Enacting the Corporation - An American Mining Firm in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia

1. Auflage, 1
ISBN: 978-0-520-28230-8
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 312 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 548 g

What are corporations, and to whom are they responsible? Anthropologist Marina Welker draws on two years of research at Newmont Mining Corporation’s Denver headquarters and its Batu Hijau copper and gold mine in Sumbawa, Indonesia, to address these questions. Against the backdrop of an emerging Corporate Social Responsibility movement and changing state dynamics in Indonesia, she shows how people enact the mining corporation in multiple ways: as an ore producer, employer, patron, promoter of sustainable development, religious sponsor, auditable organization, foreign imperialist, and environmental threat. Rather than assuming that corporations are monolithic, profit-maximizing subjects, Welker turns to anthropological theories of personhood to develop an analytic model of the corporation as an unstable collective subject with multiple authors, boundaries, and interests. Enacting the Corporation demonstrates that corporations are constituted through continuous struggles over relations with—and responsibilities to—local communities, workers, activists, governments, contractors, and shareholders.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Welker, Marina

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Note on Pseudonyms and Quoted Sources

Introduction

1. “We Need to Newmontize Folk”: A New Social Discipline at Corporate Headquarters

2. “Pak Comrel Is Our Regent Whom We Respect:” Mine, State, and Development Responsibility

3. “My Job Would Be Far Easier If Locals Were Already Capitalists”: Incubating Enterprise and Patronage

4. “We Identified Farmers as Our Top Security Risk”: Ethereal and Material Development in the Paddy Fields

5. “Corporate Security Begins in the Community”: The Social Work of Environmental Management

6. “We Should Be Like Starbucks”: The Social Assessment

Conclusion. “Soft Is Hard”

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Marina Welker is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University.