India, June 7 -- Your first cell phone, the VCR player you gave away after the advent of the DVD, the DVD player you donated to Goodwill after the arrival of Blu-ray, the Blu-ray player you never used, the college laptop you tossed away because it was ransacked by viruses-it all may very well have passed through Agbogbloshie, submitted to the stroke of a hammer and shucked of its valuables, the last chapter of a journey (What did happen to your childhood Game Boy?) You've probably never paused to contemplate in the first place.

Photos of Agbogbloshie are invariably enlisted to demonstrate Ghana's grim fate as one of the world's greatest recipients of Western electronic waste. But the reality is more complicated and, in certain respects, ...