The limits of global governance: racial capitalism,knowledge,and diamond violence in the Kimberley Process

Abstract

This article shows how knowledge around race, violence, and the political economy in the construction of international problems reproduces existing power dynamics in global governance. In particular, I contend that the operation of racial capitalism in the international system organizes the knowledge used to construct international problems, thereby limiting the possible solutions to those that maintain rather than unsettle the relations of power and dependency underpinning the global order. I develop this conceptualization through the Kimberley Process, wherein knowledge used to construct diamond regulation as an international problem emphasized the market-disruptive violence of civil war while racialized violence in production that made profits possible was left to continue unencumbered. This framework explains how global governance can reproduce inequitable relations despite inclusive sets of actors and also speaks to broader efforts in the discipline to understand the role of race in international relations.