Theme: 5. Transmitting Knowledges: Institutions, Objects and Practices
Claire Sabel
University of Pennsylvania, United States
Ping Hsiu Lin
Weatherhad Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, United States
Farabi Fakih
Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
Claire Sabel
University of Pennsylvania, United States
Laila Azkia
Study Program, Social Science Education, University of Lambung Mangkurat, Indonesia
Ping Hsiu Lin
Weatherhad Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, United States
The gem-trade has always been global, while at the same time being composed of many distinct worlds whose relations with one another have shifted with mining technologies, territorial reconfigurations, and market trends. This panel explores the distinctive institutions, objects, and practices of the gem-trade across South and Southeast Asia, from centers of the global gem trade past and present, to explore what kinds of networks, communities, and forms of knowledge working with gemstones produces. Bringing together perspectives from sociology, anthropology, and history, we examine different ways of analyzing knowledge and community-making through relations with places, products, and markets of precious stones in South and Southeast Asia. All three papers make contributions to interdisciplinary analysis of the "artisanal," by looking at contemporary social relations of artisanal diamond mining in South Kalimantan, offering ethnographic accounts of the artisanship of gem-cutting in Jaipur, Peshawar, and Karachi, and historicizing European colonial appropriation of artisanal knowledge about the earth from diamond miners in Borneo and the Deccan. We look at the distinctive worlds that gemstones create and connect at local, regional, and global scales, and offer different disciplinary perspectives on commodity chains and mineral resources.
Presenter: Claire Sabel – University of Pennsylvania
Presenter: Laila Azkia – Study Program, Social Science Education, University of Lambung Mangkurat
Presenter: Ping Hsiu A. Lin – Weatherhad Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University