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

经济企业及其批评者：减轻非洲大规模农业投资负面影响的努力

• 批准号: 353613876
• 负责人: Dr. Tijo Salverda
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/353613876?language=en
• 关键词: Economic; Enterprises; their; Critics; Efforts

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.

非洲的农业投资正面临来自国际批评人士的巨大压力，他们对大规模征地和南方国家商业农业的负面影响表示担忧。投资者往往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）改变自己的做法。然而，投资者和公司（即经济企业）如何与他们的批评者（如非政府组织、农村人口、社会运动、记者和（活动家）学者）互动，在人类学中以及在很大程度上在其他社会科学中得到相对较少的理论或实证关注。尽管经济企业面临着更大的（国际）压力，要求将其做法的负面影响降到最低，但它们与批评者之间的互动结果是非常模糊的。为了更好地解释这种模糊性，拟议的项目将重点放在赞比亚的一项大型外国投资上。这项投资为深入研究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）提供了一个完美的案例。为了更好地解释经济企业与其批评者之间相互作用的局限性和潜力，该项目结合了两个主要目标；一个经验，一个理论：第一个目标是获得对外国投资者如何平衡经济和道德/伦理问题的经验理解，特别是在反思它所面临的批评压力时，这些批评既直接针对投资者，也更广泛地针对全球舞台。这项投资提供了一个受欢迎的案例研究，用于分析不同规模之间的相互作用如何产生过程和结果，即实地的现实情况；基金组织总部的逻辑，国外其他相关行为体的作用，如非政府组织、政治家和发展机构；以及企业演员和评论家之间更广泛的全球互动。因此，该项目旨在提供一个综合的分析，包括在地面上发生的事情和全球范围内的反批评运动。第二个目标是在通过实证案例研究获得的见解的基础上建立一个理论论点。人类学家对（全球）市场社会的关注投入了大量的精力，然而，尽管波兰尼（2001）的双重运动提供了分析工具，而且他的观点继续受到关注，但迄今为止，经济企业对批评的反应在（经济）人类学中得到的关注相对较少。除了为（经济）人类学的理论发展做出贡献外，其目的还在于为其他学科（如经济学、发展研究和地理学）的辩论做出贡献。