ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the extraction of and trade in minerals essential to produce most of the electronic products we now associate with the digital age. In the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, various state-sponsored and independent militias have long fought to control the production and circulation of these minerals, often through extra-legal means (forced labor, theft, intimation, terror). This chapter analyzes a series of relationships that have emerged between evolving forms of fetishization, on the one hand, and the material experiences produced through the trafficking in conflict minerals, on the other.
