Story-Branding by Empire Entrepreneurs: Nike, Child Labour, and Pakistan’s Soccer Ball Industry

Abstract

Our study identifies and calls for an answerability-ethic of storytelling where entrepreneurs areheld responsible and accountable for the harmful ways in which they story the Third World. We study aCorporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative involving Nike in the Third World. Our study draws upon interviewsand textual study of the Sialkot Child Labour Elimination Project that was signed in Atlanta, Georgia inFebruary 1997. We find that Nike's CSR stories not only brand products but they also brand Third World labour. Our study's main contribution is to show that entrepreneurs’ branding through storytelling their “benign” CSRinitiatives in the Third World, an activity we term “story-branding,” has an imperial face requiring the use ofpower to turn workers voiceless (make them into subalterns).

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