In this chapter, I consider how transparency and gold are established and maintained as “global values” and how actors differently positioned within gold markets seek to align them, with greater and lesser degrees of success. I trace how this happens in three clusters of transparency projects: certification schemes and voluntary frameworks for mining companies; efforts to use blockchain technologies to increase transparency in the supply chain; and efforts to verify (and perform the verification of) gold’s presence in European central banks, especially the Deutsche Bundesbank. Exploring these specific sites where transparency and gold convene, both supporting and tugging against each other, allows us to consider transparency from a different angle than is found in many other discussions, viewing gold and transparency as engaged in competitive processes of value-making (and unmaking).

Building upon the ambiguous status of gold as both a monetary asset and a commodity, this chapter interrogates the plural veridictions that support industry claims to responsible business conduct. Through a chronicle of the political and legal struggles surrounding the “true” provenance of gold imported to Switzerland, it suggests that responsibility claims rely on a regime of discrete transparency. Transparency practices in the gold trade are both discreet in their efforts to preserve the secrecy of business operations, and discrete in the legal processes through which they separate normative orders to establish different veridictions on the “true” provenance and ownership of gold. Rather than opposing notions of transparency and secrecy, these veridictions seek to assemble the values associated with both terms. Challenging these veridictions supposes a disentanglement of gold from its status either as money or as commodity, and a shift from an ontology of individuals-as-consumers to one of individuals-as-citizens. A third veridiction emerges once imported gold is considered part of a stream of information owned by the sovereign rather than in terms of its relation to a consumer.

As digital technologies for tracking and tracing mineral commodities continue to expand, this chapter evaluates the role of blockchain-inspired systems and the organizations promoting digital certification technologies in mineral supply chain management. Drawing on research conducted in the cobalt mines of Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in mining sites affiliated with De Beers’ GemFair program in Sierra Leone, the chapter explores two key themes. First, it examines how transparency shapes both cobalt –an essential component for enhancing lithium battery performance – and diamonds – an emblem of hyper-consumption – within the broader digital transformation of the extractive industries. Second, it considers this digital turn as an effort to establish disintermediated trust in certification mechanisms formerly reliant on third-party verification. The chapter argues that, while digital transparency is presented as the pinnacle of technological accountability, it simultaneously operates through practices of concealment.

Replete with documentary artefacts, traceability systems, forensic testing, and inspections, organic certification is emblematic of technomoral aspirations and material interventions undertaken in the name of transparency. Based on research conducted in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, this chapter explores how organic certification becomes established as a regime of truth through semiotic technologies mobilized to make agricultural production transparent and legible. Probing a question I have frequently encountered – “Is it really organic?” – the chapter attends to what such a question reveals about transparency’s contemporary power. By examining how paper and digital record-keeping, as well as tags and traceability, come together in organic certification, it shows how transparency projects work to make real and to establish thresholds of truth for the objects that they purport only to observe.

The Introduction locates transparency in the global governance of agriculture and mineral supply chains. It proposes an analytical focus on the mediations of transparency to tackle the paradox of transparency, a process of mediation that incorrectly understands itself to be a process of disintermediation. This helps to investigate transparency beyond the normative and substantive assessment of its implementation. Rather than assuming that transparency is itself transparent, we ask: What are the technological practices, material qualities, and institutional standards producing transparency? How is transparency standardized, regimented by “ethical” and “responsible” businesses, or valued by traders and investors, from auction rooms to sustainability reports? Acknowledging that transparency is a global value, we question how transparency projects materially organize and semiotically regiment the global production and circulation of commodities across local settings. Focusing on moments and processes of mediation toward disclosure, immediacy, trust, and truth, we introduce how the chapters render transparency observable across sites, actors, institutions, and technologies.

This chapter approaches the concept of transparency by examining the work of secrecy and occlusion in trade. Exploring the role of secrets in the Indian Ocean sapphire trade, where exchange is based on arbitrage, it seeks to understand Sri Lankan and South Indian gem traders’ emic notions of what it means to conceal and reveal knowledge and to tease out their conceptions of ethical conduct in relation to secrecy. It asks: How do we conceptualize transparency in relation to a trade where practices of concealment and disclosure are folded into the gestural, embodied, and affective landscapes that make up everyday modalities of negotiation, brokerage, and arbitrage? How do such forms of withholding contribute to making gems move? What are the ethical landscapes within which certain forms of secrecy are permissible and expected? Reading trading secrets as a part of the craft of trade, the chapter seeks to reframe the assumption that a lack of transparency amounts to deception and examines instead how practices of occlusion facilitate trade.

In exploring the politics of corporate versus small-scale mining of rubies and the ongoing struggles over a potentially enormous rare earth element (REE) deposit, this chapter hinges upon a critical analysis of transparency, opacity, and the politics of sovereignty in a country that is increasingly framed as a synecdoche for climate change in this century. Recent decades have seen the growth of two emergent forms in the international aid industry: (1) transparency and accountability initiatives (TAIs) that endeavor to bring aid organizations in line with standard expectations around their operations; and (2) modest, small-scale do-it-yourself (DIY) aid projects that emerge from and depend on trusting relationships between benefactors and beneficiaries. This chapter considers the ambiguous coexistence of these forms, drawing from ethnographic research with a small-scale healthcare project in Madagascar to illustrate how DIY aid can be effective (for better or worse) despite operating outside the purview of TAIs.