Undermining Resistance - (Progress in Political Economy) by Lian Sinclair (Hardcover)

About the Book

Why do multinational mining corporations use participation to undermine resistance? Do the struggles of communities, activists and NGOs matter on a global scale? This book provides a new critical political economy of extractive accumulation to explain how participation crises and governance are related through local, national and global resistance.

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

Why and how do people affected by mining embrace or resist mining? Why are global private standards for social and environmental impacts of mining proliferating so quickly? Have multinational mining corporations fully shifted to participation as a strategy to undermine resistance?
This book answers these questions and more by providing a new critical political economy of extractive accumulation to explain how participation crises and governance are related through local, national and global resistance. Extractive accumulation is the collection of strategies and relationships at local, national and global scales that enable corporations to secure natural resources and profit from their extraction within global capitalist economies. 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.
Drawing on new evidence from three detailed Indonesian cases, Undermining resistance explains 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. Combining the 'modes of participation' approach with social reproduction theory and Gramscian political economy, the book provides a fresh look at the institutions and ideologies shaping corporate management of social and environmental conflicts.

About the Author

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