Configurations

Robert N. Proctor
Anti-Agate: The Great Diamond Hoax and the Semiprecious Stone Scam
Configurations - Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2001, pp. 381-412

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Robert Proctor - Anti-Agate: The Great Diamond Hoax and the Semiprecious Stone Scam - Configurations 9:3 Configurations 9.3 (2001) 381-412 Anti-Agate: The Great Diamond Hoax and the Semiprecious Stone Scam Robert N. Proctor Pennsylvania State University The value of a thing differs from the so-called equivalent given for it in trade . . . and if the economist were honest, he would employ this term--"price"--for trade value. But he has still to keep up some sort of pretense that price is somehow bound up with value, lest the immorality of trade become too obvious. Karl Marx, 1844 Diamonds are expensive because they are plentiful and ugly; agates are cheap because they are rare and beautiful. Apart from making my dismal science (economics) colleagues wince, there is a grain of truth in this improbable paradox, which has to do with the history of value and the ends to which "precious gems" have been put. The value of stones has changed over time, and there is little that is inherent in the nature of the diamond to exalt it over purportedly lowly agates and other "semiprecious" stones. "Little," as we shall see, but not "nothing." That observation leads to my first thesis: that there is a conspiracy of sorts that props up the value of diamonds and other "precious stones"--a joint embrace, one could say, between manufacturers and consumers, bilkers and brides, with intrigues and subtleties unparalleled in the annals of consumer culture. One of my larger...