ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author suggests that the moment when diamonds are traded provides inestimable clues to understand materials in processes of valuation, the author seeks to demonstrate how the value of one diamond stone is produced and transformed with other circulating materials in the trading context. The purest diamond is an emblematic ideation of an elusive and notoriously complex ethnographic object, the commodity. It is capricious and shifting materiality, challenging perceived notions of wants and desires, use and exchange value and rendered to consumers as a veritable icon of value fetishization, is somewhat paradoxical in that diamonds are the only gemstone that is abundant in nature. More significantly, diamonds also emerge as an unstable material by way of a ritualized negotiation. The trader's table is the centrepiece of diamond trading rooms, where beneath a fluorescent light one commonly finds a stack of white sheets of paper providing an initial colour contrast for grading purposes.
