Paper short abstract:

This case study shows how Thio peoples, New Caledonia, take the notion of corporate social responsibility at face value in striving through various means (blockade, negotiation, agreements) to integrate into the local moral community the main mining company operating for decades in the area.

Paper long abstract:

Local/indigenous peoples can deal with mining corporations in two opposite ways: by adjusting themselves to external rules (in terms of property and development) or by calling the firms for abiding by local norms and duties. In the case studied in Thio, New Caledonia, the historical depth of the mining activity has made SLN, the main mining operator, part of the local cultural and social landscape. Recent weather events have had strong environmental impacts (flooding, limited landslides) and triggered a social movement directed against SLN. A local association was born out of this action, whose name means "taking care of our home" in Xârâcùù language. This association is overtly trans-ethnic and its members belong to the Kanak indigenous people as well as to people of European and Asiatic descent and Polynesian and Wallisian migrants. Many of them also work for the SLN or local subcontractors. The association's discourse puts forward a shared communal belonging and concern for future generations. In negotiating with SLN the restoration of environmental damages and different forms of compensation, local peoples take the discourse of corporate social responsibility at face value and ask SLN to behave as a morally responsible local citizen caring for the well-being of the community. By so doing, they question the frontier of the mining enclave and strive to integrate it into the local moral community.