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Corporate Social Responsibility & Development: A Knot of Disempowerment

Eslava, Luis (2008) Corporate Social Responsibility & Development: A Knot of Disempowerment. Sortuz: Oñati Journal of Emergent Socio-Legal Studies, 2 (2). pp. 43-71. ISSN 1988-0847. (KAR id:40964)

Abstract

This paper presents a discursive analysis of the arrival, operation, and effects of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on international development from a socio-legal perspective. CSR has become a priority on the international development agenda as frameworks for development promote the contraction of the state's role and seek to encourage corporate participation in addressing social issues. It is argued here, however, that CSR discourse represents an expansion of development as an antipolitics machine. As a discourse, CSR possesses a powerful capacity for selfperpetuation, allowing it to appropriate and rephrase social dissent in its own terms, and cancelling genuine political contestation. Through institutionalization, regularization and managerial capture, CSR exemplifies how discursive practices and structures embody a constellation of power relations that constrain action and obscure the intrinsically political nature of development.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, Development, Anti-Politcs Machine, Ferguson, Escobar, Foucault, Discoursive Analysis, Socio-Legal, Law
Subjects: K Law
K Law > K Law (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > Kent Law School
Depositing User: Catherine Norman
Date Deposited: 06 May 2014 14:28 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:15 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/40964 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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