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Ethnography Paper

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Ethnographic Paper

I believe that the Global Alternatives Fair went very well overall. There was so much to learn from the other groups about their commodities. It’s so surprising how we don’t ourselves know of the small facts about things that we eat each day, such as, sugar, tuna, water – as to where they come from, what process they undergo to reach the consumer etc. The same is the case with other things that are so easily available in the market such as jewelry – diamonds, gold, platinum etc. does anyone actually ever stop to think where these gems and stones come from? Does anyone bother to even try and find out how they are mined and if the people who are working in those mines to get these stones to us are actually done justice to or not? No. We do not bother about these questions because we are getting what we want, a one carat or a two carat stone in our finger. It is meant to be there because we worked hard to save up money for it so that we can happily wear it and show it off as well. But none of us stop to think even once as to how many fingers might be lost in the process of finding that one diamond. This was exactly what we tried to explain to our audience at the fair. Not many people knew about how the diamonds are mined and how does the mining impact the environment and the people who live near that area. James Pang stopped by to learn about alluvial mining. He said that he “thought that diamond mining was a process in which diamonds were tapped away.” Apart from that, we also educated our audience about the Kimberley Process as many did not know about the concept of blood diamonds. Pang said, “I thought that blood diamonds came from children.” Another student, Luis Valle, also said that “he did not know about the Kimberley Process or its success.” He actually learnt the stats and realized how many diamonds come from Africa. The

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