Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations

Why do multinational mining corporations use participation to undermine resistance? Do the struggles of local communities, activists and NGOs matter on a global scale? Why are there so many different global standards in mining?

This book develops a new critical political economy approach to studying extractive accumulation, drawing on three detailed Indonesian cases to explain how participatory mechanisms continuously reshape and are reshaped by community-corporate conflict. Findings highlight feedback between local social relations, conflict, transnational activism, crises of legitimacy and global governance.

The author argues that corporate social responsibility, community development, ’gender-mainstreaming’ and environmental monitoring are neither simple outcomes of corporate ethics nor mere greenwashing strategies. Rather, participation is a mechanism to undermine resistance and create social relations amenable to extractive accumulation.

Lian Sinclair is Postdoctoral Research Associate, School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney and Honorary Research Fellow, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Science at Murdoch University