Culturally articulated neoliberalisation: corporate social responsibility and the capture of indigenous legitimacy in New Caledonia

Abstract

This paper expands our understandings of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a form of roll‐out neoliberalism, building on analyses ofCSRinitiatives as elements of a capitalist system actively working to create its own social regularisation – to secure a socio‐politico‐economic context supporting capitalist development. Using an ethnographic analysis of the rise and fall of an indigenous protest group that targeted a multinational mining project in New Caledonia, this paper has two theoretical aims. First, it builds on literature that analyses neoliberalism as ‘articulating’ with particular politico‐economic conditions in order to argue that such articulation is also, necessarily,cultural. I describe how the mining company undercut and ultimately co‐opted local resistance, largely by successfully capturing culturally‐based ideologies of customary and indigenous legitimacy. Thus, neoliberalisation's articulations may involve attempts to capture not only formal but also informal regulation or regulators, through direct personal benefits and also indirectly through the capture of culturally valued ideologies. These ideologies, in turn, are caught up in culturally grounded hegemonic processes. This leads to the paper's second theoretical aim, which is to explore what happens when different forms of hegemony, based in distinct cultural formations, encounter each other as well as counter‐hegemonic forces. In engaging directly with customary authorities rather than exclusively with activists, the company re‐legitimised itself by delegitimising its activist opponents, repositioning them as subordinates within their own culturally informed social hierarchy, and reinstating customary authorities’ privileged hegemonic status. Thus, multiple, culturally distinct hegemonic processes may co‐exist and interact; here, they reinforced each other by suppressing counter‐hegemonic activities. However, some customary authorities still sympathised with the protestors’ aims and perceived potential threats from the company's expanding economic power. I end by suggesting that counter‐hegemonic possibilities reside in the perpetual dynamism of cultures.

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