This article investigates the profound ambiguity of the state in the organization of contemporary business–society relations. On the one hand, there has been a decisive shift from government to governance, encouraging private actors, such as corporations, communities and NGOs, to address social and environmental concerns themselves, i.e. without the state’s involvement. On the other hand, however, the continued importance and relevance of the organized state is difficult to ignore. In this article we examine the role of the state in three cases of mining conflicts in Chile, one of the world’s most important mining countries. Through longitudinal, qualitative research of conflictive mining governance relations between state organizations, large corporations and local communities, we show that the modes of influence conducted by the Chilean state oscillate between direct, central steering (‘cathedral’) and indirect, dispersed vouching (‘bazaar’). Elaborating on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, we offer a hybrid theory of state organization, where the dematerialization of the state’s responsibility is seen not as the norm but rather as a particular mode of governance that sits alongside the underestimated, yet enduring, material involvement of the state.
AbbottK. W.SnidalD. (2010). International regulation without international government: Improving IO performance through orchestration. Review of International Organizations, 5, 315–344.
2.
Arellano-GaultD.DemortainD.RouillardC.ThoenigJ. C. (2013). Bringing public organization and organizing back in. Organization Studies, 34, 145–167.
3.
BanerjeeS. B. (2017). Transnational power and translocal governance: The politics of corporate responsibility. Human Relations, 71, 796–821.
BarryA.OsborneT.RoseN. (1993). Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality: introduction. Economy and Society, 22, 265–266.
6.
BebbingtonA.BebbingtonD. H.BuryJ.LinganJ.MuñozJ. P.ScurrahM. (2008). Mining and social movements: Struggles over livelihood and rural territorial development in the Andes. World Development, 36, 2888–2905.
7.
BendixR. (1947). Bureaucracy: The problem and its setting. American Sociological Review, 12, 493–507.
8.
BernsteinS.CashoreB. (2007). Can non-state global governance be legitimate? An analytical framework. Regulation & Governance, 1, 347–371.
9.
BlauP. M. (1968). The hierarchy of authority in organizations. American Journal of Sociology, 73, 453–467.
10.
BoL.BöhmS.ReynoldsN. S. (2018). Organizing the environmental governance of the rare-earth industry: China’s passive revolution. Organization Studies. doi: 10.1177/0170840618782278
11.
BoelensR.HoogestegerJ.BaudM. (2015) Water reform governmentality in Ecuador: Neoliberalism, centralization, and the restraining of polycentric authority and community rule-making. Geoforum. 64, 281–291.
12.
ColemanL. M. (2013). The making of docile dissent: Neoliberalization and resistance in Colombia and beyond. International Political Sociology, 7, 170–187.
13.
ConnellR.DadosN. (2014). Where in the world does neoliberalism come from?Theory and Society, 43, 117–138.
14.
DeaconR. (1998). Strategies of governance: Michel Foucault on power. Theoria, 92, 113–148.
15.
DemilB.LecocqX. (2006). Neither market nor hierarchy nor network: The emergence of bazaar governance. Organization Studies, 27, 1447–1466.
16.
DepledgeD.DoddsK. (2017). Bazaar governance: Situating the Arctic Circle. In KeilK.KnechtS. (Eds.), Governing Arctic change. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
17.
DjelicM. L.Sahlin-AnderssonK. (Eds.) (2006). Transnational governance: Institutional dynamics of regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18.
DjelicM. L.EtchanchuH. (2015). Contextualizing corporate political responsibilities: Neoliberal CSR in historical perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 2015, 1–21.
19.
Du GayP. (2000). In praise of bureaucracy: Weber-organization-ethics. London: SAGE Publications.
20.
MercurioEl (2015). Conflicto en Caimanes: Ordenan demolición total del tranque de Minera Los Pelambres. 3September2015. www.emol.com.
21.
EnrothH. (2014). Governance: The art of governing after governmentality. European Journal of Social Theory, 17, 60–76.
22.
FergusonJ.GuptaA. (2002) Toward an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality. American Ethnologist, 29, 981–1002.
23.
FoucaultM. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
24.
FrynasJ. G.StephensS. (2015). Political corporate social responsibility: Reviewing theories and setting new agendas. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17, 483–509.
25.
FukuyamaF. (2017). State building: Governance and world order in the 21st century. London: Profile Books.
26.
GarlandD. (1999). ‘Governmentality’ and the problem of crime. In SmandychR. (Ed.), Governable places: Readings on governmentality and crime control (pp 15–45). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
27.
GemmillB.Bamidele-IzuA. (2002). The Role of NGOs and civil society in global environmental governance. In EstyD.IvanovaM. (Eds.), Global environmental governance: Options and opportunities (pp. 77–100). Princeton, NJ: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
28.
GondJ-P.KangN.MoonJ. (2011). The government of self-regulation: On the comparative dynamics of corporate social responsibility. Economy and Society, 40, 640–671.
29.
GrugelJ.RiggirozziP. (2012). Post-neoliberalism in Latin America: Rebuilding and reclaiming the State after crisis. Development and Change, 43, 1–21.
30.
HallR. H. (1962). Intraorganizational structural variation: Application of the bureaucratic model. Administrative Science Quarterly, 7, 295–308.
31.
HaysP. A. (2004). Case study research. In DeMarraisK. B.LapanS. D. (Eds.), Foundations for research: Methods of inquiry in education and the social sciences, (pp. 217–234). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
32.
HeadyF. (1959). The new reform movement in regulatory administration. Public Administration Review, 89–100.
33.
HeydebrandW. V. (1989). New organizational forms. Work and Occupations, 16, 323–357.
34.
HimleyM. (2014). Monitoring the impacts of extraction: Science and participation in the governance of mining in Peru. Environment and Planning A, 46, 1069–1087.
35.
JessopB. (2007). From micro-powers to governmentality: Foucault’s work on statehood, state formation, statecraft and state power. Political Geography, 26, 34–40.
36.
JohnsonP.WoodG.BrewsterC.BrookesM. (2009). The rise of post-bureaucracy: Theorists' fancy or organizational praxis?International Sociology, 24, 37–61.
37.
JonesR. (2012). State encounters. Environment and Planning D, 30, 805–821.
38.
JoutsenvirtaM.VaaraE. (2015). Legitimacy struggles and political corporate social responsibility in international settings: A comparative discursive analysis of contested investment in Latin America. Organization Studies, 36, 741–777.
KnudsenJ. S.MoonJ. (2017). Visible hands: Government regulation and international business responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
41.
La Nacion (1996). Menem y Frei firman el protocolo de los Hielos. 10December, 1996. www.lanacion.com.
42.
LemkeT. (2007). An indigestible meal? Foucault, governmentality and state theory. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 8(2), 43–64.
43.
LiF. (2016). In defense of water: Modern mining, grassroots movements, and corporate strategies in Peru. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 21, 109–129.
MaherR. (2018). Squeezing psychological freedom in corporate–community engagement. Journal of Business Ethics, 1–20.
46.
MaherR. (2019). Pragmatic community resistance within new indigenous ruralities: Lessons from a failed hydropower dam in Chile. Journal of Rural Studies, 68, 63–74.
47.
MäkinenJ.KourulaA.2012. Pluralism in political corporate social responsibility. Business Ethics Quarterly, 22, 249–278.
48.
MasonC.SimmonsJ. (2014). Embedding corporate social responsibility in corporate governance: A stakeholder systems approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 119, 77–86.
49.
MillerP.RoseN. (1990). Governing economic life. Economy and Society, 19, 1–31.
50.
MoogS.SpicerA.BöhmS. (2015). The Politics of multistakeholder initiatives: The crisis of the Forest Stewardship Council. Journal of Business Ethics, 128, 469–493.
51.
MoonJ.CraneA.MattenD.2011. Corporations and citizenship in new institutions of global governance. In CrouchC.MacLeanC. (Eds.), The responsible corporation in a global economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
52.
MorganG.GomesM. V. P.Perez-AlemanP. (2016). Transnational governance regimes in the global south: Multinationals, states and NGOs as political actors. Revista de Administração de Empresas, 56, 374–379.
53.
Nem SinghJ. T. (2012). Who owns the minerals? Repoliticizing neoliberal governance in Brazil and Chile. Journal of Developing Societies, 28, 229–256.
54.
NettlJ. P. (1968). The state as a conceptual variable. World Politics, 20, 559–592.
55.
O’FaircheallaighC. (2013). Community development agreements in the mining industry: An emerging global phenomenon. Community Development, 44, 222–238.
ÖzenH.ÖzenŞ. (2017). What makes locals protesters? A discursive analysis of two cases in gold-mining industry in Turkey. World Development, 90, 256–268.
58.
RascheA.de BakkerF.MoonJ. (2013). Complete and partial organizing for corporate social responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 115, 651–663.
59.
RhodesR. A. (2007). Understanding governance: Ten years on. Organization Studies, 28, 1243–1264.
60.
RoseN.MillerP. (1992). Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government. British Journal of Sociology, 173–205.
61.
RosenauJ. N.CzempielE.-O. (Eds.) (1992). Governance without government: Order and change in world politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
62.
SalinasB. (2007). Implicancias territoriales del conflicto Pascua Lama, Valle del Huasco, región de Atacama.
63.
SchererA. G.PalazzoG. (2011). The new political role of business in a globalized world: A review of a new perspective on CSR and its implications for the firm, governance, and democracy. Journal of Management Studies, 48, 899–931.
64.
Schrempf-StirlingJ.PalazzoG.PhillipsR. A. (2016). Historic corporate social responsibility. Academy of Management Review, 41, 700–719.
65.
StakeR. E. (2013). Multiple case study analysis. New York: Guilford Press.
66.
StokesJ.CleggS. (2002). Once upon a time in the bureaucracy: Power and public sector management. Organization, 9, 225–247.
67.
SumN-L. (2009). Wal-martization and CSR-ization in developing countries. In UttingP.MarquesJ. C. (Eds.), Corporate social responsibility and regulatory governance (pp. 50–76). London: Springer.
68.
SwyngedouwE. (2005). Governance innovation and the citizen: The Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state. Urban Studies, 42, 1991–2006.
69.
ThomasR.DaviesA. (2005). Theorising the micro-politics of resistance: New public management and managerial identities in the public service. Organization Studies, 26, 683–705.
70.
UdyS. H.Jr (1959). “Bureaucracy” and “rationality” in Weber’s Organization Theory: An empirical study. American Sociological Review, 24, 791–795.
71.
UndurragaT. (2015). Neoliberalism in Argentina and Chile: Common antecedents, divergent paths. Revista de Sociologia e Política, 23(55), 11–34.
72.
VallentinS.MurilloD. (2012). Governmentality and the politics of CSR. Organization, 19, 825–843.
73.
WaltersW. (2004). Some critical notes on ‘governance’. Studies in Political Economy, 73, 27–46.
74.
WarwickD. P.MeadeM.ReedT. (1975). A theory of public bureaucracy: Politics, personality, and organization in the State Department. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
75.
WeberM. (2009). The theory of social and economic organization. New York: Simon & Schuster.
76.
WettsteinF. (2009). Multinational corporations and global justice: Human rights obligations of a quasi-governmental institution. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
77.
WhelanG. (2012). The political perspective of corporate social responsibility: A critical research agenda. Business Ethics Quarterly, 22, 709–737.
78.
WiebeA. (2015). A problematic process: The memorandum of understanding between Barrick Gold and Diaguita communities of Chile. MiningWatch Canada and Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales (OLCA), 15. www.business-humanrights.org.
79.
XingL.ChristensenP. M. (2016). Why is the Chinese Communist Party able to sustain its hegemony in era of great transformation? in The rise of China and the capitalist world order (pp. 187–202). London: Routledge.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
