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“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

Policy brochures to publicize mitigation, “sustainable” activities, and community investment programs. Global companies often anticipate/precede the local government regulations. 

Use the fact that the government’s actual regulations are obscenely loose or nonexistent to say they are “Much more responsible than the law dictates” - a quote from a community liaison officer she interviewed. P71. Even if their levels are bad they can hide behind being “Better” than the standards. 

Signing the contract is a symbolic acknowledgement of the indigenous people’s rights to the land and to bargain with the company. (Though, of course, their water is still being totally wrecked, and the company lies to them). 

Lots of science - data - new technology to measure more accurately - scientists presenting, holding the reporting meeting

Tried to use photo evidence - but it was rejected because the indigenous people in the audience recognized that they were using the same photos from three years ago - which then caused additional “rejected the authenticity of the material that was being presented” -p75

Using the word “stable” (estable) to say it’s ok or that the impact is negligible - when in fact this can’t be known and it’s deeply improbable that it’s true - and even if the damage is “Stable” and not escalating, it is probably already at an unacceptable level. 

The manager of social relations person put his body in between the questioning indigenous person rejecting the truth value of the data and the scientist. 

Asking for feedback -because they know the community members are suspicious of their scientific data

The visit to the new drilling site - though it seemed like they were secretly extracting and they didn’t tell much and they couldn’t do anything about the fact that the corporation had already drilled way more than what they initially proposed they needed to drill to “monitor”

The interactions the corporation has with the indigenous people and the relationships they try to make are attempts to morally legitimate the extraction

They are giving the “gift of truth” about their activities with their reporting, they feel like they are conceding to their demands when they do the reporting and take them on tours, the investment in the community relations teams and the workshops to educate about science and having meals with the community members - I think the corporate actors are always aware that their goal is to quell resistance, but they might think that their presence is actually good for the indigenouspeople in in the long run once they start providing funds for community development and conceding to these demands and giving them “education”

“Company reporting on the environmental and social impacts of mining activities may by its very existence thus be projected as a “moral good”, an open gesture of asserted high moral value” p71 - cites a bunch of sources including Rajak2011_TheatresOfVirtue

Reporting to/ consulting with the community is one of the central “moral mechanisms” of CSR, and going to these reporting meetings is important to the people who are “impacted community” members. -  “The discourse of transparency is thus central to the moral framework of engagements between corporate actors and communities” -p72. 

Another way to say the same things: “Such CSR instruments - social accounting, community development investment, and transparency reporting - establish principles of “good business” and are used to make the claim of corporations acting as “agents of world benefit” (Maak and Pless 2009).” -p72 The source is a journal of business ethics. 

Standardization - “measures of fact and accounting assert that company activity is best made visible and internationally comparable (see also Li 2011)”. P72. The source is a Focaal article from the same issue as the Rajak. 

“Concerns with translocal legibility and universal administrative acceptability and the focus on rational economic behavior linked to audit have created an ethic of the visible, the transparent, as the highest standard of governance.” p72. She cites Garsten and Lindh de Montoya 2008, Peck and Ticknell 2002. 

The community people do think it’s an improvement to have any relationship with the corporation. They’re frustrated in part during their tour of the new digging that they won because only 2 people were there and one was a junior scientist and the other was from the contractors 

There’s parallel solutions on both sides (the tech, better info presentation vs participation in scientific monitoring, own experts) to increase participation and increase truth

In the case of Chile, to the extent that they exist, the laws for environmental mitigation/regulation are not really enforced. So any “responsible” actions are “lustered with voluntarily” and done totally on the corporation’s own terms. 

“social accounting” & “audit” techniques and institutions - they are “created by global business in concert with governments and civil society” . “performance requirements”

By the initiation of very obviously affected local indigenous communities, there is a legal contract between the mine’s foundation and the indigenous community that the mine would provide annual reporting to monitor the environmental impact and show that their water extraction was within the agreed-upon amount. The foundation otherwise funds social investment CSR programs for the mining company. They also agreed to give some annual money to community development in the contract. 

It’s not a unified CSR field, even for same industry in same region - some are opposed to providing money for community development, and only give money to local government or enterprises

Increasing staff hired on the social relations team - taking part in OXFAM workshops - “increase staff capacity and improve corporate ‘social performance’”p76

People on all sides seem to be fluent with the lingo of participatory development and CSR - the discourse has permeated and it’s become established

When the reporting meetings turn out to be “a waste of time” because community members don’t get much from the scientists, they switch to doing volunteering at the community and workshops to capacitar people to understand scientific info

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 certifications, following through with trainings that were asked for, and doing the certification ceremony for an audience

Rhetoric of benefit-sharing

The high levels of buy-in; the quotes from locals themselves supporting the dam and the company, they can honestly boast strong local support of the projects - what better proof than that people have dug up their life savings from the ground to buy the stocks?

The corporate actors aren’t particularly fleshed out in this account. The World Bank people weren’t expecting the Nepalese people to come deliver demands in a very educated and efficient way 

Ah there was one part where the corporate actors feel like the Nepalese people who live near the dam sites are extorting them - in this case they don’t feel like they’re helping but rather conceding to unreasonable demands, the poor corporation has to be the government and the villagers have these crazy ideas about how much money the corporation has (the corporation does have the money… it’s extremely ironic)

We don’t get to know how the corporate actors feel about the shareholder model - do they begrudge the shares not being sold to their family or something like that, or do they recognize that this is really also a sharing of risk and cost, more than just being pure benefits in a ‘help’ way?

Power outages and material scarcity → moral and social authority for government and corps to act quickly - “Discursive momentum”

Hydropower has been reframed as a sustainable/green energy source, esp. With carbon finance, so now institutions like the World Bank are funding it - it is a responsible way to bring about development. In Nepal, the government is also trying to declare Nepal as “open to business” - the ethical thing to do is to let corporations in to build hydropower dams 

Local people are there with them - some people say they are willing to have their houses submerged, the government is the unethical party for blocking the development from happening - the quote from someone is ‘some foreign country should get Nepal and develop it’ (Rest 2012:113), p151 here.