Object Constitution and Limits of Global Governance: The Kimberley Process

• In Event: Poster Session: Gender and Comparative and International Politics & International Relations Theory
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: International Relations Theory

Abstract

In contrast to studying Global Governance via its actors, some scholars propose a turn to the objects of Global Governance and how they are constituted. Existing literature elaborates the processes of object constitution and the knowledge production that informs these processes, but does not adequately account for issues of power and inequality in the construction of international problems. To address this issue, I argue that racial capitalism and colonial modes of knowledge production limit the kinds of objects that are produced in Global Governance. In illustrating this theoretical intervention, I use evidence from the construction of diamond regulation as an international problem, or object of global governance. I contend that diamond regulation was constructed through a preoccupation with violence at the extremities (i.e. civil war, to the exclusion of systemic labor violence), was translated to Western audiences through a reliance on racist colonial era narratives, and was problematized as an issue of licit/illicit supply chain movements. Furthermore, I show that constituting diamond regulation in this way constrained the ensuing global intervention – the Kimberley Process (KP). As a result, the Kimberley Process unevenly addressed extraction, accumulation, and labor violence in diamond regulation despite being designed by an inclusive, representative set of actors including postcolonial states. The KP’s uneven application therefore moderated violence only insofar as it protected consumption and profitability. In connecting the constitution of diamond regulation with the ensuing regulation, I emphasize the role of non-neutral knowledge production about diamond-producing countries by humanitarians, states, and industry and suggest an alternative, labor-led production of knowledge as the focal point for constituting objects of Global Governance.

Author

• Cameron Macaskill