Horowitz, Leah S. in press. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

Culturally articulated neoliberalization: Corporate Social Responsibility and the capture of indigenous legitimacy in New Caledonia Abstract This paper expands our understandings of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a form of roll-out neoliberalism, building upon analyses of CSR initiatives as elements of a capitalist system actively working to create its own social regularization to secure a socio-politico-economic context supporting capitalist development. Using an ethnographic analysis of the rise and fall of an indigenous protest group that targeted a multinational mining project in New Caledonia, this paper has two theoretical aims. First, it builds upon literature that analyzes neoliberalism as articulating with particular politico-economic conditions in order to argue that such articulation is also, necessarily, cultural. I describe how the mining company undercut and ultimately coopted local resistance, largely by successfully capturing culturally-based ideologies of customary and indigenous legitimacy. Thus, neoliberalizations articulations may involve attempts to capture not only formal but also informal regulation or regulators, through direct personal benefits and also indirectly through the capture of culturally-valued ideologies. These ideologies, in turn, are caught up in culturally-grounded hegemonic processes. This leads to the papers second theoretical aim, which is to explore what happens when different forms of hegemony, based in distinct cultural formations, encounter each other as well as counter-hegemonic forces. In engaging directly with customary authorities rather than exclusively with activists, the company relegitimized itself by delegitimizing its activist opponents, repositioning them as subordinates within their own culturally-informed social hierarchy, and reinstating customary authorities privileged hegemonic status. Thus, multiple, culturally-distinct hegemonic processes may co-exist and interact; here, they reinforced each other by suppressing counter-hegemonic activities. However, some customary authorities still sympathized with the protestors aims and perceived potential threats from the companys expanding economic power. I end by suggesting that counter-hegemonic possibilities reside in the perpetual dynamism of cultures. Keywords: cultural hegemony, environmental governance, neoliberalism, political ecology, regulation theory, transnational corporations Introduction: Corporate Social Responsibility as neoliberalization On a warm September afternoon, in the gymnasium of the Goro Nickel mine site in New Caledonia (Southwest Pacific), Kanak protestors who a few months previously had hurled violent threats at mining company employees and two years earlier had burned millions of dollars of equipment now, smiling, embraced their erstwhile opponents. They, alongside local customary authorities, had just signed a pact pledging no more direct actions against the project. Welcome to the Vale family, the companys president gushed. However, there were signs quickly brushed aside by the company and right-wing media that all was not well in Paradise. The delegation had arrived nearly four hours late, mumbling excuses about customary ceremonies; all through the night, and up to the last minute, village elders had engaged in heated debates over whether to sign the agreement. Some arrived still unconvinced but, faced with a crowd of cameras, put pen to paper. One, though, annotated his signature, noting his still-fervent hope that a solution be found to avoid the pillaging of the Kanak resource. Despite its internal contradictions and tendency toward economic and environmental crisis (Altvater 1990; Benton 1996; O'Connor 1988), capitalism is expanding on the global scale. Since the 1970s, the regulationist framework (better translated from the original French as regularization than regulation see Jessop 1995) has sought to explain capitalisms paradoxes by analyzing the sociopolitical institutions and conditions that reproduce [...] the mode of production, making continual accumulation possible (Aglietta 1979, 16). In other words, capitalism as an independent economic system would soon fail; its survival relies on a coupling between the accumulation system and the mode of social regula[riza]tion (Bridge & McManus 2000, 13). The latter is a complex fabric of 1

economic and non-economic structures, practices, and norms, both formal and informal, that regularize capitalist development as an overdetermined process (Althusser 2005 [1969]), shaped more by social context than by inherent properties. This social context enables accumulation processes to function, at least temporarily, through a series of institutional fixes (Tickell & Peck 1996, 360) a continual process of rescheduling the crisis (Harvey 1989, 196). However, it is important to note that social regularization processes are not fixed and pre-determined but emerge out of contingent processes of struggle (Himley 2013, 397). Contra the rigid, totalizing social conceptions of early social regulationists, each social context must be understood as an articulated structure that is only partially closed and always under construction (Gibson-Graham 2006 [1996], 154). Thus, capitalism cannot simply rely on already-existing structures and procedures but must actively work with and within flexible, dynamic local systems to create the conditions it needs, resulting in a multiplicity of capitalisms (Gibson-Graham 2006 [1996], 30). Since the 1970s, capitalisms work to create such conditions has been facilitated and supported by neoliberalism. This term is promiscuously pervasive, yet inconsistently defined, empirically imprecise and frequently contested (Brenner et al. 2010, 184); however, different conceptualizations of neoliberalism are arguably reconcilable (Springer 2012, 139), at least in terms of baseline definitions (Ward & England 2007, 6). Whether focused on its active manifestations as policy and program, or, more abstractly, as state form or governmentality, or its ideological underpinnings as a hegemonic project (Springer 2012, 136-137), interpretations share an understanding of neoliberalism as an increasingly common institutional framework heavily privileging individual entrepreneurial freedoms (Harvey 2005, 2). Although discursively glorifying market-based mechanisms rather than state intervention as the way to solve political and social problems (Soederberg 2004, 165), neoliberalism actually entails not only minimizing regulations but nurturing firms through, e.g., privatizing industries, creating markets, ensuring property rights, and protecting these through both legal mechanisms and police powers. Protection may include suppressing challenges to economic elites power or privilege (Rodan & Hewison 2006). This reduces the state, as Marx observed, to a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie (2008 [1848], 82). Nonetheless, like capitalism, neoliberalism, far from being a static, homogeneous ideology with a uniform outcome, results from complex and dynamic processes of neoliberalization (Peck & Tickell 2002). First, neoliberal ideologies have evolved over time. The 1980s saw the emergence of the Washington Consensus, a transnational policy paradigm that promoted free markets by making international financial institutions (IFI) loans conditional upon painful structural adjustment reforms (Babb 2013), cutting social welfare initiatives and weakening labor unions (Rodan & Hewison 2006). Criticized by economists, rejected by governments, the Consensus faced a crisis of hegemony in the Gramscian sense (Soederberg 2004, 10): Elites maintained politico-economic power but lost popular support for their ideologies as free markets deepened economic inequalities. As opposition spread, governments distanced themselves from the Consensus as harming their popularity and legitimacy (Soederberg 2004, 171). A post-Washington Consensus evolved: a kinder, gentler neoliberalism (Plehwe & Walpen 2006, 45), with IFIs pronouncing a new-found commitment to good governance, participation, and Community-Driven Development (World Bank 1996, 2006). Roll-back neoliberalism, focused solely on freeing markets, had putatively been replaced with a roll-out neoliberalism designed to address its predecessors social failings (Peck & Tickell 2002), although critics see these reforms as merely an attempt to relegitimise market-led development (Carroll 2010, 3), which inevitably exacerbates power asymmetries and associated social problems (Nair 2013). Meanwhile, neoliberalization is contextual and contingent (England & Ward 2007, 250), exhibiting variations in its on-the-ground realizations. This variegation results from articulation (e.g. Castree 2006, Smith 2007), which Hall defines as a protean linkage between an ideology and contextual social forces such as politics and economic conditions (1996, 141). While always positioned within a social context that gives it meaning, an ideology has no necessary connection to any particular context; it can be articulated in more than one way (1996, 142), in both a discursive and a material sense. Thus, neoliberalization, as a global process, is forced in each manifestation to articulate to engage in mutual shaping with local circumstances: geographically-specific political and economic conditions and institutional structures (Springer 2011, 2555), and with the 2

individual characteristics of the particular stakeholders involved (Springer 2010b). Engagement with these multiple influences helps fashion unique forms of neoliberalization, which in turn leads to varying degrees of physical and structural violence (Springer 2011). This paper builds upon understandings of roll-out neoliberalization as articulating with particular politico-economic conditions as it aims to relegitimize market-led development and thus counter resistance. However, analyses to date have underestimated the role of culture in these processes, instead tending toward an overly economistic derivation of political economy or an overly statist rendition of governmentality (Barnett 2005, 10). I thus respond to the call to examine the translation of global capital across various spaces and cultural contexts (Springer 2012, 134) . Through a study of Corporate Social Responsibility practices in New Caledonia that captured the culturally-valued ideologies upon which protestors relied, and thus undermined this resistance, I conceptualize the cultural articulation of neoliberalization. The next section builds a theoretical frame for this work by discussing ways corporations capture both formal and informal regulators, and particularly exploring the role of ideological capture in encounters of multiple hegemonic and counter-hegemonic processes. Articulating CSR: Culture, capture, cooptation Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) exemplifies neoliberalizations temporal dynamism and contextual articulation. A type of roll-out neoliberalism, grounded in the notion that businesses have moral duties, CSRs roots lie in 19th century debates about industrys social role (Sadler 2004). By the 1990s, pressures on corporations had intensified, largely through the informal regulation of activism (Pargal & Wheeler 1996, 1315), enforced through direct action such as destruction of equipment or indirect action including attacks on companies global reputations (Garsten & Hernes 2009). [S]ocial movement spaces (Nicholls 2009) such as transnational activist networks (Keck & Sikkink 1998), facilitated by the information age (Castells 1996), had vastly increased activists influence. Meanwhile, enabler states encouraged informal regulation of economic activities (Ayres & Braithwaite 1992), devolving to civil society duties that they were reluctant to embrace themselves and acting only as regulator of last resort when absolutely necessary (Gouldson & Bebbington 2007, 7). Simultaneously, socially responsible investors began to screen, and pressure, potential funding recipients. For instance, in 1998 the International Finance Corporation adopted Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies directed at clients. Meanwhile, in response to criticism from the nongovernmental community, the World Bank Group commissioned a review of its involvement in the extractive industries, which recommended funding only projects with adequate governance, [...] much more effective social and environmental policies; and respect for human rights (World Bank Group 2003, vii). The hidden agenda, of course, was to mitigate risk and ensure project profitability through political technologies of participation ultimately aimed at relegitimizing neoliberal hegemony (Carroll 2009, 138). Consequently, corporations needed to (re)legitimize themselves, too, in the eyes of both activists and investors. As financial and reputational costs of ignoring opponents began to outweigh costs of addressing them (see Humphreys 2000), corporations saw a business case for good corporate citizenship (Zadek 2001). Strategies switched from dodging socio-environmental concerns to putatively embracing them, in the aim of creating a social context favorable to long-term profitability (Bridge 1998, 227) i.e. achieving social regularization. Corporations thus viewed CSR as an opportunity to seize control of the movement before it seized control over them (Welker 2009, 145), while achieving a second aim of displacing regulatory responsibilities from governments to corporations (Sadler & Lloyd 2009). CSR could demonstrate, to all observers, that the operation had obtained a social license, a critical mass of public consent (Owen & Kemp 2013, 31). One means of demonstrating this is the Impact and Benefit Agreement (IBA), a company-community contract that documents community acceptance of a project in exchange for benefits, e.g., financial payments, employment quotas, environmental management, and/or cultural heritage preservation (O'Faircheallaigh 2012). Meanwhile, CSR initiatives articulate with local politico-economic contexts. For instance, corporations tailor their responses to concerns according to the communitys economic and political power (Pellow & Brulle 2005); research shows poorer corporate environmental performance in 3

economically-depressed areas (Gouldson 2006). Where communities and/or governments are strong enough to set the agenda, companies may resist the negotiation of an IBA, embracing this process only when they are in a dominant position.1 Meanwhile, actual community approval is often less important to firms than the appearance of having achieved it, in the eyes of governments, investors, and activists (Owen & Kemp 2013). Related to both these points, the more economically and politically vulnerable a population is, the more easily a company is able to manipulate or intimidate it into accepting environmental and social harms in return for the promise of benefits (e.g. Auyero & Swistun 2009); particularly in the developing world, industrial actors may use a trinkets and beads approach to buy-off or silence desperately poor communities (Calvano 2008). This begs the question of how, in each context, corporations achieve the appearance of community consent. Before discussing cultures role in these processes, I will briefly outline two corporate strategies for undercutting both formal and informal regulation: capture and cooptation. Corporations may escape or preclude constraints through regulatory capture, the hijacking of the regulatory process, so that what regulators decide and/or perform is what industry prefers (Mitnick 2011, 35). Regulators sympathies may be won through benefits such as votes or campaign contributions. Capture then takes a variety of forms; industries, businesses, or other special interests may shape or draft new regulations, lobby legislators to weaken or repeal existing ones, or redefine themselves so as to be governed by more lenient regulatory bodies (Etizioni 2009). The term regulatory capture has until now been definitionally applied to a relationship with the public sector due to the governments monopoly of force (Mitnick 2011, 35-36). However, as this study shows, communities growing influence encourages firms to attempt to capture informal regulators too protestors, local publics, and/or the international community. One means of capturing informal regulators is cooptation, a defensive mechanism whereby governments or corporations neutralize opposition by assimilating challengers into their own leadership structures (Selznick 1948, 34). Communities may be especially vulnerable to cooptation, as corporations possess far greater experience, technical knowledge, and financial resources (Murphree et al. 1996, 448). Special interests may capture regulators (formal or informal) directly, such as through bribes or privileges. Alternatively, they may use indirect tactics, such as ideological capture: the symbolic and rhetorical alignment of corporate activities with broader social discourses, framing business activities so as to make them acceptable to regulators and civil society and thus paving the way for full-fledged regulatory capture (Lippmann 2005, 119). For instance, discussing U.S. capitalist class interests in the 1980s, Harvey (2005, 42) explains that these labored against government regulation not only by capturing political parties through donations but also by capturing ideals, winning support from the American populace by conjuring up its obsession with individual freedom and appealing to this ideal in rejecting constraints on corporations behavior. Similarly, in recent decades industry has captured the ideology of sustainability, thwarting environmental opposition by appropriating, redefining and deploying once oppositional concepts and thereby relegitimizing industrial activities (Bridge & McManus 2000, 36-37). Ideological capture not only enables informal regulatory capture and cooptation; it is also further expanded by these processes. To external observers, it appears that the corporation or government body has included the community in decision-making; the organization has thus captured the valued ideals of democratic participation and community representation (Murphree et al. 1996, 455). Meanwhile, the organization not only quiets protestors but may adopt, through association, the respectability or legitimacy that they represent in the public eye (Selznick 1948, 34). Of course, ideologies are profoundly unconscious [...] cultural objects (Althusser 2005 [1969], 233), contextualized by and, in turn, shaping norms, traditions, and discourses that outline what is acceptable, even possible, to do, say, and think. Different cultures, clearly, are infused with different ideologies. Awareness of cultural specificities, then, must inform any attempt to capture relevant ideals; neoliberalization must be, to coin a term, culturally articulated. Meanwhile, in prescribing and constraining patterns of thought and behavior, culture is deeply intertwined with hegemony, in Gramscis sense of a ruling ideology that deeply permeates subconscious life, arising from long-standing practices of cultural socialization (Harvey 2005, 39). This ideological framework stabilizes, by legitimizing, social relationships of domination and subordination. Inequitable power relations then appear as a fundamental component of the habitus, indeed as commonsense, a reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move 4

(Williams 1977, 110). Here, I argue that the scholarly literature would benefit from a greater recognition of the multiple hegemonies, with different cultural groundings, that are increasingly coming into contact. Meanwhile, scholars have recognized that it is better to speak of dynamic hegemonic processes, which must be continually restabilized, at least partially through the discursive work of subjectivation: the internalization of hegemonic ideologies (Springer 2010a), in the face of challenges from counter-hegemonic forces. Thus, hegemony or, as I argue, hegemonies are not fixed but must constantly struggle with those who would modify or overturn their relations of domination/subordination, or the politico-socio-economic context that enables these. This study explores ways that hegemonic processes attempt to maintain themselves in the face of challenges, examining the crucial, yet heretofore underexamined, role of culturally-informed ideologies in these struggles. It also analyzes what happens when differing forms of hegemony encounter each other. The next sections take the reader on an empirical exploration of the cultural articulation of neoliberalization (in the form of CSR), as a hegemonic process, based in its own cultural ideologies, encountering both resistance (a protest group) and an alternative hegemonic system grounded in the local culture (customary authority). I examine how a multinational mining company undercut and ultimately coopted informal regulation in the form of local protest in New Caledonia by appropriating culturally-valued ideologies of customary legitimacy, repositioning their opponents within localized hegemonic relationships, and simultaneously capturing indigenous legitimacy in the international arena. New Caledonia New Caledonia is a particularly appropriate site for exploring corporate strategies for capturing informal regulation. This Pacific island nation, the size of New Jersey, is a biodiversity hotspot with exceptionally high numbers of endemic species that are severely threatened, especially by mining activity (Kier et al. 2009; Richer de Forges & Pascal 2008). Mined since 1874, New Caledonia currently hosts over 30 active mine sites (DIMENC 2012), some locally-based and others run by multinational corporations (MNCs). This mining prompts concern from a multitude of stakeholders, rural and urban, indigenous and non-indigenous (Horowitz 2008a). Meanwhile, formal and customary authorities compete for the right to regulate this activity, or at least to claim a privileged role in engaging with it. New Caledonia, administered by France since 1853, is a Melanesian archipelago with a population of approximately 231,000 (ISEE 2008). The population is comprised of several ethnic groups, primarily Melanesians, known as Kanak (45%), and people of European ancestry (34%) (ITSEE 2001). In Kanak societies, the first clans to occupy an area have customary (although not legal) rights to determine land use at that site, and occupy the highest social position, with other clans hierarchically ranked in order of arrival (Bensa & Rivierre 1982). In the pre-colonial era, the chief, appointed by first-occupant clans, had no substantive authority but enjoyed respectful brotherly affection (Leenhardt 1937, 149). However, this position acquired greater significance after 1898, when colonial administrators created lesser chiefs, responsible for a village, and high chiefs, with authority over several villages, often distributing these titles themselves (Naepels 1998). These chiefs received new powers over land along with the ability, at least theoretically, to punish their subjects (Merle 1996). In 1947, administrators created village-level Councils of Elders. Later, the 1998 Nouma Accords institutionalized eight Customary Regions, each with its own Customary Council. Each region selects two members of the Customary Senate, with an advisory role on matters concerning Kanak identity. Clearly colonial and post-colonial governance systems radically altered customary authority structures. Even in their mutated and convoluted contemporary forms, however, positions of customary authority command a high degree of respect from every corner of Kanak society. The 1980s witnessed anti-colonialist uprisings, which ended with the 1988 Matignon Accord (Henningham 1992). A decade later, the Nouma Accords promised a gradual devolution of administrative authority to the territory, recategorized as a sui generis collectivity in 1999, although still a French possession. Meanwhile, New Caledonia was divided into Northern, Southern, and Islands Provinces. Many regulatory responsibilities were decentralized; for instance, the power to

draft mining regulations was transferred to New Caledonia, with the provinces responsible for enforcing them (paragraph 3.2.5 of the Nouma Accords). Grande Terre, the main island, is estimated to possess nearly 25% of the worlds nickel reserves (Mining Journal 1999) and is the second largest producer of ferronickel and fifth greatest source of nickel ore (Lyday 2006). Beside the current pyrometallurgical refinery, two refineries are in progress, colloquially called the Northern and Southern Refineries (see Horowitz 2004). The Southern Refinery project, officially Vale Nouvelle-Caldonie (known until 2008 as Goro Nickel), is located at the southern tip of Grande Terre (Figure 1). Inco, an MNC, purchased mining rights to the Goro site in 1992, and in 1999 completed a pilot refinery which, due to the ores low mineral content, uses hydrometallurgical technology. This procedure, never before implemented in New Caledonia, uses acid under pressure to leach nickel and cobalt from the ore, with effluent discharged into the sea. In 2006 Inco was purchased by CVRD, a Brazilian MNC, world leader in iron ore production and the second largest producer of nickel, operating in 37 countries. In 2007, CVRD changed its name to Vale. Operations are projected to reach full capacity by 2015, despite delays caused by acid leaks in 2009, 2010, and 2012 (Frdire 2012) and the effluent diffusers rupture in 2013 (Mainguet 2013). Insert Figure 1 here. Having conducted fieldwork in New Caledonia since 1998, I began studying the Southern Refinery project in 2006. Between 2006 and 2012 I conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews with over 120 stakeholders, including residents of villages near the mine site, leaders and members of grassroots organizations, representatives of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government officials, and mining company representatives. Additionally, I conducted telephone interviews with NGO and grassroots leaders, lawyers, researchers, and mining company officials, based in Australia, Canada, France and New Caledonia. All translations from French are mine. I use pseudonyms for all interviewees. Formal and informal regulation of the Southern Refinery The parent MNC, first Inco then Vale, benefitted from a favorable regulatory and fiscal policy environment. The French state convinced Inco to invest in New Caledonia by offering a tax exemption package involving savings of US$100 million. Meanwhile, although the Nouma Accords specified that New Caledonias mining legislation, dating largely from the 1950s, should be revised and updated, a new mining code was not implemented until 2010. Moreover, governing bodies and politicians themselves had financial interests in the project. The Southern Province, responsible for providing permits and enforcing mining regulations, remains a shareholder in the project. Additionally, the President of the Southern Province from 2004-2009, Philippe Goms, was indicted in 2012 for illegal conflict of interest after Goro Nickel granted his air conditioner company a millioneuro contract in 2005-2006, although he successfully appealed this decision a few months later (Matthieu 2012). That these financial interests might reduce regulators willingness to risk harming profits soon became clear. In April 2009, the refinery leaked 42,000 liters of 98% sulfuric acid, much of which flowed into a nearby creek; the incident was not reported to the government until the following day. An investigation revealed design flaws in the refinery, insufficient risk management, and an inadequate response from Vale (Lloyd's Register 2009). Local environmentalists took the company to court. However, the case was dismissed in 2010 as too much time had elapsed: The public prosecutor had requested information from the regulatory body, the Southern Province, which had never responded. Two years later, through environmentalists persistence, the case was reopened, Vale found guilty, and the maximum penalty under the Southern Provinces environmental code was imposed: a paltry sum of 3,750 (Chatel 2012). Informal regulation, then, attempted to counter the hegemonic neoliberal social regularization that the company enjoyed, but faced a weak legal framework and politicians with questionable motives. Resistance from indigenous protestors, however, proved more challenging for the MNC, despite the fact that under French law the leased lands were in the public domain and 6

therefore, notwithstanding customary ties to these places, local residents had no legal rights over them. In 2002, local Kanak residents organized themselves to respond to Goro Nickels present and future activities. The group was strongly influenced in its early years (and by some accounts initiated) by chiefs of two villages: Goro, closest to the mine site, and Unia, the most populated local village. Like most customary authorities, they supported the mining project for the employment it would create, but were concerned that Kanak would not benefit adequately from this employment, as evidenced by the companys bringing construction workers from the Philippines. Meanwhile, they had serious concerns about potential environmental impacts, particularly on the marine resources upon which the local population depends for subsistence and livelihood. Therefore, they believed that local residents needed to keep an eye on the project; hence the groups name, Rhb N, means eye of the country in the indigenous language Num. When both chiefs passed away in 2004, the group took on a more militant and increasingly violent character, including multiple blockades of the construction site. In April 2006, a blockade turned violent with the destruction of approximately $13 million of equipment and encounters with armed police in which four gendarmes were injured. Ultimately, 36 protestors were arrested and work was partially suspended at the site for over two weeks. However, on 27 September 2008, four Rhb N leaders, 25 customary authorities and two Goro Nickel representatives from all sides, only senior men signed a Pact for Sustainable Development of the Far South [of New Caledonia] (hereafter the Pact). Through this IBA, the mining company committed to creating a Corporate Foundation to fund local development initiatives and a Consultative Customary Environmental Committee (CCCE), to recruiting and training local environmental technicians, and to an extensive reforestation program. In exchange, Rhb N members committed to assert their point of view not through violent or illegal actions, but by dialogue (Vale Inco et al. 2008). How had this occurred? Round one: Rhb N wins customary/indigenous legitimacy Recognition of a unique Kanak identity has always formed an important part of pro-independence leaders demands (Henningham 1992; Tjibaou 1996), and respect for customary authority, even in its vastly altered form, constitutes a crucial component of contemporary Kanak cultural-political identity. Throughout New Caledonia, Kanak tend to judge the legitimacy of any endeavor by whether it has been initiated, and/or is supported, by customary authorities (Horowitz 2008b). Meanwhile, indigenous identity is an important source of political and moral legitimacy on an international scale, eliciting concern from the United Nations, NGOs, and the global public. Thus, both customary legitimacy (Kanak peoples sense that a project has support from customary authorities) and indigenous legitimacy (the international communitys acceptance of a project or group as representative of Kanak interests) are important stakes to capture before initiating a project of any scope in New Caledonia. Both may be achieved through demonstrations of customary authorities approval. Not surprisingly, then, from their inception both mining company and protest group attempted to garner the support of customary authorities. Although forms of customary authority have changed and expanded radically in the colonial and postcolonial eras, the highest authority, that over land, still stems from an ability to claim membership of a first-occupant clan. However, as is commonly the case in New Caledonia (cf. Horowitz 2002), the identity and membership of first-occupant clans in the project area was highly controversial, and the company and protest group approached this thorny question in different ways. In the 1990s, before beginning work on the pilot refinery, Inco representatives performed a customary ceremony with local chiefs and customary land owners in an official show of respect. However, they relied heavily on a few individual ties. Over the years, they built a close relationship with the chief of Goro, spurring resentment from others who contested his clans claims to authority over local lands. When the chiefs of Goro and Unia both died in 2004, the mining company was left without a close ally among local residents. In the midst of intra-village tensions between supporters and opponents of the mining project, no new chiefs were appointed for several years. At first, Rhb N was more successful in publicly winning customary authorities support for its activities and reinforcing its own legitimacy through this association. In its narrative, the chiefs 7

of Goro and Unia had initiated the groups creation. At the groups inception, its leaders forged a broader base of legitimacy by involving as many customary authorities as possible in a public customary ceremony. Somewhat ironically, the chiefs had chosen as Rhb Ns main leader Gabriel, a charismatic figure who had recently ended a political career but was from a clan low on the local customary hierarchy. As members of recently-arrived clans, Gabriel and his co-leader had no authority over land-use issues, except as spokespersons for landowner clans. After the chiefs died, then, Rhb N continued to position itself in fact, defined its very identity as representing the customary authorities of the far south of New Caledonia. Customary authorities and other local residents expressed confidence that Rhb N was fighting for the interests of the Kanak people (see Horowitz 2009). By mid-2006, however, that support was eroding. Customary authorities began to express mixed feelings about the protest group, viewing it not as the activist arm addressing their concerns but as an independent and increasingly unruly entity. Without the chiefs as figureheads, Rhb Ns customary legitimacy became less clear, and customary authorities began to complain that it no longer respected them: At first we started off well, but today they say they speak in the name of customary authorities, but the customary authorities havent given them leave to speak (Dominique, pers. comm. 10 July 2006). In part, this dissatisfaction stemmed from the violence which Rhb N members, acting independently, had begun to perform against not only the company but also fellow villagers sometimes the deceased chiefs families2 who did not support their protest activities. Explaining why he had never joined Rhb N, one customary authority voted yes to their demands, no to their methods (Guy, pers. comm. 14 September 2010). Notably, several customary authorities expressed resentment at becoming pawns in Rhb Ns game, as the protest group attempted to claim a customary legitimacy which its main leaders lacked: On the hierarchical scale they are the lowest. [...] They arent customary authorities but they always use the customary authorities (Jean-Claude, pers. comm. 20 July 2011). With no customary claims to local lands, Rhb Ns leaders needed to provide some weight [...]. Thats why they always bring elders [customary authorities] with them [...] to support them (Loc, pers. comm. 26 July 2011). However, the main leader, Gabriel, had kept all power for himself: He said we have to include the customary authorities; as soon as he did, he asked to be president (Loc, pers. comm. 26 July 2011). Meanwhile, Vale was doing its best to position Rhb N as a fringe element that represented neither customary authorities nor the general population (Horowitz 2012). Six weeks after the episode of April 2006 described above, Rhb N, company representatives, non-indigenous environmental groups, and government officials sat down for a series of closed-door Round Table discussions organized by the Southern Province. Eventually, the government excluded the environmentalists and then found itself excluded as the discussions evolved into two-way talks between Vale and Rhb N. The talks persisted but did not bring the parties any closer to a resolution, even with the 2007 intervention of an international NGO specializing in mediation. In early 2008, the company began laying the pipeline that would dump effluent into the marine environment, sparking fresh protests and blockades. In the midst of this turmoil, Rhb N was swept into office at the municipal level, reinforcing many customary authorities perception of the group as political, not customary, and therefore not authorized to speak on behalf of the chiefs (Flix, pers. comm. 11 August 2010). However, the group vehemently denied that it had become a political party and continued to base its identity in customary legitimacy; a 2008 brochure proclaimed, Rhb N is the word [mouthpiece] of the chieftainships, the clans, and the indigenous Kanak of the South! Round two: Vale discovers cultural articulation At this point, Vale flew in a legal specialist from Brazil as the new lead negotiator. He took a different tactical approach, recognizing that Vales attempts to avoid informal regulation by local protestors needed to articulate with the local culture. Executives had been trying to adhere to a tight schedule and begin production as planned, in line with their own culturally-based ideologies of efficient profitmaking. However, this apparent rush created friction and distrust as community members interpreted the haste as a sign that the MNC had only short-term interests in New Caledonia, whereas local residents needed to ensure long-term health of their natural resources (Horowitz 2010). Interpreting 8

this as tension between an operational drive to move forward and the local absence of the same concept of deadlines culturally speaking, the new negotiator convinced senior management to proceed instead in a manner much more typical to how the indigenous communities operate more organic [...] more laborious, more time-consuming, but more legitimate and probably more sustainable (Benke 2010). The distinguishing feature of this new approach, and the basis of its legitimacy, was that it was more inclusive. Criticizing previous strategies that had focused on talking to those who were most able to disrupt operations (Benke 2010), the negotiator realized that exclusive engagement with the main source of trouble had allowed Rhb N to exert pressure on Vale. In attempting to achieve efficiency, the company had not seen a need to negotiate with other, less troublesome, community sectors. However, instead of the failed strategies of countering protestors with force or addressing their demands directly, Vale could counterbalance and undermine their influence by capturing the deeply-held cultural ideal of customary legitimacy. To do this, it needed to broaden its engagement strategy, including not the entire community, as many women and young people sympathized with the protest group, but the sector most sympathetic to the project: customary authorities, who were also, of course, at the top of the social hierarchy. Drawing from fashionable CSR discourses, the negotiator portrayed this strategy as culturally sensitive. As he later noted, the fundamental flaw in the negotiation process up to that point was that Rhb N was the only party at the table allegedly representing indigenous community interests (Benke 2010). Against Rhb Ns claim to have been initiated by local chiefs, in his version the group had been created by the municipal council and thus had no basis in in fact had excluded traditional structures of representation and leadership. In contrast, in reaching out to customary authorities, he was following culturally correct protocols by understanding the customary leadership structures and interests and engaging directly with all legitimate customary representatives of all tribes related to the project (Benke 2010). Thus, beyond taking the focus off Rhb N, the company began working to undercut the groups claims to customary/indigenous legitimacy and instead establish Vales own claims to that powerful resource. Customary authorities increasing disillusionment with the protest group, detailed above, provided just that opportunity. The tripartite negotiations that ensued effectively marginalized Rhb N; if the group was, as it claimed, representing the customary authorities, the presence of the latter at the table rendered the protestors redundant, and silenced them. Sidelined at the negotiation table, Rhb Ns voice had no outlet but through their lawyer, who co-drafted the Pact. This lawyer, however, inadvertently strengthened Vales capture of customary legitimacy. Drawing upon his specialization in indigenous rights, he took literally Rhb Ns continued insistence that their sole purpose was as an arm of the customary authorities and interpreted the groups demands as being primarily for recognition of the indigenous people (pers. comm. 22 September 2009), prioritizing recognition over their environmental and economic concerns and severing their ties to former allies such as urban-based environmentalists and government agencies (see Horowitz 2012). He drafted a long preamble (about a third of the document), which described the customary authorities demands to see recognized the legitimate place of he who originates from the history of this land and their ultimately successful search for an agreement that would take into account each actors legitimacy (Vale Inco et al. 2008). He later expressed satisfaction that Vale had understood [...] that it was necessary to recognize the place of the first people, and so not to consider them as subjects, as pawns, but rather as partners (pers. comm. 22 September 2009). He thus failed to recognize that both protest group and mining company were using the customary authorities precisely as pawns, for the legitimacy they represented. Meanwhile, protest group leaders were becoming anxious about their dwindling support amongst local villagers, many of whom disapproved of the groups violent tactics and/or were impatient to enjoy the promised employment, despite continued environmental anxieties. If Rhb N could at least engineer an agreement and convince customary authorities to sign it, the group would regain a little respect from local residents (Loc, pers. comm. 26 July 2011). Paradoxically, though, as customary authorities support for the mining project became highlighted through their engagement in the Pact negotiation process, Vale finally captured customary legitimacy, wresting it away from Rhb N and repositioning the protestors as subordinates within their social hierarchy.

In capturing customary legitimacy, Vale also captured the ideal of indigenous legitimacy, from the international perspective. Ironically, to maintain his groups indigenous legitimacy in the eyes of the international community, Rhb Ns main leader found himself needing to team up with the MNC. At a United Nations (UN) workshop, Gabriel joined Rhb Ns lawyer and Vales negotiator in presenting a case study from New Caledonia, lauded by the UN as an exemplary process that had led to a mutually acceptable result (OHCHR 2009, 5). Two years later, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples also praised the Pact, which ensured Kanak oversight of the environmental impact of the project and provided economic benefits through an innovative mechanism, the Corporate Foundation (Anaya 2011, 11). Vale simultaneously managed to capture the protest group itself. In part, it achieved this directly, by providing Gabriel with official recognition: presidency of the CCCE, largely a figurehead role. Both main leaders also received lucrative contracts to provide seedlings for reforestation. However, Vales capture of Rhb N also occurred through indirect pressure, as a logical outcome of its capture of customary and indigenous legitimacy. When Vale began successfully to highlight its relationship to customary authorities, Rhb N was implicitly faced with a choice: Adopt a new identity not based in customary or indigenous legitimacy and face accusations, locally and internationally, that its leaders had no customary right to speak about land matters or renounce the struggle. Several other factors were also at stake. Leaders expressed concerns about the violence occasioned by the blockade in April 2006 and worried that another such event might result in loss of life. They also noted the intracommunity and even intrafamilial tensions between proponents and opponents of the mining project church windows smashed, stones and insults hurled at cars, houses burned down and the need to restore community harmony. Also, Rhb N had been fined heavily for destruction of mining company equipment during the 2006 blockade; the Pact dropped those charges, specifying, All contestations between the Rhb N Committee and Goro Nickel are irrevocably extinguished by the present transaction (Vale Inco et al. 2008). Meanwhile, given its leaders previous political roles, some community members cynically speculated that in being elected to municipal office in 2008, the group had achieved its true purpose. That same year, UNESCO inscribed sections of New Caledonias coral reef on its World Heritage list, further undercutting the protest movements environmental arguments. Faced with all these factors, the leaders chose to cease their protest activities and sign the Pact. Captured and coopted In allowing itself to be captured, Rhb N abandoned its original goals; it had become coopted. On the environmental front, the group had earlier made significant gains through the courts, such as the revocation in June 2006 of the MNCs permit to operate its refinery due to an insufficient environmental impact assessment, forcing Vale to invest significant time and money in a new study. It had also, aided by media attention, pressured the company into reducing the effluents 100 mg/l manganese concentrations to European standards of 1mg/l, a tenth of limits the local government had imposed in response to public concern, costing Vale $60 million (Marcuson et al. 2009). In contrast, the Pact did not reduce the projects environmental impacts. One component of its Environmental Program was the reforestation of areas affected by projects prior to Vales. While seemingly positive, this activity served to distract attention from the projects own impacts (e.g., its effluent, the potential later realized of acid spills, carbon emissions from its coal-fired power plant, etc.), displacing blame for ecological damage onto Vales predecessors. Additionally, the eight environmental technicians (who received a one-year training program organized by Vale through the local university) and the CCCE (10 customary authorities and five Rhb N representatives) could only recommend environmental studies, provide opinions on project activities, and elaborate a strategy for showcasing Kanak traditional knowledge within the operations (Vale Inco et al. 2008). The only other environmental provision was a commitment to maintain conformity with the environmental standards applicable to the project already legally required. While providing a false sense of participation in environmental decision-making, the Pact left the community without the power to effect real change. Nor had Rhb N achieved its original economic goals. The Heritage Fund that the group had initially demanded, to be supported by a percentage of mining profits from all companies 10

operating in New Caledonia, came no closer to realization. Nor did the Pact commit Vale to greater employment for local residents, or training for more highly-skilled jobs. No profit-sharing or royalties were envisaged. Instead, Vales Corporate Foundation provided funding for locally-initiated smallscale development projects, committing approximately US$6.9 million over the first five years and $1.7 million annually for the next 30 years. While this sum, unprecedented in New Caledonia, favorably impressed local residents, it pales in comparison to examples from neighboring Australia, where a recent IBA provided royalties of 2% of gross revenues and entitlement to 5% of project equity without cost, or a gold mine in Papua New Guinea where, in 2008 alone, community royalties amounted to $9.2 million in addition to landowner contracts and local salaries worth 10 times this amount (O'Faircheallaigh 2012, 8). Signatories were largely unaware of the Pacts comparative context, and often of its very contents; some explained they hadnt had time to read it (Albert, pers. comm. 11 August 2010), or hadnt been to school and the explanations provided were difficult to understand (Benot, pers. comm. 28 October 2009); they had simply trusted protest group leaders to negotiate and inform us afterward (Albert, pers. comm. 11 August 2010). Others refused to sign the Pact, expressing disappointment at its failure to address employment issues and noting that it did not allay their environmental concerns: Its incoherent; you think that youve reforested, that that will diminish the rate of marine pollution? (Loc, pers. comm. 21 July 2011). Several customary authorities described internecine quarrels, including an all-night debate the eve of the signature, or their own inner turmoil before signing, often reluctantly (Eugne, pers. comm. 7 August 2010). Many who signed had felt pressured to do so by Vale, or by Rhb N who forced people to say yes (Oscar, pers. comm. 24 October 2009). Others had felt they had no choice. Still anxious about impacts, many had signed in a desperate attempt to restore harmony to the families and villages that had been broken, divided between project supporters and opponents (Bastien, pers. comm. 15 August 2010). Moreover, as a powerful multinational, Vale could send anyone to attack them if they tried to protest (Martin, pers. comm. 29 October 2009); recalling the events of April 2006, customary authorities noted that the State was on Vales side and had sent police to break up their calm demonstration (Albert, pers. comm. 11 August 2010). They worried that, had the protests continued, there would have been victims protestor deaths as local youths were highly motivated [...], determined to stop the refinery; averse to this risk, and feeling that attempts to stop the project were futile, they reasoned, Its better to sign so as to have something than not to gain anything at all (Martin, pers. comm. 29 October 2009). Some customary authorities worried that they had been coopted, assimilated into companycreated structures while their demands, [...] grievances that were formulated since the beginning of the project had never been really responded [to], listened to (Loc, pers. comm. 21 July 2011). Furthermore, they wondered whether they could remain independent critics of Vales activities through structures such as the CCCE, or lIL, an observatory charged with monitoring the project, both funded by the MNC (and both presided by Gabriel): I wonder if we can go against Vale even if its Vale that pays for everything (Oscar, pers. comm. 13 July 2012). In any case, they were acutely conscious of having been manipulated in order to build local support for the Pact: Both parties needed us [...] vis--vis the community (Loc, pers. comm. 21 July 2011). Later, some expressed regret and wondered whether they had signed too quickly (Guy, pers. comm. 14 September 2010), especially after recurrent acid spills in subsequent years. Many also noted the fury of other community members, particularly women and youth who had participated in blockades, upon learning of the signature. However, they felt that the Pact had negated their ability to protest; they had pledged no more actions against Vale (Eugne, pers. comm. 7 August 2010). Conclusion This study of the demise of an indigenous protest movement has shown how processes of neoliberalization must articulate not only with specific politico-economic conditions but also with cultural ideologies and local hegemonic relationships. Vale, already benefitting from New Caledonias neoliberalized regulatory and fiscal policy environments, key ingredients of social regularization, faced informal regulatory challenges from Rhb N. These protestors based their identity in customary legitimacy through ties to customary authority. However, protest actions 11

became more extreme, and more violent, than customary authorities felt comfortable supporting. Seizing this opportunity, the MNC switched tactics; rather than engaging directly with Rhb N, the company sought to undermine the groups claims to customary legitimacy and hence its ability, culturally speaking, to say anything about land use. By bringing customary authorities to the negotiating table, Vale destabilized the protest groups claims to represent them and effectively captured customary legitimacy for itself, repositioning Rhb N leaders within localized hegemonic structures, as members of socially subordinate clans. To maintain its customary legitimacy vis--vis fellow Kanak, Rhb N found itself needing to promote the Pact that its lawyer, and Vales team of lawyers, had negotiated; to continue to claim indigenous legitimacy in the eyes of the international community, it needed to ally itself with Vale. Vale further captured these informal regulators by coopting the groups main leader, providing him official recognition through structures it had created and/or funded, and personal economic benefits. Meanwhile, the Pact did not further Rhb Ns and customary authorities original economic goals of a Heritage Fund or increased training and employment, nor their environmental goals of eliminating the refinery or reducing its pollution, instead only providing a sense of participation with no real power. Complaining about the compromises it had made, the company pledged relatively small economic and environmental benefits and otherwise proceeded, unencumbered, with its original plans. While some customary authorities were content with this situation, others worried that they had been coopted and continued to express anxieties about environmental impacts and disappointment with the limited economic benefits offered. This paper has attempted to achieve two related theoretical aims. First, it has contributed to and expanded our understandings of CSR initiatives and other roll-out neoliberalization processes as elements of a capitalist system actively working to create its own social regularization to secure a socio-politico-economic context supporting, or at least not inhibiting, capitalist development. Contingent upon the specific contexts within which they occur, such efforts result in variegated forms of neoliberalism, through necessary articulations mutually-shaping engagements with not only local political and economic conditions but also, as this study shows, cultural ideologies and institutions. Direct capture of individual regulators (formal or informal), such as through personal material incentives, is inadequate in the face of widespread resistance from civil society; in these cases, CSR initiatives may attempt to associate the corporation with, and thus capture, culturallyvalued ideologies. These ideologies, in turn, are caught up in (both nurtured by and nurturing) culturallygrounded hegemonic processes. This leads to the papers second theoretical aim, which is to explore what happens when different forms of hegemony, based in distinct (if intertwined) cultural formations, encounter each other as well as counter-hegemonic forces. Here, Vales neoliberal hegemony, grounded in a capitalist culture that valued efficient profit-making, was challenged by the counter-hegemonic efforts of protestors who forcibly slowed, and added costs to, operations. Direct engagement, in the form of physical battles or exclusive negotiations, proved ineffective. Therefore, the company devised a new strategy, this time in articulation with the local cultural ideology of customary legitimacy. Having positioned themselves as representing, and thereby assuming, the hegemony of customary authority, Rhb N leaders had slipped from the favor of customary authorities, who began to see the group as a threat to their own dominance. In engaging directly with these authorities and marginalizing the protestors, Vale relegitimized itself by delegitimizing its activist opponents, repositioning them as subordinates within their own culturally-informed social hierarchy, and instead underlining customary authorities privileged status. Thus, multiple, culturallydistinct hegemonic processes may co-exist and interact; here, they reinforced each other by suppressing counter-hegemonic activities. However, some customary authorities still sympathized with the protestors aims and perceived potential threats from the companys expanding economic power: In collaborating with Vale to suppress Rhb N, they had allowed themselves to be manipulated and silenced too. Nonetheless, within the very source of this hegemonic victory cultural forms of empowerment also lie new possibilities for transcending the risk of capture. Cultures, of course, are dynamic. Kanak culture continues, as it always has, to evolve; novel sources of status and influence emerge outside the hereditary customary realm as women, youth, and low-status clans find opportunities within local political and economic structures. From these higher social positions, they 12

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Figure 1: The Vale Nouvelle-Caldonie site

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Notes
1 2

I am grateful to Ciaran OFaircheallaigh for this insight. E.g. on 13 August 2006 one late chiefs widow awoke to find her electrical box smashed by anti-mine activists (pers. comm. 13 August 2006); earlier, protestors had visited the other late chiefs son late at night and insulted his family because [they were] not with Rhb N (pers. comm. 5 August 2006) .

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