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There has been some backlash to this methodology from luxury brands such as Chanel and Fendi, which fared particularly badly on the index. Chanel replied that the “reality of our actions seems more important to us than any related media coverage”.

But, as Moore tells me, this goes against the idea of transparency. Companies should be making clear how — and how far — they monitor supply chains, she explains. Transparency is essential, Moore says, to tackle the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture in the fashion industry.

And beyond it, things get considerably worse. “When we started asking to drill down below sewing factories, companies didn’t seem to know,” Moore says. Only two of the surveyed companies published details of second-tier suppliers, which include fabric and yarn mills. And more than half published no details of monitoring processes for raw materials such as cotton.

On June 22, the Bolivian government seized the company's Colquiri tin and zinc mine, south of the capital city of La Paz.

“Massive corporations like Glencore, the world’s largest commodity trading company, and the privately held and secretive Cargill, the world’s biggest trader of agricultural commodities, are moving to further consolidate their control of world grain markets and vertically integrate their global supply chains in a new form of food imperialism designed to profit off global misery,” wrote journalist Christian Parenti in the Nation magazine. “While bread triggered war and revolution in the Middle East, Glencore made windfall profits on the surge in grain prices. And the more expensive our loaf of bread becomes, the more money firms like Glencore and Cargill stand to make.”

Glencore is no stranger to controversy and strife. In April a BBC investigation alleged that the company was indirectly buying cobalt and copper from children as young as ten who climb down hand dug shafts into the Tilwezembe mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with no protective equipment.

Your smartphone or desktop computer is not built from scratch by Apple or Dell. It includes parts made by subcontractors. But one sole subcontractor does not make every chip inside; that task is handled by yet another subcontractor, who may buy the needed tantalum from still another supplier who may have purchased the tantalum ore from a militia leader who forces children to work in dangerous mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The authors found foreign-based companies “about 22 percent less likely to admit they were unable to verify the origins of their products.” (A company can be non-U.S. based and be listed in the U.S. and thus subject to SEC rules.)

“Businesses are not dissembling about their inability to determine the source of their minerals. They simply cannot obtain a reasonable degree of certainty about processes from which they are three or more steps removed.”

the index was based on methodology that immediately stirred criticism. WWD contacted a series of industry organizations that work on sustainability initiatives but they declined to comment. A spokesperson from one of the organizations said “it is really hard to comment on research that is so poorly executed and tells us nothing.”

In a statement, a Chanel spokesman questioned the report, stating that it only highlights how well companies communicate their sustainability initiatives. “This index in no way measures actions regarding social, societal and environmental responsibility, but only evaluates the communication policies of brands relative to these topics. Like three-quarters of the companies questioned, if Chanel chose not to answer the questionnaire, it is because the reality of our actions seems more important to us than any related media coverage.

The group said it took more than a year to put together the research. According to the organization, the survey revealed an absence in long-term thinking in brands’ sustainability strategies, with only 40 percent of the companies surveyed having a system in place to monitor labor standards.

to consider mining only from a purely technical or engineering point of view does not give insight into the complexity of the relationships established around the mines, nor help us in fully evaluating the social, political and economic impacts of this activity. Extractive processes are neither ecologically nor politically neutral.

More than ever, anthropologists now have the opportunity to extend the boundaries of their discipline and undertake fieldwork that explores possible forms of integration with other disciplines (Godoy, 1985) as well as cooperating with social actors that are not necessarily linked to the academy (Ballard, Banks 2003). Overall, they can continue to experiment with new forms of civic engagement and advocacy in support of the communities being studied (e.g. Coumans 2011).

By re-orientating the purposes and methods of the discipline, anthropologists have the opportunity to offer critical and analytical tools capable of subverting the “politics of resignation” (Benson, Kirsch 2010) that large scale mining companies promote in order to attempt to make acceptable and taken for granted the suffering, risks and environmental damages they themselves produce.