Economic Enterprises and their Critics: Efforts to Mitigate the Negative Impact of Large-Scale Agricultural Investments in Africa

在非洲的农业投资面临着巨大的压力，因为一场国际批评运动引发了对全球南方大规模征地和商业农业的负面影响的担忧。投资者经常不得不对这些担忧做出回应，以至于他们可能感到有压力(部分地)改变他们的做法。然而，投资者和公司(即经济企业)如何与非政府组织、农村人口、社会运动、记者和(激进)学者等批评者互动，在人类学以及在很大程度上也在其他社会科学中，相对较少受到理论或经验上的关注。尽管经济企业面临着比人们似乎承认的更大的(国际)压力，要求它们将其做法的负面影响降至最低，但它们与批评者之间互动的结果非常模糊。为了更好地解释这种模棱两可的情况，拟议中的项目将把重点放在赞比亚的一大笔外国投资上。这项投资提供了一个完美的案例研究，以便更深入地调查经济企业如何平衡经济和道德关切，以及它们的做法是否、为什么以及如何因面临压力而改变(或不改变)。为了更好地解释经济企业与其批评者之间互动的局限性和潜力，该项目结合了两个主要目标；一个是经验上的，一个是理论上的：第一个目标是从经验上了解外国投资者如何平衡经济和道德/伦理关切，特别是考虑到它面临来自批评者的压力，无论是直接针对投资者还是在全球范围内。这项投资提供了一个值得欢迎的案例研究，用于分析不同规模之间的互动如何产生过程和结果，即实地现实；基金总部的逻辑；海外其他相关行为者，如非政府组织、政客和发展机构的作用；以及企业行为者和批评者之间更广泛的全球互动。因此，该项目旨在提供一项综合分析，既包括实地发生的情况，也包括批评者反击运动的全球层面。第二个目标是在通过实证案例研究的镜头获得的见解的基础上建立一个理论论证。人类学家对(全球)市场社会的担忧投入了大量关注，然而，尽管波兰尼斯(2001)的双重运动提供了分析工具，他的观点继续受到关注，但经济企业如何应对批评在(经济)人类学中迄今受到的关注相对较少。除了对(经济)人类学的理论发展做出贡献外，它的目的也是为了对其他学科的辩论发表意见，如经济学、发展研究和地理学。

Agricultural investments in Africa are under substantial pressure from an international movement of critics that has raised concerns about the negative impact of large-scale land acquisition and commercial agriculture in the Global South. Investors often have to respond to these concerns, to the extent that they may feel pressured to (partly) change their practices. Yet how investors and corporations (i.e. economic enterprises) interact with their critics, such as NGOs, rural populations, social movements, journalists, and (activist) scholars, receives relatively little theoretical or empirical attention in anthropology and to a large extent also in the other social sciences. Notwithstanding that economic enterprises face more (international) pressure to minimise the negative impact of their practices than seems to be acknowledged, the outcomes of the interactions between them and their critics are highly ambiguous. To better explain this ambiguity the proposed project will focus on a large foreign investment in Zambia. The investment offers a perfect case study for a closer investigation of how economic enterprises balance economic and moral concerns, and whether, why, and how their practices change (or not) as a result of pressure they face. To better explain the limits and potentials of the interactions between economic enterprises and their critics the project combines two main objectives; one empirical, one theoretical:The first objective is to obtain an empirical understanding of how the foreign investor balances economic and moral/ethical concerns, in particular in reflection upon the pressure it faces from critics, both directly targeting the investor and within the global arena more generally. The investment offers a welcome case study for analysing how processes and outcomes result from interactions between different scales, i.e. the realities on the ground; logics at the funds headquarters, the role of other relevant actors abroad, such as NGOs, politicians, and development agencies; and global interactions between corporate actors and critics more generally. As such, the project aims to offer an integrated analysis incorporating both what happens on the ground and the global dimensions of a countermovement of critics. The second objective is to build a theoretical argument based upon insights gained through the lens of the empirical case study. Anthropologists have devoted substantial attention to concerns about (global) market society, yet how economic enterprises react to criticism has so far received relatively little attention in (economic) anthropology, notwithstanding the analytical tools Polanyis (2001) double movement offers and the attention his ideas continue to receive. Apart from contributing to theory development in (economic) anthropology, the intention is to also speak to debates in other disciplines, such as economics, development studies and geography.