As lawyers in Taiwan have reported, the Vietnamese government has a record of censoring communication about the 2016 Formosa marine disaster. The blocking of certain keywords (Formosa, dead fish, Vu Ang) is a form of media injustice that local and diaspora activists have to work around.
Narrowed critique just to be of sincerity of CSR claims, not ideology of CSR. Consensus enforcing (above) silences any kind of dissent.
Enforcing consensus: Credibility and viability to compete for funding of your NGO is gone if you protest or dissent → performed consensus by silencing “stone throwing” NGOs or irrational opposition because you’re “actually trying to do something”, so the new unethical is the NGO who is just being stubborn or petty;
Creating ads to educate consumers or communities on how to live responsibly [responsibilization]: flow of ethical expertise, from business/govt thru media to community/consumer
Awards for CSR accomplishment is like moral capital; it also is ritualized like gift giving, reciprocal gratitude; circuit of exclusive events generates and legitimates this discourse, celebrity speakers, positive vibes
Confession of past sins plus highly visible partnerships with well-known NGOs, a very branded activity
To the extent that corporations genuinely believe that market access is going to end poverty... They seem to genuinely believe that the “third world” governments are corrupt and incompetent, in the way like in Orientalism colonialists seemed to genuinely believe that they were saving the nonwhite people from themselves. And they genuinely believe their resources are better and greater and their distribution networks etc. are better.
NGOs have their back against the wall - they have to silently accept the language of the corporations and do it their way because they depend on the corporations for funding. So they may not see it as helpful but have to participate anyway
Redefined: New unethical is the NGO who doesn’t support CSR - they are bitter, unprogressive. Legitimate action - ethical - “partnership with business for the common cause”; Illegitimate action - unethical - “misguided, anti corporate campaigning” p17
Proof of the ethical is in rigorously calculated indices of corporate responsibility and awards presented by orgs that supposedly represent civil society
Money funneled thru well-known NGOs who have to do what they say
blame/displacement of scrutiny onto “Southern” i.e. previously colonized governments; pretty blatant language of colonialism (needing to save people from their own corrupt and incompetent governments) cast as “good governance” that corporations can do to lift people out of poverty with market access/inclusion
“Market comes to stand for social system as a whole” -p12
Business-led development becomes development orthodoxy
Reconfigured to appear as a double market competition - corporations competing for awards/ moral capital with their CSR actions, and NGOs as enterprises competing for corporate money to execute social good programs (but of course here the power is with corps to drive what is a social good program)
Public-private partnerships, defining development as market access, making it about scrutiny of “3rd world” government incompetence instead of corporate irresponsibility