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Corporations, the UN and Neo-liberal Bio-politics

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Abstract

Ewa Charkiewicz shares with readers a think piece that puzzles out the ever increasing popularity of corporate social responsibility (CSR). She is interested in why it appealed so strongly to the UN and civil society and asks what problems did it help to solve, on what terms does it operate and in particular, how has the consent and engagement with the discourse on CSR been generated? She warns that there is a double game being played, and that behind the caring face of CSR a war is being played out against ‘bare life’ and peoples' livelihoods.

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Notes

  1. The archive is available on the website of Humanistic University, Utrecht, Netherlands www.uvh.nl

  2. See www.cepnyc.org

  3. From the summary of Foucault's unpublished lecture by Thomas Lemke (2001).

  4. Donald Katz describing South Korean bosses in Indonesian Nike factories, quoted in Ballinger and Olsson (1997: 7).

  5. Taking the concentration camp and the treatment of refugees as the anchors of his analysis Agamben (1998) argues biopolitics is thanatopolitics. Mebembe (2003) makes a similar argument analysing politics of development in Africa. In his take biopolitics turned into necropolitics.

  6. The avalanche of CSR in the late 1990s corresponds with the emergence of global coordinated protests such as the Jubilee Campaign, or World Social Forum, Public Eye on Davos, and the mobilization of civil actors during the G8, WTO ministerial meetings and the World Bank Annual Meetings. See for instance de Angelis (2003).

  7. From Kantorowicz and Foucault quoted in Gordon (1991: 9).

  8. Baudrillard (2000), in his analysis of Watergate pointed out that framing it as a scandal allowed for the cancealment of the very properties of the political system that the Watergate revealed.

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Acknowledgements

This article draws on the paper for the HIVOS and Humanistic University, Netherlands project on Corporate Social Responsibility. The paper was presented at the Global Studies Association conference in Brandeis University, April 2004. Another version of the paper entitled: ‘Take the read pill: corporate social responsibility as neoliberal form of government’ to be published in a book entitled Winst en Humaniteit. Een kritisch perspectief op maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen (Profits and Humanity. A critical perspective on corporate social responsibility) Editors : Ireen Dubel, Tonja van den Ende & Harry Kunneman, the publisher SWP Amsterdam, and the book will be published in June 2005.

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Unpacks some of the myths around corporate responsibility

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Charkiewicz, E. Corporations, the UN and Neo-liberal Bio-politics. Development 48, 75–83 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.development.1100102

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