“Enterprising attempts at incorporating local communities ‘on the margins’ into the ‘universal rationality of good business practice’ (Rajak 2011a: 17). In doing so, CSR activities seek to maintain low levels of resistance to corporate proposals.” p72. Also cites Welker2009_CorporateSecurityBegins. The Lord2016 is also a good example of this.
An attempt to constrain critique with a survey of feedback about how to do the presentation of information of the scientists “better” and “more simply”
“Members of the community, while criticizing the adequacy of scientific reporting as not telling the whole truth, accept to some extent the proposition that further information can be found, and that thereby they may possess this knowledge. However, focusing on technology as a form of knowledge and seeking to know its dimensions avoids questions regarding how things come to count as “knowledge and “not knowledge.” in the first place (Riles 2004). Insistence of better transparency allows for the possibility that transparency might in fact be possible: it “leaves the world itself intact. Intentionally or not, it depends on maintaining the absolute difference between representations and the world they represent” (Mitchell 2002:4).” p78
Protests to demand inclusion as project-affected people
Oppositional mobilizations - “internal to the logic of the project” p153 - so people do not consider something less damaging to the land and animals or a way to do it with less extraction of resources and profit for elite people in Kathmandu or in Europe/the US/China who do not really have to bear any of the cost of it.
The author thinks that information circulated about the shareholder model - financial education - would be helpful - he notes that it would have to be oversimplified and made into financial narratives even though it is a complex socioenvironmental decisions. But his final conclusion is more optimistic. I think this kind of corporate-led education is a big foreclosure.
The text doesn’t really go there because it seems to be taking CSR at face value - so it’s saying the corporation isn’t really doing CSR. Author isn’t arguing that CSR forecloses anything but that the corporation’s actions foreclose any “real” social responsibility.
Individualizing and psychologizing the suicides, ignoring the publicness of the action and the structural causes, took away from its extreme emotional potency. Although it did spawn a good deal of activism and research, the profit margins of Apple continue to grow and Foxconn’s are shrinking.
Automation is ignored - this topic was raised in the Dialectical Anthropology article that responded to something else that Ngai wrote and cited this piece.
Piecemeal approach to self-regulation forecloses more sweeping structural change as well as an actual check on power thru independent control over corporations
No real audit and no punishment for violating something like the UN Global Compact.
Since the CSR initiatives align with some of the infrastructure/development and personal goals of the village elites, it forecloses resistance to the mine and in fact has spawned violent defense of the mine by local people.
Mistrust of the NGOs, who come in and out, and who the corporations have carefully targeted with smear campaigns, forecloses certain kinds of alliances that could have put a check on corporate power, but perhaps not improved the lives of the villagers in the way they wanted.
The gift of the money caused discord in the community - rather than buying the good tea for a better price, so that it feels earned, it is a bigger power dynamic to gift the money
The positioning that you have to choose, and that Bono gets to choose, between livable working conditions and wages vs HIV treatment - forecloses possibility of HIV treatment AND acceptable working conditions.
Forecloses critique of the industries’ unethical work conditions - because they are “proven” by inspectors to have good working conditions, and the bodies of the HIV worker-patients who are treated are proof of the goodness of the corps
Worker resistance is foreclosed because they know they depend on this “ethical” reputation to even have industry in their country, which is needed for survival because of past extractions and present oppressive global trade conditions
Narrowed critique just to be of sincerity of CSR claims, not ideology of CSR. Consensus enforcing (above) silences any kind of dissent.
The initiative forecloses a serious discussion about the harms caused by transnational capital and privatization of the telecom industry
And it forecloses more meaningful connections across difference/ more meaningful activism by putting people into a happy shallow self-centered kind of activism
It forecloses a deeper engagement with issues and inequalities that cause child labor and make it harmful for the children and their families
It forecloses more radical conclusions for tech workers hoping to contribute to ‘social good’
Truly bringing different “stakeholders” to the table - because the Rio event was very much taken over by the corporate green consultants