The Anthropology of Corporate Social Responsibility

272 Pages·2016·2.29 MB·English

by  Catherine Dolan

The Anthropology of Corporate Social Responsibility
DISLOCATIONS
General Editors: August Carbonella, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Don
Kalb, University of Utrecht & Central European University, Linda Green, University
of Arizona
The immense dislocations and suffering caused by neoliberal globalization, the
retreat of the welfare state in the last decades of the twentieth century, and the
heightened military imperialism at the turn of the twenty-first century have
raised urgent questions about the temporal and spatial dimensions of power.
Through stimulating critical perspectives and new and cross-disciplinary
frameworks that reflect recent innovations in the social and human sciences, this
series provides a forum for politically engaged and theoretically imaginative
responses to these important issues of late modernity.
Volume 1 Volume 10
Where Have All the Homeless Gone? The Making Communities of Complicity: Everyday Ethics in
and Unmaking of a Crisis Rural China
Anthony Marcus Hans Steinmüller
Volume 2 Volume 11
Blood and Oranges: European Markets and Elusive Promises: Planning in the Contemporary
Immigrant Labor in Rural Greece World
Christopher M. Lawrence Edited by Simone Abram and Gisa Weszkalnys
Volume 3 Volume 12
Struggles for Home: Violence, Hope and the Intellectuals and (Counter-) Politics: Essays in
Movement of People Historical Realism
Edited by Stef Jansen and Staffan Löfving Gavin Smith
Volume 4 Volume 13
Slipping Away: Banana Politics and Fair Trade in the In Blood and Fire: Toward a Global Anthropology of
Eastern Caribbean Labor
Mark Moberg Edited by Sharryn Kasmir and August
Carbonella
Volume 5
Made in Sheffield: An Ethnography of Industrial Volume 14
Work and Politics The Neoliberal Landscape and the Rise of Islamist
Massimiliano Mollona Capital in Turkey
Edited by Neşecan Balkan, Erol Balkan, and
Volume 6
Ahmet Öncü
Biopolitics, Militarism, and Development: Eritrea in
the Twenty-First Century Volume 15
Edited by David O’Kane and Tricia Redeker Yearnings in the Meantime: ‘Normal Lives’ and the
Hepner State in a Sarajevo Apartment Complex
Stef Jansen
Volume 7
When Women Held the Dragon’s Tongue and Other Volume 16
Essays in Historical Anthropology Where Are All Our Sheep? Kyrgyzstan, a Global
Hermann Rebel Political Arena
Boris Petric, Translated by Cynthia Schoch
Volume 8
Class, Contention, and a World in Motion Volume 17
Edited by Winnie Lem and Pauline Gardiner Enduring Uncertainty: Deportation, Punishment and
Barber Everyday Life
Ines Hasselberg
Volume 9
Crude Domination: An Anthropology of Oil Volume 18
Edited by Andrea Behrends, Stephen P. Reyna, The Anthropology of Corporate Social Responsibility
and Günther Schlee Edited by Catherine Dolan and Dinah Rajak
The Anthropology of
Corporate Social
Responsibility

Edited by Catherine Dolan & Dinah Rajak
_
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2016 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2016 Catherine Dolan & Dinah Rajak
All rights reserved.
Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78533-071-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-78533-072-8 (ebook)
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction T oward the anthropology of corporate social
responsibility 1
Catherine Dolan and Dinah Rajak
Chapter One T heatres of virtue: Collaboration, consensus, and
the social life of corporate social responsibility 29
Dinah Rajak
Chapter Two Virtuous language in industry and the academy 48
Stuart Kirsch
Chapter Three R e-siting corporate responsibility: The making of
South Africa’s Avon entrepreneurs 67
Catherine Dolan and Mary Johnstone-Louis
Chapter Four P ower, inequality, and corporate social
responsibility: The politics of ethical compliance
in the South Indian garment industry 86
Geert De Neve
Chapter Five Detachment as a corporate ethic: Materializing
CSR in the diamond supply chain 110
Jamie Cross
Chapter Six D isconnect development: Imagining partnership
and experiencing detachment in Chevron’s
borderlands 128
Katy Gardner
vi | Contents
Chapter Seven S ubcontracting as corporate social responsibility
in the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project 152
José-María Muñoz and Philip Burnham
Chapter Eight C ollective contradictions of “corporate”
environmental conservation 179
Rebecca Hardin
Chapter Nine E ngineering responsibility: Environmental
mitigation and the limits of commensuration in a
Chilean mining project 199
Fabiana Li
Chapter Ten Global concepts in local contexts: CSR as
“anti-politics machine” in the extractive sector in
Ghana and Peru 217
Johanna Sydow
Afterword B ig men and business. Morality, debt, and the
corporation: A perspective 243
Robert J. Foster
Index 251
IllustratIons
Table 4.1. G eneric ethical code of conduct 91
Figure 8.1. Image on homepage of French Forest Products
Group, Rougier, with slogan “Manage the forest,
give life to the wood” 189
Figure 10.1. Sign within the Newmont concession: “Yanacocha
cares for the environment” 231
– vii –
aCknowledgments
First and foremost we would like to thank the authors of the book’s
chapters for their compelling and thought-provoking contributions,
which build on complimentary themes while drawing from diverse
cases to address key questions concerning the discourse and practice
of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in contemporary capitalism.
This volume joins an innovative collection of books in Berghahn’s
Dislocations series, edited by Don Kalb, which critically confronts
contradictions, inequalities and frictions in the new millennium. We
are very grateful to Don for his advice and support in the evolution
of this volume.
At Berghahn, we wish to thank Molly Mosher, Adam Capitanio,
Dhara Patel, Charlotte Mosedale and Sarah Sibley for their enthusiastic
support and expert guidance in the development of this manuscript.
We are also most grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for
Berghahn for their particularly insightful and detailed comments on
the manuscript.
This volume grew out of a special section of Focaal (volume 60)
on “Ethnographies of corporate ethicizing.” Sincere thanks are owed
to Luisa Steur, editor of Focaal, who shepherded that initial special
section that formed the seed for this volume, and to Christina Garsten,
our co-editor of the special section. We thank Focaal for permission to
reprint the essays by Cross, Dolan and Johnstone-Louis, Hardin, Li
and Rajak (which constitute chapters 1, 3, 5, 8 and 9 of this volume).
Chapter 4, “Power, inequality, and corporate social responsibility:
The politics of ethical compliance in the South Indian garment
industry” by Geert De Neve first appeared in Economic and Political
Weekly (volume 44, issue 22, 2009). We are grateful to Geert De Neve
and Economic and Political Weekly for granting permission to reprint
this article as a contribution to the present book. The Afterword, “Big
men and business: Morality, debt, and the corporation: A perspective”
by Robert Foster has also appeared as an article in Social Anthropology
(volume 20, issue 4, 2012). We are grateful to Social Anthropology
for permission to use his article in this volume. We are grateful to
– viii –
Acknowledgments | ix
Chicago University Press for permission to reprint Stuart Kirsch’s
essay “Virtuous language in industry and the academy” which was
first published in Corporate Social Responsibility? Human Rights in the
New Global Economy, edited by Charlotte Walker-Said and John D.
Kelly.
We would like to express our gratitude to Mick Blowfield and
Samuel Knafo for their tireless support and commitment to our work;
and to Lucy, Raphael and Noa for providing a joyful respite from it.
IntroduCtIon
Toward the Anthropology of
Corporate Social Responsibility
Catherine Dolan and Dinah Rajak
_
As corporations confront new social and environmental challenges
to their operations—from concerns about labor productivity to
community resistance, climate change, or saturated markets—the
corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement has demonstrated
a powerful capacity to offer itself up as a solution. Today, ethical
initiatives—from certification and labeling schemes to cause-related
marketing and inclusive business programs—are ubiquitous,
circulating new regimes of accountability that aim to institute ethics
and social responsibility in global business practice. Indeed, while
ethics were once the province of philosophy and religion, they are
increasingly insinuated into corporate capitalism as the market
supplants politico-judicial and religious domains as society’s ethical
arbiter. It is now the global brand—whether Coca-Cola, Nike, Wal-
Mart, or L’Oréal—that serves as a guarantor of social welfare and
environmental stewardship, uniting financial profit with social good
in the localities in which companies operate across the globe, and
giving rise to a contemporary expression of what has become known
as “enlightened self-interest.”
Two decades ago James Ferguson, in making his case for an
anthropology of development, wrote that the study of development
had been dominated by an “ideological preoccupation with the
question of whether it is considered to be a ‘good thing’ or a ‘bad
thing’” (Ferguson 1994 [1990]: 14). The study of CSR has been
similarly polarized, drawing supporters and critics in equal measure.
While advocates extol CSR as a radical reorientation of business
for the twenty-first century, heralding a new era of “humane
capitalism,”1 critics have sought to expose CSR as “a Band Aid over
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