Paper short abstract:

This paper examines 'corporate diplomacy' in the extractive industries, and an effort to recast relationships with mine-area communities as part of an 'Age of Conversation.' This conversational approach to commercial statecraft gives the lie to the idea diplomacy is a preserve of the nation-state

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on ethnography of London's mining market, this paper examines a shift from 'corporate social responsibility' (CSR) to 'corporate diplomacy' in the extractive industries. Anthropologists studying the mining sector have depicted CSR regimes as part-and-parcel of corporate reproduction; exercises in indebtedness engineering that are ultimately experienced by mine-affected communities as antisocial instances of 'failed exchange'. CSR managers, lawyers and public relations professionals have come to terms with aspects of this critique, and attempted to recast their relationships with mine-area communities in terms of an "Age of Conversation." The corporate diplomat is summoned as a key figure within this Age of Conversation, who often declares that the responsibility of mining companies is self-evident - since they are absolutely disciplined by an all-seeing, ever-discoursing social mediascape. Yet when corporate diplomats mount their missions to embattled mine-sites, only a select few "influencers" are admitted into the conversation. Corporate diplomacy, then, involves artful manipulation of the everyday diplomats allegedly accommodated by the Age of Conversation. As ethnography carried out behind the closed doors of London's mining market reveals, the Age of Conversation is only one aspect of a broader turn towards 'corporate foreign policy': engaging the right mine-area 'influencers' can provide mining companies with the support they need when dealing with unsympathetic host-states. The rise of this conversational form of commercial statecraft gives the lie to the notion that diplomacy today is the preserve of the nation-state, which may itself jostle with the corporation for a place in the international order.