Strategic minerals such as uranium, diamonds, and rare earth elements circulate through complex global networks whose origins and trajectories have often been difficult to verify. From extraction sites to processing facilities, manufacturing hubs, end users, and waste repositories, the pathways of these materials have frequently remained opaque. Yet since the mid-twentieth century, the capacity to trace their origin and movement has become a central instrument of global governance. Techniques designed to identify provenance and monitor circulation increasingly underpin efforts to regulate nuclear proliferation, control conflict minerals, and ensure corporate and environmental accountability. In this context, traceability does not simply produce knowledge about materials; it generates the power to control them.
This paper asks when and how tracing minerals became a key mechanism of global control. Focusing especially on methods that trace diamonds, it examines the emergence of traceability practices across the second half of the twentieth century and into the present. It also explores the development of scientific, technical, and bureaucratic methods used to track strategic resources across transnational supply chains. By situating these techniques within broader geopolitical concerns—from Cold War nuclear monitoring to contemporary regimes governing critical minerals—the paper argues that traceability systems evolved alongside expanding infrastructures of global regulation.
Speaker
Maria Rentetzi
Chair of Science, Technology and Gender Studies, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen–Nürnberg
Fellow on Science Diplomacy, Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies (AIAS)