Pearling Worlds

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Pearling Worlds: A Comparative Ethnography From the pages of memoirs to travelogues, from scholarly archeological, archival, maritime history to mythology, the story of pearls and pearling that span over 7,000 years served as a tie that bound diverse communities along the bustling shores and trading routes. Pearling bears witness to human ingenuity working in harmony and ironically in tension with nature’s bounty. It tells a story of the rise and fall of cities and ports as well as it unveils the tripartite celebrations of pearls in museum exhibitions, trading narratives and in high-end retail spaces bridging the gap between past and present. Whether displayed in a museum or told in an oral narrative, each pearl carries with it the weight of history illuminating the alchemy of transforming raw substances into objects of fascination and from aesthetic appreciation to ethical considerations about its fetishisms. This seminar will examine pearling in diverse locations in the Gulf Region, China, Japan Western Australia and Tahiti to compare and contrast different hierarchies, gendered practices and art forms as well as emerging forms of consumption of ethically resourced gems. The seminar will be theoretically situated in what anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls “the social life of things,” an approach that brings together conceptual tools to understand the multifaceted dynamics of pearling across environments and cultures. The seminar will cover readings on archeology, history, cultural studies and memoirs of traders and observers who chronicled the subtilities enmeshed in these lustrous gems.