Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2012
Publication Title
Social & Public Policy Review
Abstract
This paper focuses on the complexities and contradictions within the practices of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arising as a result of CSR’s implementation within a neoliberal framework and, based on empirical observations, provides an assessment of the following: 1) critical overview of CSR initiatives on employees of large-scale manufacturing companies in India; and 2) an analysis of flexible hiring practices and the consequent marginalization of Indian immigrant information technology (IT) workers in the U.S. as a subcontracted workforce and their exclusion from CSR agendas despite their contributions to many CSR-member corporations. Both the IT and manufacturing sectors have been key contributors to India’s recent economic growth. Moreover, companies in both sectors work closely with the state (such as, the IT industries in both India and the U.S. shape work visa policies and, likewise, the manufacturing sector in India influences policies on industrialization, privatization, and labour laws). Therefore, it is important to study how workers in these sectors, central to the development process, are faring in terms of their social and economic indicators. The increasing popularization of CSR ideology and practices changes the terms under which the third world is being folded into transnational capitalism. Instead of seeing themselves as subjects/objects, people are now encouraged to view themselves as agents of the economic outcomes surrounding them, i.e., dominance is being recast as hegemony. Yet, as this essay shows, the fundamental hierarchies of power are relatively stable. Hence, third world workers continue to be incorporated into global capitalism in deeply unequal and exploitative ways. But the ideology and practices of CSR give the impression that all of this is ‘participatory’, ‘ground-up’, and in some sense, ‘democratic.’
Keywords
CSR, Development, HIV/AIDS, Globalization, Neoliberalism, Immigrant Labor, Information Technology, Gender;, Subcontracting, India, United States
Volume
6
Issue
1
First Page
67
Last Page
80
Recommended Citation
Banerjee, Payal and Gupta, Kasturi, "Corporate Agendas and Ground-Realities: A Transnational Perspective on Indian Workers and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)" (2012). Sociology: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/soc_facpubs/37
Comments
Archived as published.