Coloniality of corporate social responsibility
| DOI | 10.1177/1358229120938650 |
| Author | Jurgen Poesche |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Coloniality of corporate
social responsibility
Jurgen Poesche
Abstract
The objective of this article is to make the case horizontally that the intertwined legal
compliance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) abet enduring coloniality in settler
colonial states. The focus is on Indigenous nations and settler colonial states in the
Americas. There are three key contributions. First, the jurisprudential, managerial,
philosophical and political foundations of CSR are of Occidental extraction therefore
making CSR susceptible to being a tool of coloniality directed against Indigenous nations.
Second, CSR is constrained by compliance with Occidental jurisprudence. Third, firms’
compliance with Indigenous nations’ cosmovisions can be best safeguarded by legal
pluralism-based compliance as this entails court-imposed coercive enforcement. CSR is
not part of the solution; CSR is part of the problem.
Keywords
Ethics, indigenous nations, legal compliance, settler colonial states, societal power
structures
Introduction
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has received extensive fav ourable attention in
the business literature and business ethics literature. In this article, the opposite view
is taken – and this gap in the literature is addressed. CSR is consequently considered
unethical. Because CSR comprises compliance with Occidental jurisprudence in settler
colonial states, CSR may be illegal – and unethical – on the foundation of Indigenous
nations’ cosmovisions and a tool in continued jurisprudential coloniality. As positive law
Independent Researcher, QC, Canada
Corresponding author:
Jurgen Poesche, Independent Researcher, QC, Canada.
Email: jurgen.poesche@hotmail.com
International Journalof
Discrimination and theLaw
2020, Vol. 20(2-3) 115–136
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1358229120938650
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in the sense of Hans Kelsen’s Reine Rechtslehre and legal theory associated with Mod-
ernity is not the only source of jurisprudence in the Occident, jurisprudential coloniality
is not inescapable in the settler colonial states. The emphasis in this article is on the Civil
Law family that incorporates, for example, Roman law and the scholastic jurisprudence
of the School of Salamanca. The geographical focus of this article is on the Americas
spanning from the Islas Tule del Sur to Inuit Qeqertaat. The objective of this article is to
make the case horizontally that the intertwined legal compliance and CSR abet enduring
coloniality in settler colonial states.
It is warranted to emphasize the difference between decolonization – the formal legal
recognition of the sovereignty of former colonies – and decoloniality – the cessation of
the dominance of the knowledge, societal power structures and territorial divisions
introduced by the former colonial powers. The term Occident refers in this article to
the cultural sphere rooted in the Greco-Roman Heritage and Occidental Christianity –
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
Coloniality is violence. In the colonial and settler colonial contexts, Occidental
knowledge can be considered a form of violence (Palermo, 2010). Coloniality negates
the validity of otherness in discourses (Pinto Y´epez, 2009). The focus of An´ıbal Quija-
no’s scholarship has been the coloniality of societal power structures, including Euro-
centrism, Occidental epistemology and Occidental social science (Germana, 2010;
Grosfoguel, 2013; Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2006; Richards, 2014). Eurocentrism is an
epistemic issue instead of a geographical one (Mignolo, 2011).
In settler colonial states, coloniality is ethically an d morally troubling. Racism is
fundamental to coloniality in societal power structures (Grosfoguel, 2012; Mart´ınez
Salazar, 2012; Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2008). Coloniality does not require settler
colonialism: Because of the Occidental education of the Indigenous colonial elites
(Droz, 2006), decolonization has not equated with decoloniality. Coloniality means
that the colonial societal power structures have remained intact in spite of formal
decolonization (Mart´ınez Salazar, 2012; Morales, 2016; Quijano, 2003) – these socie-
tal power structures are responsible for the disenfranchisement and dispossession of
Indigenous nations in the Americas. In addition to An´ıbal Quijano’s focus on ethnicity-
based societal power controlling knowledge, territory and work, there is a conceptua-
lization of coloniality – biocoloniality – associated with the control of Nature (Cajigas
Rotundo, 2007; Toro P´erez, 2009).
In keeping with Borboa A
´lvarez and Delhumeau Rivera (2018), CSR is understood to
be a comprehensive, dynamic and inclusive concept that focuses on the collaboration of
stakeholders on economic, environmental, ethical and human rights concerns in addition
to legal compliance and the societal impacts in firms’ operations in this article. This
description of CSR raises two major issues. First, because Occidental jurisprudence has
been used to legalize the disenfranchisement and dispossession of Indigenous nations,
compliance with Occidental jurisprudence de facto renders CSR a tool of coloniality that
is incompatible with Indigenous nations’ cosmovisions. Second, when CSR goes beyond
compliance with Occidental jurisprudence, additional sources may introduce coloniality,
for example, the understanding of the place of humans in Nature differs between the
Occident on the one hand, and Sumak Kawsay (Avila Santamar´ıa, 2019) and Indigenous
nations in northern Qu´ebec (Laugrand, 2015) on the other hand.
116 International Journal of Discrimination and the Law 20(2-3)
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