Paper short abstract:

Based on political ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines how international policy initiatives aiming to reform the Congolese mineral exploitation and trade are translated into every-day public practices and discursive action.

Paper long abstract:

Stemming from the assumed link between the Congolese mining sector and the country's protracted crisis, international public and private initiatives have been promulgated, aiming for the formalization and de-militarization of the mining sector. Several certification and traceability schemes have been designed and already partly implemented seeking to prevent 'conflict minerals' from reaching the international market. Viewing policy interventions as a social process of interaction rather than a unilateral action of decision-makers deciding the course of action of implementers and its recipients, this paper assumes that the implementation practices related to the international reform policies will not necessarily be in perfect harmony with its stated policies objectives (Scott 1998, Mosse 2004, Colebatch 1998). Consequently, the problem of analysis becomes to understand the process through which these certification and traceability schemes are negotiated and translated into national Congolese policy as well as into every-day governance practices at the provincial level. Based on two months of fieldwork in both Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, this paper takes the role of national state officials and provincial civil servants working for state mining services, as well as their practices and discursive actions to be the point of departure in the analysis of the policy process. Drawing on an interpretative /political ethnographic approach (Long 2001, Yanow 2011, Olivier de Sardan 2008) the paper examines the motivations, assumptions and theories of change underlying these international initiatives and their competition or complementation with national and provincial 'official norms' (after the concept of Olivier de Sardan).