Transparency has become a ubiquitous presence in seemingly every sphere of social, economic, and political life. Yet, for all the claims that transparency works, little attention has been paid to how it works even when it fails to achieve its goals. Instead of assuming that transparency is itself transparent, this book questions the technological practices, material qualities, and institutional standards producing transparency in extractive, commodity trading, and agricultural sites. Furthermore, it asks: how is transparency certified and standardized? How is it regimented by 'ethical' and 'responsible' businesses, or valued by traders and investors, from auction rooms to sustainability reports? The contributions bring nuanced answers to these questions, approaching transparency through four key organizing concepts, namely disclosure, immediacy, trust, and truth. These are concepts that anchor the making of transparency across the lifespan of global commodities. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
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'For decades, transparency has been a mantra, a passepartout to open the doors of business and bureaucratic administrations worldwide, a notion so central to many discourses across fields that it has almost become transparent itself. Like a prism, this volume shines a light on what transparency actually is, and how it is produced and made 'tangible' through different discourses and practices. The editors and an incredible range of contributors reflect theoretically and ethnographically on the paradoxes of transparency, making an invaluable contribution to debates on global network production, commodities and value creation, audit cultures, and state and non-state bureaucracies. Essential reading for scholars and practitioners alike, this book challenges us to rethink what transparency really means, and what it obscures.' Lorenzo D'Angelo, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy 'The supply chains that comprise the global economy have never received so much attention or been more controversial, making this novel examination of the protocols and practices of transparency especially timely and valuable.' Stuart Kirsch, University of Michigan 'Brilliantly, this volume gives form to the how of 'transparency'. Pushed beyond its development-mantra as a self-evident and neutral disclosure device, transparency, in these authors' telling, is made through institutional, economic, and technological arrangements. Their rich ethnography reveals the consequential political and social effects when transparency is understood as a plurivalent site and mode for producing global value.' Suzana Sawyer, University of California, Davis
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Ethnographic accounts from diverse regions and commodity chains examine how transparency works as a global value.
Acknowledgements; Introduction: making transparency visible Matthieu
Bolay, Filipe Calvão, Elizabeth Ferry and Alex Golub; Part I. Disclosure:
1.
Indian tea, postcolonial governance, and the uses of transparency Sarah
Besky;
2. Transparency and the meaning of sustainability Matthew Archer;
3.
Opaque exchange: concealment, disclosure, and asymmetric transactions in the
Indian Ocean sapphire trade Nethra Samarawickrema; Part II. Immediacy:
4.
Coercive expertise and the paradox of responsible extraction in the ruby
trade in Mozambique Brian Brazeal;
5. The social life of digital transparency
Filipe Calvão and Emanuel Hermann;
6. 'I never looked into a diamond': the
transparent ignorance of the diamond broker Sam Shuman; Part III. Trust:
7.
Worth its weight: value-making with gold and transparency Elizabeth Ferry;
8.
Lenses of transparency: optical disjunctures around mining and the future in
Greenland's nation-building project Les Field;
9. Transparency and trust in
DIY aid Andrew Walsh; Part IV. Truth:
10. Transparency and truth in organic
certification Shaila Seshia Galvin;
11. Discreet transparency: dealing in
plural veridictions in Swiss gold refineries Matthieu Bolay;
12. How to count
vanilla: transparency trade-offs in organic certification Sarah Osterhoudt;
Methodological appendix: Making global comparison possible? Filipe Calvão and
Matthieu Bolay; Index.
Filipe Calvão is an economic and environmental anthropologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute. His research explores the politics, ecologies, and economies of mineral extraction in postcolonial Africa. Currently, he investigates the intersection of digitalization, labor, and extractivism, with a particular focus on crypto-mining. His research has been published in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Annual Review of Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Political Geography, and Extractive Industries and Society. In addition to being a trained gemmologist and diamond grader, he is the co-editor of the Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology. Previously, he led the SNSF project 'Transparency: Qualities and Technologies of the Global Gemstone Industry' and is now the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council's Starting Grant 'Synthetic Lives: The Futures of Mining.' Matthieu Bolay is a social anthropologist and an Associate Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO). He was previously at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva and at the University of Bern, where he leads the SNSF Ambizione project Arbitral Reasoning in the Legal Topographies of Global Extraction. His research covers issues related to migration and mobility, extractivism, labour, valuation and expertise. He is co-editor of the Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology. Among other journals, his work has been published in the American Ethnologist, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, Critique of Anthropology, Resources Policy, Politique Africaine, Political Geography, and The Extractive Industries and Society. Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Her work includes Not Ours Alone: Patrimony, Value, and Collectivity in Contemporary Mexico (2005); Minerals, Collecting, and Value across the US-Mexico Border (2013); and La Batea (with Stephen Ferry) (2017), which won the 2019 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, among other awards. She is co-editor of Timely Assets: The Politics of Resources and Temporalities (2010) and The Anthropology of Precious Minerals (2019). She is currently writing a book about gold as a physical object in finance and mining.
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