Enacting the corporation an American mining firm in post-authoritarian Indonesia

• Main Author: Welker, Marina
• Format: eBook Book
• Language: English
• Published: Berkeley University of California Press 2014
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: activists; Anthropology; batu hijau; big business; business; business ethics; Capitalism; Capitalism > Indonesia > Sumbawa Island; collective subject; Colorado; copper mines; corporate social responsibility movement; corporations; Cultural; denver; employer; environmental threat; Ethnology; Ethnology > Indonesia > Sumbawa Island; gold mines; government and governing; Greenwood Village; imperialism; imperialist; Indonesia; local communities; Mineral industries; Mineral industries > Social aspects > Indonesia > Sumbawa Island; miners; mining; money and power; natural resource extraction industry; Newmont Mining Corporation; Newmont Nusa Tenggara, PT; ore producer; patron; personhood; religious sponsor; shareholders; Social aspects; Social responsibility of business; Social responsibility of business > Colorado > Greenwood Village; Social responsibility of business > Indonesia > Sumbawa Island; SOCIAL SCIENCE; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; sumbawa; Sumbawa Island; sustainable development; workers; government and governing; ore producer; money and power; personhood; corporate social responsibility movement; batu hijau; denver; local communities; sumbawa; employer; activists; workers; copper mines; anthropology; patron; environmental threat; shareholders; business; mining; newmont mining corporation; business ethics; indonesia; big business; miners; corporations; sustainable development; natural resource extraction industry; religious sponsor; gold mines; collective subject; imperialist; imperialism
• ISBN: 0520282302; 9780520282315; 0520282310; 9780520957954; 9780520282308; 0520957954
• DOI: 10.1525/9780520957954

What are corporations, and to whom are they responsible? Anthropologist Marina Welker draws on two years of research at Newmont Mining Corporation’s Denver headquarters and its Batu Hijau copper and gold mine in Sumbawa, Indonesia, to address these questions. Against the backdrop of an emerging Corporate Social Responsibility movement and changing state dynamics in Indonesia, she shows how people enact the mining corporation in multiple ways: as an ore producer, employer, patron, promoter of sustainable development, religious sponsor, auditable organization, foreign imperialist, and environmental threat. Rather than assuming that corporations are monolithic, profit-maximizing subjects, Welker turns to anthropological theories of personhood to develop an analytic model of the corporation as an unstable collective subject with multiple authors, boundaries, and interests. Enacting the Corporation demonstrates that corporations are constituted through continuous struggles over relations with—and responsibilities to—local communities, workers, activists, governments, contractors, and shareholders.