Seller and Consumer Activists in the World of Canadian Diamonds: A Case of Italian Political Consumerism

By contextualizing this analysis in two Italian jewelry stores that sell Canadian ethical diamonds, the purpose of this study is to understand both how the concept of ethics applied to jewelry is explained by jewelers and to investigate consumers' decision criteria in choosing jewelry set with ethical diamonds mined in Canada over other diamond types. To explain the behaviour of the actors involved, we applied the concept of "political consumerism" through which we understood the people interviewed as "ethical seller activists" and "ethical consumer activists". In order to understand how the issue of Canadian ethical diamond is narrated by the former and understood by the latter, we used Thematic Analysis and Performance Analysis through which it was possible to analyze the ethical rhetoric during the buying and selling of jewelry on which Canadian ethical diamonds are mounted. Taking the concept of "authentic space", understood as the context in which the ethical rhetoric related to Canadian ethical diamond is manifested, we applied the theory of "the destorification of the negative" to explain how the diamonds mined in Canada allows the people involved to think that their buying and selling serves to reduce illicit socio-economic practices related to the diamond trade.