Presentation short abstract

I examine sustainability managerial labor-power as a social process. Based on ethnographic data from sustainable sourcing initiatives in the palm oil sector in Mexico, I show how workers’ experiences generate critiques and hesitation around "green" capitalism, while reinforcing the ideology of work.

Presentation long abstract

Critical scholars are increasingly examining how efforts to green the economy are shaping labor relations. Workers are seen as strategically positioned to leverage power across industries to confront the climate crisis. Political ecologists have also studied the role of unpaid, unorganized, and precarious forms of labor in climate adaptation and conservation. These studies illuminate workers’ struggles and their collective potential. But they neglect the political implications for workers who are not obviously “producing” or “maintaining” things. Workers in corporate sustainability tend to be quickly dismissed as a managerial class with fixed material interests, thereby overlooking processes of social differentiation and their political imaginaries. In this paper, I suggest unpacking the constitution of sustainability managerial labor-power as a social process. I examine the division of labour of corporate sustainability based on 14 months of fieldwork with sustainability workers across the palm oil supply chain in Mexico. I focus on one sustainable sourcing initiative in Chiapas to show how different workers experience and negotiate the value of their labor through managerial practices. I build this analysis in conversation with political ecologists, environmental labor studies, feminist scholars, Spinoza, Ranciere, and Marx. I argue that the political effects of corporate sustainability are not only about capitalist expansion but also in how capitalist labor mediates our relationship with socioenvironmental concerns. I show how in “greening” capital, workers’ experiences generate critiques and hesitation around capitalism, while reinforcing the ideology of work.