Geographies of Tantalum Production and Consumption
Despite their central importance to many of the “high tech” products that we have come to rely on in our daily lives, the “Three T’s” (tin, tungsten, tantalum) commonly used in personal electronics are commonly extracted in an opaque and often violent supply chain. While it is hard to imagine that items as seemingly benign as our cell phones and computers can contribute to enslavement and displacement thousands of miles away, even seemingly trivial components of the products we purchase can have enormous influence in perpetuating structural violence and exploitative labor hierarchies.