinds (Munn 1983). Appadurai is inspired by Kopytoff (1986), who goes against Marx and does not accept that a commodity exists only after it is produced.
Kopytoff (1986) argues that commoditisation is a process of becoming; it is not an end product or an “all-or-none state of being,” and commoditisation is a process that is not only economic, as Marx argues, but also cultural and cognitive. In discussing commodities, Kopytoff propounds the concept of “singularisation,” a process slightly different from commodification. Certain things considered commodities in normal circumstances are publicly prevented from being commoditised. Commodities are singularised by pulling them away from their pathway through restricted commodification, sacralisation, or terminal commodification. These processes are very similar to Appadurai’s notion of commodity pathway diversion.
Diversion and/or singularisation can produce various kinds of enclaved commodities where the commodity potential of an object is carefully hedged in an interested, calculated, or planned manner to increase and trans-form the cultural and symbolic potential of the object as a commodity, and make it more profitable in monetary value terms. A diversion that makes an object an enclaved commodity is often a sign of creativity (Appadurai 1986) – such as the business strategy of the gemstones and diamond trade – or a crisis, such as war or conflict.
Commodities diverted by royal families to display exclusivity, rank, file, and status, or “kingly things” (Gluckman 1983) constitute another variety of singularised commodity; and can form the symbolic inventory such as war insignia, ephemera, museum, and palaces of a society. Royal treasures, which may consist of a big piece of a precious stone, might give the possessor an additional commercial advantage – apart from various kinds of other values – and can in crises be commodified and auctioned (Helms 1998).
Certain forms of diversion or singularisation produce “sacred things” of ritual and symbolic value, or “terminal commodities” (Appadurai 1986). These terminal commodities are diverted after they are produced because society or the community ascribes some cosmological significance onto it. But the product is special only for the community which regards it as sacred.
During British colonial rule, sacred objects – stones, diamonds, idols, and other such artefacts – were appropriated, desacralised, and its exotic value commodified and sold. Some artefacts are kept in museums in coloniser countries to create oriental, enchanting, and mystical representations and memories of the exploits and valour of war and colonialism (Frost 2019).
These singularisations and diversions make commodities culturally valuable, after which these can be returned to the market, usually through auctions (Kopytoff 1986). Auctions constitute another socio-economic space that inflates the price and exclusivity of a commodity by gauging and displaying the demand available for a product. Auctions use the sense of value that a monied community of exclusive elites ascribes to a commodity and start with a minimum price that guarantees the seller and the auction house a profit, and the customer a distinctively elite status.[9]
There is a degree of disjuncture, however, between how Marxist theories conceive value (through labour), and how the industry and market deter-mine price, which is above and beyond the value added by the labour and depends upon demand and supply and rarity and uniqueness of the commodity[10] (Ormazabal 2006). The “enrichment economy” of modern capital-ism – particularly in the tourism, heritage, art, and luxury markets – is growing with reference to the process in which the value of the object, service, or experience is increased, not in terms of the accumulation of riches (Boltansky and Esquerre 2020). Boltansky and Esquerre relate the value and price of an object in capitalist economy with a parsimonious definition –“value is a justification of the price,” thus conceptually bringing Marxist notion of value and economic notion of price closer. They argue the value of any object can be increased physically, culturally, or discursively by adding value through the explicit usage of the “narrative device” (stories) and by treating things and objects even of recent origin as things destined to be immortal, which ultimately can increase its market price when it is brought in the market.
In 1938, an advertisement for De Beers used the tagline “A Diamond is forever” to fetishise diamonds. The advertisement described diamonds as the hardest form of carbon and praised their putative indestructibility –though they can be shattered, discoloured, and even incinerated. It said a diamond takes millions of years to form and made it into a symbol of the eternal bonds of “love and marriage.” Ironically, such a homology between love and diamonds makes diamonds a product that can be sold in markets as a symbol of love, which should not be commodified. The advertisement campaign that associated diamonds with marriage is an invented tradition; before the 1930s, not everybody proposed with a piece of stone in the U.S. or in the Anglo-American world. Later, however, it became popular even in Japan (Friedman 2015). De Beers makes diamonds popular and desirable by supplying fewer stones than there is demand for, though it rents many vaults in London and Belgium banks that are hoarded with stones at least until 1998 (Billon 2006) when their monopoly and image was challenged, as it was exposed that they bought millions of dollars of “conflict diamonds” (also called blood diamond in the context of Sierra Leone) from the Angolan rebels in Africa, who brutalised civilians. Following this, United Nations imposed a trade embargo on Angolan stones in 1998 (Harden 2020). Thus, De Beers (and later other such large companies) manipulates both supply and demand to make the market, which has been considered as normal practice. Increasingly the issue of ethical sourcing of diamonds, to avoid trading in diamond being mined and sold from criminal (and terrorist) sources, has been actively promoted (Billon 2006). In 2003, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) was started, under which states implemented safeguards on shipment of rough diamonds and certify them as “conflict free,” to make the consumption of diamond ethical and moral (KPCS 2020).
Labour is needed to extract diamonds and gemstones from mines, and value is added through cutting and polishing, which is done by skilled labour, but little of the value that is added is proportional to the retail price of a natural stone at corporate or non-corporate outlets; and most stones, including diamonds, can be produced flawlessly in a laboratory. It is not the labour activity, however intensive and value adding, that enhances the value of the stone. A flawless laboratory-produced stone would not command that value, either. Neither the intrinsic value of a stone nor its labour-added value therefore fetches the retail price. Rather, that it is rare and natural makes it exclusive, magical, and totem-like; sometimes its little flaws and “inclusions” (bubbles and minerals) are described as making it all the more “natural” and beautiful. Also, a “flawless” natural stone, a fetish in itself, would cost a fortune (DeMarco 2022).
Both Marx ([(1939) 1976]) and Freud ([(1972) 1977]) discuss “fetishism”; but “use value” or “commodity consumption” is an abstract, residual category in Marx’s “commodity fetishism”– focused as it is on the “exchange value” in economic relations of production; and whereas Freud demonstrates the dimensions of and desire for the female body and its sexuality and how a “fetish”–a substitute for a suitable object – is desired and consumed (Dant 1996). Baudrillard ([(1972) 1981]) shows that Marx and Freud’s analyses of fetishism demonstrate human relations with imaginary/unreal objects; by ascribing complex social values to objects, like beauty and functionality;
the exchange of sign values assigns socially relevant meaning and significance.
Marx distinguishes between “subject” and “object” and assigns primacy to the human subject, but Baudrillard ([(1972) 1981], 131) says that “use value” is not inherent in an object or exists in relation to some pure, natural, bio-logical, or asocial human need; use value is as fetishised a social relation as exchange value. As signs within a code of significatory values, objects may have one of two registers – functionality and ostentation – or both. The consumer’s individual and collective social needs to customise sign values and their exchange.
Dant (1996) argues that Baudrillard’s analysis of consumption as an exchange of signs is illuminating but – mapped as it is to functionality and ostentation – it does not explore how consumption relates to use value; and in his work sign value is progressively disconnected from social prac-tices. Consumption extends beyond merely purchasing an object to using and enjoying it, and finally disposing of it; human subjects derive various benefits as they interact with a material object and enhance their own capacity. Their interaction can be recorded on registers other than ostenta-tion and function, such as sexuality, knowledge, aesthetics, and mediation; thus, Dant (1996) connects sign value to its social context and practices. An object that confers special status to its owner and enhances their power and capacity is enjoyed in imagination – fantasy and desire – and has an excess of social value; its value does not derive only from consumption. Such objects are “overdetermined.”
Applying Dant (1996), the commodification and social relations of diamonds and gemstones can therefore be mapped to several registers: functionality (limited use in industry), ostentation (for conspicuous consumption), and aesthetics (to enhance beauty).
A natural stone, therefore, represents exclusive value, rarity, and status, that is an “overdetermined and excess of social value” and only those who have the surplus money can enjoy such premier luxury and exclusivity. However, it is the fetish or totemic character that masks the fact that in its ordinary form, not cut or polished, a stone/diamond would look like an ordinary pebble. But ironically, the human labour that has extracted it and converted it into a rare stone does not constitute its “value.” This process devalues the labour and the miner, who draws a minimum wage, in relation to the extractive capitalist and retail houses who draws immense, disproportionate profit.
The labour process is masked by advertising and marketing strategies that convert the stones into a greater fetish, and a reified object by adding further stories to the stone. These strategies feed the customer “narrative device” (Boltansky and Esquerre 2020) through the media, and play with their psychological and emotional dimensions and simultaneously manipulate the demand and supply chain of the product, that ultimately justifies the geo-metrical increase in its market price.
In a study on sapphire mining in Madagascar, Walsh (2010, 111) writes aptly that it is an example of ultimate “commodification of fetishes.” Various stories, narratives and geographic origin of stones add “value” to mined sapphires (which are varieties of corundum), which otherwise can be easily produced in laboratories. But the international market value attached to naturally produced sapphire, termed as a “work of god,” cannot be produced in laboratories.
These stones represent the “commodification of fetishes,” as these stones are primarily fetishes, a sign of abstract desire and fantasy for a status, which epitomise bourgeoisie class aesthetics and opulence, are then commodified through historical or contemporary narratives and stories. Human greed, desire, and fetish render these stones into moderately or extremely valuable commodities for bodily adornment or of invaluable symbolic value in a cul-tural context such as national heritage.
The charismatic, legendary diamond Kohinoor (Mountain of Lights) has entered various such exchanges. It was a 186-carat piece mined in Kollur (Golconda) mines presently situated in the state of Andhra Pradesh, in India. It has been gifted, appropriated, extorted, or bought and sold. It was initially part of Mughal treasury and then emplaced in the crowns of Maharaja Ranjit Singh; and Queen Victoria after Punjab was annexed by the British in 1849. It was thereby diverted temporarily from commodity pathways. It was converted into a royal family heirloom and finally, when returned to the auction market, it was made priceless by archiving it in museums as a national treasure (Dalrymple and Anand 2016). Countries and communities have fought over the ownership of this “cultural property” for its symbolic value and national heritage and honour and demanded that it be restored by returning the stone to its original (national) owner, India (Ghoshray 2007). Its history is unusually adventurous and its colourful “social life” in royal courts and wars makes it invaluable. Market manipulation may withdraw a gemstone/diamond from the market and make it valuable. It may be made valuable also by creating a social life for it by ascribing to it a unique story or a historical, ahistorical, or mythical narrative that makes it rare, desirable, and exclusive.
The Trimbakeshwar Temple (in Maharashtra, India) is a Shiva temple. The Nassak Diamond adorned the third eye of the deity. The diamond was an extremely sacred object for Hindus. After the Marathas lost the Third Anglo-Maratha war, the British East India company captured the diamond and sold it to Rundell and Bridge in 1818, which much later made its way to the U.S.A., where it was sold at an auction for $500,000 (NYT 1970). Now it is in a museum in Lebanon. The Indian government and nationalistically minded interest groups and lobbies are in talks to bring it back (PTI 2018).
A sacred thing was looted, de-sacralised, made into a commodity, gifted, and ended up as a kingly thing in a museum. As it is a part of India’s colonial and national history, there is talk of bringing it back and re-sacralising it in the context of growing nationalism.
Ritual objects are not produced as sacred objects. Their value accumulates slowly over space and time (Spielmann 2002), as these diamonds circulated and gathered history and are physically modified, such as being cut several times. The social life of the Nassak Diamond bears Spielmann out.
Discussion and Conclusion
Historically only emperors, kings, and nobles could acquire and own valuable gemstones. The advent of large corporate houses such as De Beers in the late 19th century promoted large-scale production and marketisation of gemstones, and democratised the gemstone market to the degree that upper-middle class consumers and the growing middle class could buy gem-stones and jewellery. Gemstones offer a sense of status and class distinction.
As Epstein (1988) says once the amethyst was considered as a rare cardinal stone, until its large reserve was found in Brazil and after which its value (and price) fell drastically and is now considered as a cheap semi-precious stone, so the sense of rarity and exclusivity that it renders is actually valued.
It reflects what Veblen (1899)says in his theory of “conspicuous consumption” and consumer preference; he observes that persons who considered themselves above middle-class would demonstrate their status by paying for an artificial “distinction,” which usually the middle class cannot pay. Certain sections in society can climb up the social order by posturing and displaying opulence and éclat to gain certain status (Weber [(1922) 1978]).
As Bourdieu ([(1979) 1984], 56) says, the aesthetic choices of individuals or groups establish “class fractions” or class-based social groupings.
This “distinction” of aesthetic “taste” inadvertently helps one class maintain a “cultural hegemony”– and, subsequently – power over another. Post-war modern capitalism is centred on inventing new markets and products, and generating a heightened drive for consumption. By buying/consuming the same product, people feel equal to those they differ widely from in their economic position as a class or individuals in relation to the “mode of production” (capitalism). The democratisation of the gem market happened when companies like De Beers lost its monopoly, prices of gemstones fell, and a significant part of the upper middle class gained access to gemstones, and thus were equalised with the elites in consuming this premier luxury.
Good-quality diamonds and gems usually end up in the jewellery market and people buy them for their aesthetic appeal and bodily adornment. In India, gemstones, particularly coloured ones, are also connected with the occult and the mystical cultural tradition, including astrology, and the world of mining, manufacturing, production, and prescription of these happens in an alluring and somewhat insulated world. Lower-grade diamonds and coloured gemstones that lack aesthetic appeal and cannot be sold in upmarket retail jewellery outlets end up in the astrology market, which is the fringe market of extractive capital operating in the gems and jewellery sector in India (Roy Chowdhury and Lahiri-Dutt 2016). Astrologers prescribe certain stones to individuals to control fate and allay misfortune and for other cosmological reasons as part of both the Hindu and Islamic cosmologies in India (Khalid 2015). The narrative device plays the most vital role in converting stones that even lack aesthetic appeal into an all-powerful, magical, and reified object with the unusual power of control-ling planetary inflictions on mortal lives; and into a saleable commodity.
The multi-million-dollar diamond and gemstone industry thus thrives worldwide and in India based on this ascribed (fetish) value of these stones. The industry reaps extravagant profits from the aesthetic appeal of these stones, which are useless barring some industrial uses. But their aesthetic dimension hides the greed, lust, violence, and aggression inherent to their commodification. Many of these stones emerge from conflicts in the Global South. This source and history only add to their allure and mystery and show the reified fetishes that these stones actually are and, also, the almost totemic, seductive, and distinctive power that these stones signify for the status of the global elites and their conspicuous consumption.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my respondents for their participation in interviews and infor-mal discussions that allowed me to better understand the field. I owe a great deal of gratitude to Professor Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, without whose encouragement this article would not have been written.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
Research Fund (International Faculty Support), HSE University.
ORCID
Arnab Roy Chowdhury http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6626-3936
References
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