For Pearl Johns, the diamond engagement ring – invented for Austrian nobility, popularised by the Victorians and marketed with the 20th Century slogan “A Diamond is Forever” to symbolise the durability of marriage – narrates Anthropocene contradictions, representing love and conflict, status and poverty, beauty and destruction, empowerment and misogyny.
Museum of the Anthropocene: The Diamond Engagement Ring
Would you say that a diamond really is forever? The engagement ring is a narrator of the Anthropocene’s contradictions, representing both love and conflict; status and stark poverty; beauty and environmental destruction; empowerment and misogyny.
The journey of the diamond engagement ring began in 1477 in Austria, when Archduke Maximillian commissioned the first for his engagement to Mary of Burgundy, kickstarting a tradition among European nobility. So began the tradition of claiming women’s bodies and identities with the promise of wealth, encapsulated in a luxurious ring. But the popular use of engagement rings didn’t really start until the 1930s in the US, when legal protections for women whose marriages were called off ended. The diamond ring then became a form of ‘insurance’, a financial safety net for women for whom a failed engagement or marriage could spell ruin.
The Victorians and Edwardians had popularised diamond rings more widely and added more intricate and colourful multi-gem designs. In more recent history, diamonds became increasingly accessible with the introduction of industrial-scale mines, owned by large corporations. In 1947 De Beers launched their world-famous slogan “A Diamond is Forever,” symbolising the strength and durability of a marriage initiated by a diamond. Their deeply successful marketing campaigns saw the sales of diamonds increase by 50% over three years, with the engagement ring becoming a battleground of overt displays of status and wealth.
So began the mass marketing and consumption pressure to mark (arguably) the most important choice of your life with an expensive jewel. Yet it is a jewel whose origins are shrouded in mysterious and complex supply chains, which was to raise troubling ethical and political questions.
In the early 2000s the issue of ‘conflict’ or ‘blood’ diamonds came to global attention. These are diamonds that have been traded to fund brutal wars in developing countries, a classic example being Sierra Leone. Widespread concern led to the 2003 Kimberley Process which introduced certificates proving diamond origin to reassure consumers about the ethics of their consumption choices and to soothe boycott threats. Whilst it reduced the trade of illegal diamonds from 25% to 5-10%, there are still loopholes, and the human rights of mineworkers are in no way guaranteed. While the problem of ‘blood diamonds’ may have reduced, soothing Western consciences, diamonds are still products of supply chains which brutalise environments and labouring bodies.
Zimbabwe is a textbook example of this: in 2008 over 200 miners were massacred by the army, and this was not considered a breach of the Kimberley Process. Today in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) young school boys have no choice but to work in diamond mines, as school fees are too expensive, and will only be paid a pittance for the diamonds they find; the mining companies absorb about 70% of the value of each diamond.
The mining process is environmentally damaging, leading to contamination of groundwater by chemicals from open-pit mining, sinkhole formation and erosion. Like so many other Anthropocene processes, these impacts are felt most by poverty-stricken local communities in the ‘Global South’ who are stuck in an abusive, dependent relationship with the mining companies.
Meanwhile, the wealthy man in the West who buys a diamond ring, laying claim to his bride, is perhaps only concerned by the impact on the health of his wallet. Disregarding the environment, misogynistic connotations, or the lives involved in the supply chain, the diamond still somehow symbolises love and harmony. As the challenges of the Anthropocene intensify, and as scholars continue to join the dots between environmental change and economic and gendered inequalities, can we find new ways to symbolise our love for each other? And how can we ensure that the ‘other’ that is the subject of that love includes the invisible workers and natures that materials like diamonds bind us to?
Notes
The diamond engagement ring was contributed by Pearl Johns. Pearl says: “In my studies of Geography, I began to take a keen interest in questions of gender inequality and how they permeate throughout our lives. I was able to explore this more deeply in the ‘Human Geographies of the Anthropocene’ module and now plan to continue my investigations into the connections between patriarchy and the environment through an MSc in Global Health at King’s College London this year.”
A 2009 report, Diamonds in the Rough: Human Rights Abuses in the Marange Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe, details an investigation by Human Rights Watch into the Zimbabwean military’s violent takeover of the Marange diamond fields in October 2008 and calls on the Kimberley Process to take action.