Overview

The Eyes of the World focuses on the lives and experiences of Eastern Congolese people involved in extracting and transporting the minerals needed for digital devices. The digital devices that define our era exist not only because of Silicon Valley innovations, but due to a burgeoning trade in dense, artisanally mined substances like tantalum, tin, and tungsten. As James H. Smith argues, in the Eastern DR Congo these minerals are also socially dense, fueling movement and collaborations that encompass diverse actors, geographies, temporalities, and dimensions.   Based on long-term research, The Eyes of the World examines how Eastern Congolese understand the work in which they are engaged, the forces pitted against them, and the total process through which substances in the earth and forest are converted into commodified resources. Smith shows how the experience of violent dispossession has fueled a bottom-up social theory that valorizes movement and collaboration—one that directly confronts tracking initiatives designed to ensure that the minerals in digital devices are “conflict free” by excluding certain actors and places. While global watch groups espouse Western-style bureaucratic methods that prioritize transparency and purity, Smith explains why Congolese understand these exclusionary interventions as potentially violent and predatory efforts to further separate them and their histories from supposedly “clean” technologies.

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Reviews

Blood minerals: a global cause 'intended to do one thing, but under the surface, invisible to many, . . . doing something else.' Smith offers a whirlwind of research on the varied actors who extract coltan-often in the ruins of colonial concessions-making it available to international markets. The Eyes of the World skillfully cuts through metropolitan stereotypes, drawing readers instead into the astounding vortex of the mines. * Anna Tsing, coeditor of Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene * A riveting, wonderful potpourri of story, theory, and history. The Eyes of the World hugs closely to people's lives, words, and theories, vividly unpacking multiple dimensions of movement in the mining of those digital minerals that end up in global devices. One of the most brilliant, important, and utterly teachable ethnographies to appear on Congo in a long time. * Nancy Rose Hunt, author of A Nervous State: Violence, Reveries, and Remedies in Colonial Congo * Smith gives us a rare glimpse into the complex dynamics of otherwise largely invisible local worlds that do nonetheless matter on a global scale. A great observer and talented narrator, he convincingly argues how, in the vortex of these Congolese mining worlds, destructive forms of extra-statecraft undid existing socio-cultural assemblages while generating the basis for new transformative orders. * Filip De Boeck, author of Suturing the City: Living Together in Congo's Urban Worlds *

Chock-full of fascinating details on the people and communities that have lived off mining in the chaos of the wars in Congo. * Foreign Affairs * Blood minerals: a global cause 'intended to do one thing, but under the surface, invisible to many, . . . doing something else.' Smith offers a whirlwind of research on the varied actors who extract coltan-often in the ruins of colonial concessions-making it available to international markets. The Eyes of the World skillfully cuts through metropolitan stereotypes, drawing readers instead into the astounding vortex of the mines. * Anna Tsing, coeditor of Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene * A riveting, wonderful potpourri of story, theory, and history. The Eyes of the World hugs closely to people's lives, words, and theories, vividly unpacking multiple dimensions of movement in the mining of those digital minerals that end up in global devices. One of the most brilliant, important, and utterly teachable ethnographies to appear on Congo in a long time. * Nancy Rose Hunt, author of A Nervous State: Violence, Reveries, and Remedies in Colonial Congo * Smith gives us a rare glimpse into the complex dynamics of otherwise largely invisible local worlds that do nonetheless matter on a global scale. A great observer and talented narrator, he convincingly argues how, in the vortex of these Congolese mining worlds, destructive forms of extra-statecraft undid existing socio-cultural assemblages while generating the basis for new transformative orders. * Filip De Boeck, author of Suturing the City: Living Together in Congo's Urban Worlds *

Author Information

James H. Smith is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Bewitching Development, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coauthor of Email from Ngeti.

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