The Contentious Politics of Corporate Responsiblity in Mining

• In Event: Socio-Economic Developments in Crucial Sectors

Abstract

Social conflict between mining firms and local communities has attracted the attention of researchers and activists (Bebbington and Bury 2013, Thorp et al. 2012, Svampa 2009). The focus of much of this work has been on the mobilization strategies of activists, while the response of firms to citizen mobilization has attracted less attention.

This paper examines the corporate response to community mobilization, focusing on the "social responsibility" (CSR) efforts of firms, and their effects. The paper is grounded in the contentious politics literature (Tarrow 2008), and focuses on how CSR programs interact with the incentives for collective action at the community level. I argue that each mine site is characterized by (1) an opportunity structure that provides an overarching framework that may facilitate or depress collective action; (2) a discursive struggle over the meaning of information related to the project; and (3) a material or distributive struggle over access to resources. A company's CSR program affects all of these factors, and therefore, can have an important impact on whether communities mobilize against mining projects.

The paper is based on fieldwork in Argentina and Chile, 2011-2014; and a comparative method which examined four cases of firm-community relations in each country.

Author

• Paul A Haslam, University of Ottawa