Article ID: CBB724707256

Judging the Perle Japonaise: The Techno-Legal Separation of Culture from Nature in 1920s Paris (October 2021)

unapi

This article traces the making of a techno-legal apparatus to regulate a new object: the "cultured" pearl. In the early 1920s, round pearls cultivated on Japanese farms provoked alarm within the Paris association whose members traded more pearls than anywhere in Europe. Despite their claims to be connoisseurs of surfaces, anti-cultivation pearl dealers in Paris asserted that a pearl's identity could only be ascertained by examining its inner structure. By mid-decade, dedicated pearl testing laboratories appeared and supported French court rulings about what to call the products of Japanese pearl cultivation in relation to "natural" pearls. The meanings of nature and culture were not fixed, but transformed in the 1920s, amid legal and technical efforts to know la perle japonaise inside out.

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Authors & Contributors
Lipinski, T. A.
Debjani Bhattacharya
Brian Hochman
Armando Gervasoni
Anne-Marie Coles
Martínez, Julia
Concepts
Technology and law
Technology and government
Safety regulations
Surveillance
Privacy
Environmental history
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
Modern
18th century
Places
France
United States
Japan
Germany
Australia
Great Britain
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