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. (May)
