| Based on 12 months of fieldwork in New York with diamond consumers, and archive research on the history of diamond marketing in the United States, this dissertation is an ethnography of the everyday consumption of diamonds which demonstrates how people bring their own experience to bear in making meaning of commodities. Analysis of narratives suggests that the set of themes promoted by De Beers through their billion-dollar marketing strategy, particularly romance, status, and glamour, is just one resource among many that consumers draw upon to interpret their own diamonds. Personal history, memory, context and local contingency also play important roles in how people interpret these objects. This work is contextualized within a broader understanding of the history and processes of globalized diamond production and marketing.; The overarching theoretical skein of this dissertation works from Silverstein's critique of the referential ideology of language in linguistics to rethink how we might deepen our understanding of consumption as a meaningful practice. Consumption theory, heavily indebted to a "culture as text" analogy, has imported and then applied a metaphor that not just contains but is built upon a referentially based conceptualization of language. My analysis of consumer narratives suggests that people do interpret diamonds referentially, but also as motivated poetic, and performative signs. Ultimately I argue for a re-invigorated approach to consumerism where commodities are historically contextualized and also investigated as to how consumers attribute meaning to them. |
