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My research project examines the ethical technologies through which a mining corporation seeks to govern dispersed and disparate people, institutions, objects, and environments that harbor potential risks and opportunities for extractive capitalism. It is based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork extending from Newmont Mining Corporation’s Batu Hijau copper and gold mine site on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa to the corporation’s headquarters in Denver. For corporate responsibility proponents, risk discourse can be quite empowering. What else could grab the attention of senior management like the claim that, unless the appropriate social programs are funded, a mine will begin to hemorrhage a million dollars a day due to demonstrations? Yet risk as a ruling idiom is not going uncontested, as critics question how risk management imperatives not only justify but shape corporate ethics and practices. Through a close study of Newmont’s community development projects, environmental practices, and self-auditing program, this research explores how the moral and instrumental intertwine in the making of corporate ethical technologies. |
