Gold Mining and the Discourses of Corporate Social Responsibility in Ghana

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Gold Mining and CSR: Responsibility to Whom and for What

   • Nathan Andrews

   Pages 1-33

3. “We Need Social Licence to Actually Mine and We Believe Communities Are Part of What We Do”: Contested Corporate Citizenship

   • Nathan Andrews

   Pages 35-69

4. “We Want to Bring Everyone on Board but It’s Quite Difficult”: Responsibilization via the Newmont Ahafo Development Foundation

   • Nathan Andrews

   Pages 71-103

5. “A Woman Can Also Speak Out”: Gendered Perspectives on Responsibilization

   • Nathan Andrews

   Pages 105-132

6. “There Is No Yardstick to Measure [Our Performance] With”: A Global Movement for Institutionalizing Unaccountability

   • Nathan Andrews

   Pages 133-168

7. The Bigger Picture: Implications for ‘Engendering’ CSR, De-responsibilization and Re-responsibilization

   • Nathan Andrews

   Pages 169-193

8. Back Matter

   Pages 195-227

   PDF

This book critically examines the practice and meanings of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and how the movement has facilitated a positive and somewhat unquestioned image of the global corporation. Drawing on extensive fieldwork material collected in Ghanaian communities located around the project sites of Newmont Mining Corporation and Kinross Gold Corporation, the monograph employs critical discourse analysis to accentuate how mining corporations use CSR as a discursive alibi to gain legitimacy and dominance over the social order, while determining their own spheres of responsibility and accountability. Hiding behind such notions as ‘social licence to operate’ and ‘best practice,’ corporations are enacted as entities that are morally conscious and socially responsible. Yet, this enactment is contested in host communities, as explored in chapters that examine corporate citizenship, gendered perspectives, and how global CSR norms institutionalize unaccountability.

• Natural Rescources
• Development
• African Studies
• Social Impact
• Global
• Mining
• Gold
• Ghana
• Africa
• corporate social responsibility
• natural resources and energy economics

“Gold Mining and the Discourses of Corporate Social Responsibility in Ghana offers critical insight into the CSR practices of mining multinationals operating in Ghana. In revealing the unfulfilled expectations and contradictory outcomes of CSR for its putative beneficiaries – those living in the shadows of the gold mines – this book makes an important contribution to scholarship on CSR and extractive capitalism.” (Dinah Rajak, author of In Good Company: An Anatomy of Corporate Social Responsibility)

“Gold Mining and the Discourses of Corporate Social Responsibility in Ghana is innovative and engaging. Importantly, it moves the emerging corporate social responsibility debates in Africa forward in an exciting way. The book offers critical insights into the nature, contestations and dynamics of CSR in Ghana while privileging African voices.  A must read for anyone interested in CSR within Africa.” (Uwafiokun Idemudia, Associate Professor, York University, Toronto)


“Responsibilizing the Corporation offers critical insight into the CSR practices of mining multinationals operating in Ghana. In revealing the unfulfilled expectations and contradictory outcomes of CSR for its putative beneficiaries – those living in the shadows of the gold mines – this book makes an important contribution to scholarship on CSR and extractive capitalism.” (Dinah Rajak, author of In Good Company: An Anatomy of Corporate Social Responsibility)

“This is a powerful and engagingbook that should be read by all those interested in the social responsibility of organizations (and the related responsibility of states). Through a detailed empirical study of the mining activities of Newmont and Kinross in Ghana and the impact on local communities, Andrews examines ways to re-responsibilize the state while de-responsibilizing the corporation. This has major and important implications, undermining the way that many business apologists and management scholars (and quite a few corporate-linked NGOs) understand and analyze corporate responsibility.” (David J. Cooper, Professor of Accounting, University of Alberta and Editor, Accounting Organizations and Society)

“Responsibilizing the Corporation is innovative and engaging. Importantly, it moves the emerging corporate social responsibility debates in Africa forward in an exciting way. The book offers critical insights into the nature, contestations and dynamics of CSR in Ghana while privileging African voices.  A must read for anyone interested in CSR within Africa.” (Uwafiokun Idemudia, Associate Professor, York University, Toronto)

“An original, informed analysis of the profound limits of CSR around two multinational corporations in today’s ‘Gold Coast’. It nicely juxtaposes ‘natural resource governance’, state-corporate-community relations, development, and sustainability. And it reflects on the variety of global standards today. Andrews privileges local, especially female, voices and suggests that African cannot ‘rise’ until the political economy of gold is transformed. This monograph is destined to become a classic in several overlapping fields beyond mining, business ethics and African studies.” (Timothy M. Shaw, Editor of Routledge’s International Political Economy of New Regionalisms Series & Palgrave’s International Political Economy Series)

 

 

• Department of Global and International Studies, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, Canada

  Nathan Andrews

Nathan Andrews is Assistant Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada.

Policies and ethics