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, Renee 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.
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