Conclusion
Conclusion
The Fullness of Diamonds
This concluding chapter revisits questions encountered in the entire text, reviews themes suggested by ethnographic materials, and discusses how this framework might be expanded. It argues that diamond meanings do refract advertisement discourse, but gaining a wider and more nuanced understanding of consumerism requires a methodological expansion in three ways. First, refocusing the gaze from the use of diamonds by social groups or as defined in marketing discourse to individual interpretations foregrounds everyday subjective perspectives without sacrificing a necessary and dedicated awareness of the political. Second, there has been surprisingly little comprehensive work based on empirical observations of the practical relationships between consumers and commodities, particularly once these objects are acquired and integrated into everyday lives as cultural and economic processes in which consumerism is inevitably and dialectically involved. Lastly, a methodological focus on the interaction between individuals and objects illustrates how things are encountered.
Keywords: diamond, ethnography, advertisement, consumerism, social groups, commodities, marketing
NYU Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
