The modern consumption theories, which are particularly developed in the West, teach that the development and depth levels (amount and quantity) of consuming some kind of goods do not depend merely on the level of population income. The people’s national character and mentality taking their definite and specific shape in goods – in our case in diamond jewelry - are of vital significance.
There is much talk going on about the Russian national character and Russian mentality. However, common verbiage, though often correct, is focused on fundamental phenomena such as power, family, war, fellowship, attitude to death and sexual taboos. For instance, it is popular to promote one fruitful idea saying that the “Russians” are not an ethnicity, but a way of world perception (for example, within the frames of fuzzy logic); a decision-making method in abnormal situations; fellow mutualism as completely opposed to mandatory collectivism; and existence of suppression machinery parallel to that of the state (a behaviour code based on criminal “notions”).
The subject of influence exerted by the national character on diamond goods consumption in Russia has actually not been elaborated. There are shallow, although somewhat fixed comparative speculations related to other cultural communities, as for instance the Anglo-Saxon, Chinese, Brazilian and some other ones.
Meanwhile, due to unexpectedly wonton growth of diamond jewelry consumption (during the 10 years passed from 1997 to 2007 retail sales went up 10 times from $200 to $2,000 million) the diamond consumption phenomenon ceased to be a peripheral problem turning into a social phenomenon. The mass-scale (and willing) consumption of diamond jewelry unprecedented in Russian history makes vital the problem of articulating promising and potential requirements in terms of national and cultural practices in individual behaviour within the Russian society.
To give high-quality market demand outlooks, experts are obliged to analyze not so much the essence of diamond demand from these or other social groups, but the ways these requirements are being formulated (made clear) in every individual. Besides, the society will benefit from pluralism in discussing diamond demand: this will bring national self-assessment to a higher level improving in this way the people’s life quality.
To generate a mathematical model of diamond consumption in the Russian Federation for 2010-2020 one will also need (besides the macroeconomic development outlook in this country) a “Model of socio-cultural ways of rough diamond interpretations and polished diamond communications” (hereinafter referred to as “Model”).
The Model may be based on historically and culturally specific set of discursive resources available for members of various groups of citizens (and non-citizens) in the Russian Federation to assert and emphasize their diamond demands. The set of discursive resources includes:
1. idioms (for example, thesis of demand, thesis of rights, thesis of interests);
2. lexicon open to assert diamond demands in terms of ethically recognized idioms (for example, aesthetic lexicon, romantic, religious, feminist, provocative, therapeutic, corporate, and other lexicons);
3. argumentation paradigms having authority in conflicts of diamond requirements of various intensity and direction (for example, by way of addressing experts or imitating cult-heroes but never by way of state regulations or government decrees or democratic voting);
4. traditions based on stories or narrations helping to generate group biographies reflecting social identity of particular diamond consumers (for example, diamond traditions of businessmen, diamond whims of artistic bohema, jewelry traditions of authoritative criminal leaders);
5. individualization methods, in other words, those forms in which various discourses position their addressees as subjects (regular or marginal, leading or being led, impressible or independent, diamond activists and antagonists);
The modern Russian society differentiation, the shades in self-assessments and self-irony, multiplication of behavioural patterns – all this shifted (transformed) linear diamond consumption based on the size of one’s wallet into a relationship category characterizing and shaping one’s personality. Diamond ceased to be a thing pointing to the level of one’s prosperity. It turned into something more, which is yet to be researched.
The will to knowledge is the driving force of the Russian civilization. Diamond knowledge of one’s self is capable to produce synergetic effect in the development of this country in the coming decades.
Vladimir Teslenko
