Is the Diamond Industry Still Corrupt?

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Hammer and Park highlight how technology strengthens racial colonial capitalism. They state that "the metropolitan population created an investment of the veil that prevents them coming to terms with the supply chain and its dramatic human and natural toil" (Hammer and Park 2021:231). 

There is a certain disconnect between the individual buying and goods and the individuals who source out these goods, this concept can be defined by the global veil. Many places use labor in countries that have been former colonies to exploit people for cheap and unsafe labor. 

Despite, drastically reducing the number of conflict diamonds existing, many diamonds are still resourced through exploitation. For example the Human Rights Watch shed light on how many diamond companies do not know where their diamonds come from. Further, the Kimberley process, the process that initially prevented conflict diamonds, defined conflict diamonds as 'rough diamonds used to finance wars against governments'. This definition is far too specific, although the diamond may not have been to fund a war, it still could have been obtained through exploitation. 

The global veil "protects the metropolitan world from reckoning with the kind of violence upon which its comforts depend"(Hammer and Park 2021:230). Many of the diamonds that are being marketed in the US come at the expense of people in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Diamonds have always been something people seeked out, people are always getting married, getting proposed to and these stones often symbolise that.

Further, lab-grown diamonds are often given a lesser value as diamonds from the earth. Despite science being able to create 100% real diamonds, diamonds from the ground are perceived to have more value.   


Hammer, Ricarda and Park, Tina M. 2021. “The Ghost in the Algorithm: Racial Colonial     Capitalism and the Digital Age.” Political Power and Social Theory 38: 221-249.

Baker, Aryn. “Why the Blood Diamond Trade Won’t Die.” TIME.com, TIME, 2019, time.com/blood-diamonds/.

Nicole. “MiaDonna — Blood Diamonds in 2020 - What Most Jewelers Don’t Want You to Know.” MiaDonna, 9 July 2020, www.miadonna.com/blogs/news/blood-diamonds-in-2020-what-most-jewelers-dont-want-you-to-know.

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