Hostname: page-component-7f64f4797f-6fdxz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-04T03:15:55.179Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Waste and Potency: Making Men with Minerals in Guanajuato and Tucson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2011

Elizabeth Emma Ferry
Elizabeth Emma Ferry*
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
*
ferry@brandeis.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the mines of Guanajuato, Mexico, when miners drill and dynamite for metallic ore, they dislodge other substances. Among these are elements and compounds known as “minerals,” sold and collected in their own right as scientific specimens or aesthetic collectibles. These minerals often fetch thousands of dollars at mineral shows and collector showrooms in Tucson, Arizona and other mineral collecting hubs. In this process, minerals move from byproducts and even waste to highly valued commodities in their own right.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 914 - 944
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Anderson, Warwick. 2008. The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Barrow, Mark V. Jr. 2000. The Specimen Dealer: Entrepreneurial Natural History in America's Gilded Age. Journal of the History of Biology 33, 3: 493–534.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. The Forms of Capital. In Richardson, J., ed., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood), 241–58.Google Scholar
Burke, Timothy. 1996. Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Chalfin, Brenda. 2004. Shea Butter Republic: State Power, Global Markets, and the Making of an Indigenous Commodity. New York: Routledge Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Jane. 2003. Threads: Gender, Labor and Power in the Global Apparel Industry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Creighton, Colin. 1996. The Rise of the Male Breadwinner Family: A Reappraisal. Comparative Studies in Society and History 38, 2: 310–37.Google Scholar
De Grazia, Victoria and Furlough, Ellen, eds. 1996. The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. 2005a. Geologies of Power: Value Transformations of Mineral Specimens from Guanajuato, Mexico. American Ethnologist 32, 3: 420–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. 2005b. Not Ours Alone: Patrimony, Collectivity and Value in Contemporary Mexico. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. 2008. Rocks of Ages: Temporal Trajectories of Mexican Minerals. In Ferry, Elizabeth and Limbert, Mandana, eds., Timely Assets: The Politics of Resources and Their Temporalities. Santa Fe: SAR Press Advanced Seminar Series, 51–74.Google Scholar
Finn, Janet. 1997. Tracing the Veins: Of Copper, Culture and Community from Butte to Chuquicamata. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
FMR Associates, for the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau. 2007. Study of Economic Impact of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Showcase, Executive Summary. http://www.visittucson.org/includes/media/docs/Gem_ShowTracking.pdf.Google Scholar
Freeman, Carla. 2001. Is Local: Global as Feminine: Masculine? Rethinking the Gender of Globalization. Signs 26, 4: 1007–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graeber, David. 1996. Beads and Money: Notes toward a Theory of Wealth and Power. American Ethnologist 23, 1: 4–24.Google Scholar
Harris, Olivia. 2000. To Make the Earth Bear Fruit: Essays on Fertility, Work and Gender in Highland Bolivia. London: Ilas Series: Institute of Latin American Studies.Google Scholar
Hendrickson, Carole. 1996. Selling Guatemala: Maya Export Products in US Mail-order Catalogues. In Howes, David, ed., Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities. London: Routledge, 106–21.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 1997. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State. New York: Routledge Press.Google Scholar
Jáuregui, Aurora. 1999. Un Científico del Porfiriato Guanajuatense: Vicente Hernández Rodríguez. Guanajuato: Ediciones La Rana.Google Scholar
Jáuregui, Aurora. 2002. Ponciano Aguilar y su Circunstancia. Guanajuato: Ediciones La Rana.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. 1965. A Field Guide to the Gems and Minerals of Mexico. Mentone, Calif.: Gembooks.Google Scholar
Klubock, Thomas Miller. 1996. Working-Class Masculinity, Middle-Class Morality, and Labor Politics among Chilean Miners. Journal of Social History 30, 2: 435–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kondo, Dorinne. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1984 [1922]. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Meyer Cosío, Francisco. 1999. La Minería en Guanajuato: Denuncios, Minas, y Empresas (1898–1913). Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán/Universidad de Guanajuato.Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel. 1998. A Theory of Shopping. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney. 1985. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in World History. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Modern Girl around the World Research Group. 2009. The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Thomas P. 2007. Collector Profile: Kay Robertson and Her Mineral Collection. Mineralogical Record 38, 2: 125–35.Google Scholar
Moretti, Daniele. 2006. The Gender of the Gold: An Ethnographic and Historical Account of Women's Involvement in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in Mount Kaindi, Papua New Guinea. Oceania 76, 2: 133–49.Google Scholar
Myers, Fred. 2002. Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Nash, June. 1979. We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Palerm, Ángel. 1980. El Primer Sistema Económica Mundial. In Antropología y Marxismo. Mexico City: Editorial Nueva Imagen.Google Scholar
Pomian, Krzystzof. 1990. Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Ramamurthy, Priti. 2004. Why Is Buying a ‘Madras’ Cotton Shirt a Political Act?: A Feminist Commodity Chain Analysis. Feminist Studies 30, 3: 734–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roe, Alfred. 1990. Washington Roebling, His Life and His Minerals. Mineralogical Record 21, 1: 13–20.Google Scholar
Safa, Helen. 1995. The Myth of the Male Breadwinner: Women and Industrialization in the Caribbean. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Salzinger, Leslie. 2003. Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico's Global Factories. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Santamaría, Francisco Javier. 1959. Diccionario de Mejicanismos. Mexico City: Ediciones Porrua.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan Wallach. 1999. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Shieldhouse, Richard. 2010. The Impact of World Heritage on Tourism and the Integrity of Heritage: One Case from Mexico. Paper delivered at Laval University conference, “World Heritage and Tourism: Managing for the Global and the Local.”Google Scholar
Sinkankas, John. 1964. Mineralogy for Amateurs. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan. 1993. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 1982. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Tortolero Cervantes, Yolia. 1992. Vida Cotidiana de Mineros Guanajuatenses, Siglo XX. Tésis de Licenciatura, Escuela de Filosofía, Historia, y Letras, Universidad de Guanajuato.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna. 2009. Supply Chains and the Human Condition. Rethinking Marxism 21, 2: 148–76.Google Scholar
United States Department of the Interior. 1996. Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms Compiled and Edited by the Staff of the U.S. Bureau of Mines. 2d ed.http://xmlwords.infomine.com/xmlwords.htm.Google Scholar
Villanueva, Hecky. 2007. Desert Pirates on the Ultimate Treasure Hunt? The Annual Tucson Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Showcase. MS.Google Scholar
Wallace, Terry, Francis, Carl, Megaw, Peter K. M., and Hall-Wallace, Michele. 1999. Silver Mineralogy of Guanajuato Mining District, Guanajuato, Mexico. Mineralogical Record (Mar.) 30, 2: 84–85.Google Scholar
Watts, Michael J. 2004. Are Hogs Like Chickens? Enclosure and Mechanization in Two “White Meat” Filiéres. In Hughes, A. and Reimer, S., eds., Geographies of Commodity Chains. New York: Routledge Press, 39–62.Google Scholar
West, Paige. 2006. Conservation in Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wight, Quintin. 2007. Obituary: Juanita Curtis. Mineralogical Record 38, 2: 91–92.Google Scholar
Wilson, Wendell E. 1994. The History of Mineral Collecting: 1530–1799. Tucson: Mineralogical Record.Google Scholar
Wright, Melissa W. 2003. The Politics of Relocation: Gender, Nationality and Value in a Mexican Maquiladora. In Vila, Pablo, ed., Ethnography at the Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 23–45.Google Scholar