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Diamond Stories: Enduring Change on 47th Street (Anthropology of Contemporary Issues)
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You Are Here: Books About Antiques > Antique Diamonds > Item 30 of 121
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$47.50 |
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$4.89
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Available from Amazon
Price Last Updated : 6-25-2008
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Features
Hardcover: 233 pages
Publisher: Cornell University Press May 2002
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0801439892
ISBN-13: 978-0801439896
Product Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
New York's diamond business is an insular world. Yet thanks to introductions from relatives in the business, anthropologist Shield (Uneasy Endings: Daily Life in an American Nursing Home) gained access to the industry's inner sanctum: West 47th Street in Manhattan. Once there, she interviewed diamond dealers, brokers and manufacturers the majority of them Orthodox and Hasidic Jews and then merged her findings with anthropological observations to illuminate the history and culture of New York City's diamond industry. This modest, accessible if somewhat academic volume, part of Cornell's Anthropology of Contemporary Issues series, covers a lot of ground, including the fundamentals of diamond mining; the origins of Jews' entry into the trade; the minutiae of the business, which still observes verbal contracts and handshakes; the role of the influential Diamond Dealers Club of New York; and the process of arbitration, the system the industry uses to resolve conflicts. Shield also pays particular attention to women's functions in the trade (Orthodox Jews and Hasidic sects are highly patriarchal cultures in which women have often been excluded from the marketplace), the vagaries of being part of a family business and the aspects of the business that allow many men to work well past typical retirement age. Though perhaps too detailed and scholarly for a wide, popular audience, the book offers a window into an enigmatic sector of society that, as Shield ably portrays, balances on the cusp between the traditional and the modern. Photos.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Sequestered within the heart of a cosmopolitan city is an exotic worlda 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 trades social environment, offer hints for successful aging in general.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Diamond Stories: Enduring Change on 47th Street (Paperback)
What is fun about a bunch of robbers ????? When Greed is taught in our Colledges, we have'nt a chance to do what is right....unless we start to think for ourself....Do what is RIGHT.. Do not listen to the lies of the Politicians,Question your educators untill you know they are telling the truth and Lord help us you know when that is...
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Diamond Stories: Enduring Change on 47th Street (Anthropology of Contemporary Issues)
by Renee Rose Shield
List Price: $47.50
Available from Amazon
Price: $4.89
on 6-25-2008
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