The Corporation and White Settler Subject: Environmental Harm as Racial Colonial Betrayal

• In Event: Social Theory and Environmental Change

Abstract

This paper examines corporate discretion and impunity, mobilizing critical interdisciplinary frameworks on colonialism, white supremacy, and the law to theorize corporate behavior in dimensions underexamined in sociological scholarship on corporate malfeasance and toxics. This article lays historical groundwork as part of a larger project that asks how U.S. multinational corporations operate as entities that profit off global-scale violence, extraction, and toxic pollution through the case of “forever chemicals.” Despite repeated global scale catastrophes which have wrought irreversible damage, how do some corporations manage not only to evade serious consequence but continue doing business growing markets for known dangers, causing irreversible damage to the health of innumerable lifeforms and environments? This paper juxtaposes interdisciplinary scholarship on the corporate form, examining two historical reconfigurations to argue that critical race theory (CRT) and critical Indigenous theory offer needed insights for understanding the weight and capacities of the corporation. Comparing accounts demonstrates the ways in which abstract liberal assumptions limit the scope of scholarly analyses, undermining our capacity to consider the legitimacy of the corporate form. To think beyond the corporation, we need to understand settler colonialism, white supremacy, and racial capitalism.  

Author

• Lauren Richter, University of Toronto