Abstract
How do extractive-based corporations deal with people they impact? Based on this question, this article presents a literature review describing a chameleonic repertoire of discursive practices intertwined in processes of exploration by these companies, of lands inhabited by peasants, indigenous peoples, and other traditional communities around the world. The bibliographic research was part of the project “Political implications of extractive capitalism: social movements and right conditions for justice in the Brazilian Amazon’. Nevertheless, it focuses on what happens outside Brazil, enabling a comparative framework in which many similarities between different national contexts can be noted. In the repertoire unveiled by these studies, a central aspect of how corporations exercise power is identified. It is shown how the continuous creation of ambiguities sustains Kafkaesque legal processes, the consequent non-resolution of conflicts, the precariousness of life with the promises of local development, the deregulation of state action in the name of ‘governance’ and so on. Focusing on creative practices and the concrete effects of this vocabulary that underlies “corporate social responsibility’, we will see that such practices do not mitigate (on the contrary, enable) the perpetuation and intensification of violence against the lives that resist the expropriation processes.
Keywords
Big corporations; Neo-extractive capitalism; Corporate social responsibilities; Socio-environmental impacts; Corporate oxymoron