Enacting the Corporation: An American Mining Firm in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia

Marina Welker

Published by University of California Press 2014

Enacting the Corporation

An American Mining Firm in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia

Marina Welker

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520957954

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Welker Marina :

Marina Welker is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Note on Pseudonyms and Quoted Sources Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. “We Need to Newmontize Folk”: A New Social Discipline at Corporate Headquarters Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
2. “Pak Comrel Is Our Regent Whom We Respect”: Mine, State, and Development Responsibility Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
3. “My Job Would Be Far Easier If Locals Were Already Capitalists”: Incubating Enterprise and Patronage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
4. “We Identified Farmers as Our Top Security Risk”: Ethereal and Material Development in the Paddy Fields Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
5. “Corporate Security Begins in the Community”: The Social Work of Environmental Management Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
6. “We Should Be Like Starbucks”: The Social Assessment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
Conclusion: “Soft Is Hard” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 306

eBook

Published: March 21, 2014
ISBN: 9780520957954