Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T16:35:51.312Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

WHO OWNS THE DIAMONDS? THE OCCULT ECO-NOMY OF DIAMOND MINING IN SIERRA LEONE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2014

Lorenzo D'Angelo
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Much of the literature on Sierra Leonean diamonds focuses on the role that this mineral resource played in the recent civil conflict (1991–2002). However, the political-economic perspective that is common to these analyses has lost sight of the main actors in this social reality. What do miners think of diamonds? Like their Malagasy colleagues engaged in the search for sapphires, the Sierra Leonean diamond miners often maintain that they do not know what diamonds could possibly be used for. What is specific to the diamond mining areas in this West African country is that suspicions and fantasies about the uses of diamonds go hand in hand with the idea that these precious stones belong to invisible spiritual entities known locally as djinns or dεbul dεn. Although this article aims to analyse the occult imaginary of diamond miners, it takes a different stand from the occult economies approach. By combining a historical-imaginative perspective with a historical and ecological one, this article intends to highlight the indissoluble interweaving of material and imaginative processes of artisanal diamond production in the context of Sierra Leone's mines.

Résumé

L'essentiel de la littérature consacrée aux diamants de la Sierra Leone porte sur le rôle qu'a joué cette ressource minérale dans le conflit civil récent (1991–2002). Or, la perspective politico-économique commune à ces analyses a perdu de vue les principaux acteurs de cette réalité sociale. Que pensent les mineurs des diamants ? Tout comme leurs homologues malgaches en quête de saphirs, les mineurs de diamants de la Sierra Leone soutiennent souvent qu'ils ne savent pas à quoi peuvent servir les diamants. Ce qui est spécifique aux zones minières de diamants de ce pays d'Afrique de l'Ouest est le fait que les soupçons et les fantasmes concernant l'utilisation des diamants vont de pair avec l'idée que ces pierres précieuses appartiennent à des entités spirituelles invisibles connues localement sous le nom de djinns ou dεbul dεn. Bien qu'il vise à analyser l'imaginaire occulte des mineurs de diamants, cet article prend une position différente concernant l'approche des économies occultes. En conjuguant une perspective historico-imaginative et une perspective historico-écologique, cet article entend souligner l'imbrication indissoluble de processus matériels et imaginatifs de production artisanale de diamants dans le contexte des mines de la Sierra Leone.

Type
Hidden Potential
Information
Africa , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 269 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Amir-Moezzi, M. A. (ed.) (2007) Dictionnaire du Coran. Paris: Lafont.Google Scholar
Bird-David, N. (1999) ‘“Animism revisited”: personhood, environment, and relational epistemology’, Current Anthropology (40): 67–91.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, C. (1990) ‘“No success without struggle”: social mobility and hardship for foster children in Sierra Leone’, Man 25 (1): 70–88.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, C. and Robey, K. M. (1986) ‘Arabic literacy and secrecy among the Mende of Sierra Leone’, Man 21 (2): 202–26.Google Scholar
Brown, C. A. (2003) ‘We Were All Slaves’: African miners, culture, and resistance at the Enugu government colliery. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (1999) ‘Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony’, American Ethnologist 26 (2): 279–303.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (2000) ‘Millennial capitalism: first thoughts on a second coming’, Public Culture 12 (2): 291–343.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (2003) ‘Ethnography on an awkward scale: postcolonial anthropology and the violence of abstraction’, Ethnography 4 (2): 147–79.Google Scholar
Conteh, J. S. (1979) ‘Diamond mining and Kono religious institutions: a study in social change’. PhD thesis, Indiana University.Google Scholar
D'Angelo, L. (2011) ‘L'eco-nomia occulta delle miniere di diamante della Sierra Leone’. PhD thesis, University of Milano-Bicocca.Google Scholar
D'Angelo, L. (forthcoming) ‘Changing environments, occult protests and social memories in Sierra Leone’, Social Evolution and History.Google Scholar
De Boeck, F. (1998) ‘Domesticating diamonds and dollars: identity, expenditure and sharing in Southwestern Zaire (1984–1997)’, Development and Change 29: 777–810.Google Scholar
De Boeck, F. (2000 ) ‘ Borderland breccia: the mutant hero in the historical imagination of a Central-African diamond frontier’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 1 (2).Google Scholar
De Boeck, F. (2001) ‘ Garimpeiro worlds: digging, dying & “hunting” for diamonds in Angola’, Review of African Political Economy 90: 549–62.Google Scholar
Diamonds and Human Security Project (2004) Diamond Industry Annual Review. Ottawa and Freetown, Sierra Leone: Partnership Africa Canada/Network Movement for Justice and Development.Google Scholar
Fanthorpe, R. and Maconachie, R. (2010) ‘Beyond the “crisis of youth”? Mining, farming, and civil society in post-war Sierra Leone’, African Affairs 109 (435): 251–72.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. (1999) Expectations of Modernity: myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ferme, M. C. (2001) The Underneath of Things: violence, history and the everyday in Sierra Leone. Berkeley CA and London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Fithen, D. C. (1999) ‘Diamonds and war in Sierra Leone: cultural strategies for commercial adaptation to endemic low-intensity conflict’. PhD thesis, University College London.Google Scholar
Frost, D. (2012) From the Pit to the Market: politics and the diamond economy in Sierra Leone. Woodbridge: James Currey.Google Scholar
Fyle, C. N. and Jones, E. D. (eds) (1980) A Krio-English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Gorz, A. (2003) L'Immatériel: connaissance, valeur et capital. Paris: Galilée.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. (1996) ‘Hunting and gathering as ways of perceiving the environment’ in Ellen, R. F. and Fukui, K. (eds), Defining Nature: culture, ecology and domestication. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. (1999) ‘Comments’, Current Anthropology 40: 81–2.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London and New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jackson, M. (1977) ‘Sacrifice and social structure among the Kuranko. Part III: sacrifice and social structure’, Africa 47 (2): 123–39.Google Scholar
Jackson, M. (1989) Paths toward a Clearing: radical empiricism and ethnographic enquiry. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, M. (1998) Minima Ethnographica: intersubjectivity and the anthropological project. Chicago IL and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kirsch, S. (2004) ‘Changing views of place and time along the Ok Tedi’ in Rumsey, A. and Weiner, J. (eds), Mining and Indigenous Lifeworlds in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Wantage: Sean Kingston.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: an introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Leach, M. (1992) ‘Women's crop in women's spaces: gender relations in Mende rice farming’ in Croll, E. and Parkin, D. (eds), Bush Base: forest farm, culture, environment and development. London and New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leach, M. (2000) ‘New shapes to shift: war, parks and the hunting person in modern West Africa’, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 6: 577–95.Google Scholar
Levin, E. A. (2005) ‘From poverty and war to prosperity and peace? Sustainable livelihoods and innovation in governance of artisanal diamond mining in Kono District, Sierra Leone’. MA thesis, University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1970) The German Ideology. New York NY: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Masquelier, A. (2000) ‘Of headhunters and cannibals: migrancy, labor, and consumption in the Mawri imagination’, Cultural Anthropology 15 (1): 84–126.Google Scholar
Masquelier, A. (2002) ‘Road to mythographies: space, mobility, and the historical imagination in postcolonial Niger’, American Ethnologist 29 (4): 829–56.Google Scholar
MMR (2005) Details of Policy Measures Relating to Small Scale and Artisanal Mining and Marketing of Precious Stones. Freetown, Sierra Leone: Ministry of Mineral Resources (MMR).Google Scholar
Nash, J. (1993) We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: dependency and exploitation in Bolivian tin mines. New York NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Neary, M. and Taylor, G. (1998) ‘Marx and the magic of money: towards an alchemy of capital’, Historical Materialism 2 (1): 99–117.Google Scholar
Partnership Africa Canada and Global Witness (2004) Rich Man, Poor Man. Development Diamonds and Poverty Diamonds: the potential for change in artisanal alluvial diamonds fields of Africa. Ottawa and Washington DC: Partnership Africa Canada and Global Witness Publishing Inc.Google Scholar
Peters, K. (2012) ‘The crisis of youth in postwar Sierra Leone: problem solved?’, Africa Today 58 (2): 129–53.Google Scholar
Pijpers, R. (2010) ‘When diamonds go bust: contextualising livelihood changes in rural Sierra Leone’, Journal of International Development 23: 1068–79.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. (2007) ‘Scotland Yard in the bush: medicine murders, child witches and the construction of the occult: a literature review’, Africa 77 (2): 272–83.Google Scholar
Reno, W. (1995) Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, P. (1996) ‘Chimpanzees, diamonds and war: the discourse of global environmental change and local violence on the Liberia–Sierra Leone border’ in Moore, H. L. (ed.), The Future of Anthropological Knowledge. London and New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Richards, P., Bah, K. and Vincent, J. (2004) Social Capital and Survival: prospects for community-driven development in post-conflict Sierra Leone. Washington DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Robotham, D. (2005) ‘Political economy’ in Carrier, J. G. (ed.), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Shaw, R. (1992) ‘Dreaming as accomplishment: power, the individual and Temne divination’ in Jedrej, M. C. and Shaw, R. (eds), Dreaming, Religion and Society in Africa. Leiden, New York NY and Cologne: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Shaw, R. (2000) ‘“Tok af, tok lef”: a political economy of Temne techniques of secrecy and self’ in Karp, I. and Masolo, D. A. (eds), African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Shaw, R. (2002) Memories of the Slave Trade: ritual and the historical imagination in Sierra Leone. Chicago IL and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shaw, R. (2009) ‘Mami Wata and the Sierra Leone diamonds: wealth and enslavement in men's dreams and the state economy’ in Drewal, H. J. (ed.), Sacred Waters: arts for Mami Wata and other water spirits in Africa and the Afro-Atlantic world. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Shepler, S. (2012) ‘The real and symbolic importance of food in war: hunger pains and big men's bellies in Sierra Leone’, Africa Today 58 (2): 43–56.Google Scholar
Skinner, D. E. (1978) ‘Mande settlement and the development of Islamic institutions in Sierra Leone’, International Journal of African Historical Studies XI (1): 32–62.Google Scholar
Thayer, S. (1983) ‘Nature, culture, and the supernatural among the Susu’, American Ethnologist 10 (1): 118–32.Google Scholar
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2011) Human Development Report 2011. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Utas, M. (2008) ‘Abject heroes: marginalised youth, modernity and violent pathways of the Liberian civil war’ in Hart, J. (ed.), Years of Conflict: adolescence, political violence and displacement. New York NY and Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
van der Laan, H. L. (1965) The Sierra Leone Diamonds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van der Laan, H. L. (1975) The Lebanese Traders in Sierra Leone. The Hague and Paris: Mouton & Co.Google Scholar
Walsh, A. (2004) ‘In the wake of things: speculating in and about sapphires in northern Madagascar’, American Anthropologist 106 (2): 225–37.Google Scholar
Werthmann, K. (2003) ‘Cowries, gold and “bitter money”: gold mining and notions of ill-gotten wealth in Burkina Faso’, Paideuma 49: 105–24.Google Scholar
Zack-Williams, A. (1995) Tributors, Supporters and Merchant Capital: mining and underdevelopment in Sierra Leone. Aldershot and Brookfield VT: Avebury.Google Scholar