Diamonds: The Hope Diamond In The World

Diamonds. These small and rare rocks have been considered prized possessions throughout the ages. Diamonds are as old as the earth itself, and ever since their discovery they have captivated humans. Diamonds have come to represent many things, but in this paper, I will focus on power. I will track a certain diamond through its’ dated 350-year period, and use it to understand the individuals who owned it and the power it gave them. The diamond I refer to is the hope diamond.
The Hope diamond is the largest blue diamond in the world. The diamond originally weighed an impressive 112 carats, although it has since been cut down to a still staggering 45.52 carats. It is currently held in the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. were it is a hotly visited item. The diamond has an impressive history, and in order to study that history, it is first important to understand the individuals who owned it.
Over its …show more content…
McGuire materialistic objects, such as the Hope diamond, show “The exercise of power through the reproduction of the material world” (6-7). The diamond is not only a materialistic object but also an object of power and domination. The diamond shows “the complexity of the relationship between ownership and use of material goods, economic status, inequality and meaning (Lury 11).” Power has many different meanings, in this essay I will display how different people used, abused and sometimes even loosed their power. The owners of the Hope diamond used it as a symbol of power and domination. In this essay, I will use Robert Paynter and Randall H. McGuire’s definition of domination as the “exercise of power through control of resources” (10). The term resource mainly refers to wealth, which Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro define as, “one’s accumulated assets and resources” (Yosso 77). Now that I have defined power and wealth, let us start off the journey of the Hope diamond with one of its more popular owner, King Louis