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Keywords:Geographies of responsibilityCorporate social responsibility

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dynamic and contested ways in which concepts of responsibility can play a role in network regulation.

Tintoomina

production and investment: The Alcan controversy serves as anexample of how responsibility has become a key word, and sub-ject to multiple interpretations, as solidarity activists, humanrights campaigners, labor unions and others seek to transformand businesses respond to defend their investments.

The extreme nature of the social and environmental conict atthe Utkal Project gave rise to considerable activism in India andCanada. The project plans involved an open cast mine in a densely

out. It is at this point that the police, ordered by the executivemagistrate, opened re. People began to run away in feartowards the surrounding hills. Firing continued for about halfan hour. In all, nineteen rounds were red on the retreatingpeople, killing three: Damedo Jhodia, Anhilas Jhodia andRaghunath Jhodia. Eight others were injured (PUDR, 2005, pp.1819).

Alcan was met in Canada with criticism in the press, street levelprotests at its annual general meetings in its home city ofMontreal, shareholder activism and widespread negative publicity

Geoforum 42 (2011) 451461

Contents lists availab

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l seE-mail address: noah@quastel.comdevelop a project in Kashipur, Orissa, India through Utkal AluminaInternational Ltd. (UAIL): This would serve as a way of enteringinto the South Asian market and also securing access to bauxite re-serves needed for aluminum production. However, the Utkal Pro-ject (or just UAIL), as Alcans joint venture came to be called,became a test case for corporate social responsibility (CSR) andan object of worldwide criticism and activism. This paper analyzeshow responsibility plays an important role in global networks of

ing Prakash Jodhia of Maikanch and threatened that they wouldopen re if these ve were not handed over. Women had gath-ered in front and they did not let the police enter the village.The Circle Inspector kept issuing threats every few minutes.He pushed an old woman and threw her down. She faintedand remained unconscious for some time. Some other womenwere hit with lathis. Hearing the cries of women, the men camein 1993 Alcan entered into an agreement to invest in, design, and

company in Canada. Responding to Indian economic liberalization, anch. As one Indian human rights report notes:

We were told that the police inquired about ve youths includ-Foreign direct investmentGlobal production networksAnti-mining activismBauxiteOrissaFree prior informed consentBusiness and human rightsNorthSouth solidarity

1. Introduction

Alcan Inc. (now merged with Riotional conglomerate and also the d0016-7185/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.03.012Both foreign direct investment and commodity networks (here referred to as global production andinvestment networks) are subject to complex negotiations and compromises involving corporate socialresponsibility and sustainability initiatives as well as shareholder activist, human rights, labor, and envi-ronmental activism. This is illustrated by reference to conicts in Canada over Alcan, Inc.s investmentsfrom 1993 to 2007 in the Utkal Alumina Project in Orissa, India. The project involved signicant socio-environmental conict. In Canada, Alcans investment was met by civil society campaigns that testedthe companys commitments to sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The case study suggestsrevising theories of geographies of responsibility. While foreign direct investment can create new rela-tionships between distant others, these are uid and contingent and not necessarily desirable. Ratherthan see networks as a source of responsibility we should work to ensure that the relationships that net-works foster be structured to ensure our deeper values are respected.

2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

), was a large transna-nt aluminum smelting

populated area, and would result in the displacement of local tribal(Adivasi) populations, air pollution, and despoliation of local riversand sacred lands. Villagers resorted to civil disobedience. OnDecember 16, 2000 one hundred police went to the village of Maik-Available online 22 April 2011worked into management systems and social activism in such networks. Drawing on literature from glo-bal production networks, geographies of responsibility and other literatures, this paper explores theThis is a Montreal Issue: Negotiating reand investment networks

Noah QuastelThe University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 18 July 2008Received in revised form 30 March 2011

a b s t r a c t

While geographers have innew geographies of respon

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journal homepage: www.ell rights reserved.onsibility in global production

singly focused on how global commodity and production networks createility there has been little empirical work considering how responsibility is

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they foster relationships and demand rethinking the ethics of con-nection. As networks draw people together propinquity needs to

m 4on human rights, anti-mining, development and NorthSouth sol-idarity organization websites. In 2005 and 2006 Alcan resolutelydefended the project against widespread opposition-includingshareholder proposals that it revisit the social and environmentalassessments for the project. By 2007 it decided to withdraw fromthe joint venture, citing corporate social responsibility concerns(Ct, 2007).

I started researching this project and the Canadian responsewhen I was asked in 2007 by human rights activists to give a legalopinion as to whether Alcan could be sued in Canada by projectaffected villagers: The activists were outraged that Alcan couldwalk away from the project without compensating villagers forthe harms incurred. I spent some time on the matter because theAlcan case was only one of many cases in the 1990s and 2000swhereby Canadian resource companies became connected to crisesof environmental degradation and human rights abuses in theGlobal South (North et al., 2006; Halifax Initiative, 2006a). Humanrights and development organizations in Canada were activelylobbying at the time for extra-territorial human rights frameworks,and the idea of compensation for victims could potentially havebeen made part of that debate (Civil Society, 2005). When I sawthere could not be redress, I was struck by the difference between,on the one hand, activists convictions concerning just conduct inthe trans-national relationships Alcans investment created, andon the other hand, Alcans legally defensible actions.

The matter struck deep at the foundations of Canadian law. Thepublic documents at my disposal newspaper articles and radioshows, reports by development experts and Indian non-govern-mental organizations, anecdotes on anti-mining and human rightswebsites were inconclusive as to Alcans precise role and the de-gree to which it was working with its Indian partners or the localpoliticians and police in Orissa. However, the problem in obtaininglegal redress was not only about whether one could prove Alcanplayed a causal role in the violence in Kashipur. Rather, Canadianlaw both enabled Alcans investment while providing no possibleavenues of redress a complex combination of lex mercatoriagoverning trans-national investment, assumptions about territorialjurisdiction at common law and an absence of extra-territorial leg-islation covering Canadian companies (Scott and Wai, 2004). Therewere basic conceptual differences in how Canadian law, AlcansCSR, and activist groups understood the relationships and connec-tions tying themselves and Alcans investment to villagers (andothers) in rural Orissa.

I moved from exploring the legal situation to the wider geogra-phies of the issue. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is central to theglobal space of ows that ties together distant economic actorsinto the global economy (Dicken, 2000). Following moves in rela-tional economic geography (Boggs and Rantisi, 2003; Yeung,2005) I was interested in how FDI cut across the scales of the ter-ritorial nation-state to forge new connections between people andhow this leeds to transforming how people understand them-selves, their connections and the places they inhabit. The owsof Alcans capital through the Canadian economy, to governmentrevenue and pension plans, the social and business ties of Alcanheadquarters to the Montreal area, the spin-off effects of Alcansindustries and headquarters in Canada all helped forge links be-tween lands and people in India and Canada. Alcans investmentwas only one of many offshore mining investments facing opposi-tional social and environmental movements (Bridge, 2004) andadopting CSR messaging and public relations (Himley, 2008).Alcans investment could be understood in similar terms to globalproduction networks such as for cut owers or coffee that increas-ingly feature forms of ethical governance (Hughes et al., 2008).

452 N. Quastel / GeoforuActivists and corporations existed in dynamic symbiosis as partof what researchers of ethical commodities call an ethical com-plex the combined results of negotiations, protests and manou-be negotiated (p. 6). Masseys insight suggests that Alcan and itsCSR was working to respond to concerns about the relationalitiesof global commodity and investment networks. Alcan promotedits CSR and sustainability policies through advertising on TV andin its annual review that it was Linked to the Planet withimages of employees and community members holding hands ina line stretching from a smelter to a river (Alcan, 2006a; Yakabuski,2006, p. 76). However CSR was not the only way in which peoplewere seeking to negotiate these network connections. In the caseof Alcans investment (and as the case study will show), Canadianlaw, Alcan, and solidarity and human rights activists all wereinvoking responsibility in different ways. Responsibility had be-come a key word in the emergent ethical complex: At times it wasused to challenge FDI, and at times to defend it against criticism.The research shifted to a geography of responsibility.

This paper thus presents a detailed analysis of Canadian re-sponses to the AlcanUtkal investment as an example of howresponsibility is being used in struggles over FDI. The paper be-gins with a theoretical discussion of global production networksand the ways this approach can be used to understand the usesof responsibility. After a brief description of the socio-ecologicalconict in Kashipur, Orissa, the analysis shifts focus to debatesand struggles in Canada over Alcans investment. I discuss veways of seeing responsibility that actors brought to bear on under-standing Alcans investment. First, in the current international le-gal system, commercial law and liberalized trade rules bothprovided the enabling conditions for Alcans investment processand came with distinct concepts of what I call commercial respon-sibility. Second, human rights groups asked for binding rightsnorms and a complaints process which might have allowed theproject under restructured conditions. Third, solidarity activistsdemanded that Alcan leave the project as an expression of solidar-ity with Kashipur villagers. Fourth, shareholder resolutions by so-cially responsible investors guided by proxy voting guidelinessought, in uneven ways, to incorporate human rights and environ-mental guidelines into business practice. Fifth, Alcans own CSR fo-cused on developing, and then relying upon, codes of conduct andenvironmental management systems to justify the project. I con-clude by suggesting that the AlcanUtkal case shows that whileinvestment can give rise to novel forms of social relationship, thereare limits to mobilizing responsibility in global production andinvestment networks: Not only is the term prone to shifting andstrategic use in CSR, but also the uidity, contingency and prot-oriented basis of foreign direct investment results in social rela-tionships characterized by weak ties.

2. Bringing responsibility into global production andinvestment networks

This paper follows the global production networks approach(GPNs) which has emerged as an attempt to combine diversemethodological and theoretical approaches such as global com-modity chains, global value chains, and commodity networks.vering by managers, activists, consumers and other stakeholdersthat produces soft-regulation and voluntary standards (Freidberg,2004; Popke, 2006). I thus at times use the term global productionand investment network to refer to Alcans FDI.

Massey (2004) describes global networks as creating novelinterdependencies as identities and places become entangled. Net-works become geographies of responsibility in virtue of the ways

2 (2011) 451461The GPNs approach provides a wide umbrella under which a vari-ety of analytic frameworks can be marshaled for examining power,economic function, organization, governance and regulatory

and potentially transformed by network actors (Hess, 2004; Hessand Yeung, 2006; Hughes et al., 2008). The GPN approach thus

m 4standards in global networks such as for automobile production orcut owers. The GPNs approach seeks to show how networks in-volve not only prot making and power relations (such as betweencontractors and sub-contractors) but also involve complex circuityand feedback loops as information ows, and cultural values (suchas consumer concerns over quality) move back and forth betweenconsumers, distributors and producers (Bair, 2008; Coe et al., 2008;Nadvi, 2008; Sturgeon et al., 2008).

The increasing role of activism, voluntary standards, CSR, andethical investment funds suggests foreign direct investment beanalyzed in ways analogous to GPNs. Alcans investment was analternatively physical and semiotic process of interlinkages as Alcanmade prots from reneries and service provision in North Americaand reinvested capital in new projects and locations. This repre-sents a classic movement from physical infrastructure and com-modity production into the money form and then reinvestment inphysical capital with an eye to expanding both prots and materialproduction (Hudson, 2005; Harvey, 2006). Alcans CSR featuredknowledge ow and translation through ethical learning spaces(Hughes et al., 2008, p. 356). Like other CSR initiatives (and alterna-tive goods) it was shaped by an ethical complex which includedinternational non-governmental organizations, human rights, envi-ronmental and social justice movements. These movements, inturn, may also be conceptualized as global networks (Keck andSikkink, 1998; Riles, 2000; Juris, 2004, 2005; Tsing, 2005; Routledgeet al., 2007; Cumbers et al., 2008; Routledge, 2008; Routledge andCumbers, 2009). These networks increasingly use digital technolo-gies such as the internet to enable dense informational owswithinloose and exible coalitions held together by the strength of thinties (Bennett, 2003, p. 146, also see Castells, 2003; Juris, 2004,2005).

The GPNs approach suggests ways to reconcile divergent trendsin geographers treatment of responsibility in long distance net-works. Since the 1990s geographers have sought to unveil theways in which everyday goods also involved troublesome methodsof production far from industrial welfare state regulatory controls.Labor rights violations and environmental destruction at distantsites of production were widely documented, with the assumptionthat bare awareness could motivate consumers to (act responsiblyand) change their buying practices or lead governments to forgenew forms of economic regulation (Barnett and Land, 2007). How-ever, researchers soon saw the problematics of a bare informa-tional approach.

On the one hand, researchers found that consumers did notmerely acknowledge distant harms and then change their practices rather, the process whereby people incorporated awareness ofnetworks was found to depend on ethics and self-understanding(Barnett and Land, 2007). For the most part geographers havefollowed a relational perspective emphasizing an ethics of care.Massey (2004) thus emphasized how peoples identities and theirplaces (such as their cities and neighborhoods) were entangledthrough network connection. Case studies and analysis of con-sumption in this vein foregrounded the moral claims and motiva-tions of consumers who took consumption as a terrain foracknowledging connection and acting with care towards workersand places at the other ends of long distance networks (Whatmoreand Thorpe, 1997; Barnett et al., 2005; Popke, 2006; Quastel, 2008;Popke, 2009; Jackson et al. 2009; Barnett et al., 2011).

On the other hand, there was a need to research and criticallyassess the workings of global commodities which expressly in-voked consumer responsibility alternative goods for coffee,cut owers or wood with labels such as ethical, organic, faretrade or with non-governmental organization certication.

N. Quastel / GeoforuResearch concerned how such labels were not simply benign, butpart of processes of restructuring power relations and the politicaleconomy of commodities as new products, production processes,follows Levy (2008) in arguing that networks are not objective,predetermined structures, but processes of social constructionand meaning creation, wherein social order is negotiated (p.948, also Coe et al., 2008). As such, the GPN approach has beenused to bring out the dynamic interrelationships that evolve overtime between consumer concern, ethical values, regulatory frame-works and the political-economic workings of environmental andethical goods networks (Baird and Quastel, 2011). Retrospectiveanalysis of the workings of ethical commodities can potentiallybe used by actors in networks to challenge and transform the net-works of which they are a part. Such critical analysis can not onlybe extended to ethical codes of conduct, CSR and other manage-ment systems, but form the basis for rethinking (and mobilizingchange concerning) the interpretations of ethical concepts usedby such frameworks.

3. Rethinking responsibility in global production networks

The role of responsibility within regulatory frameworks suchas CSR and consumer and shareholder activism makes the concept(and its various interpretations) important for understandingGPNs. The GPNs approach also suggests unique analytic and empir-ical tools for understanding responsibility. Responsibility gener-ally refers to the fact that a person or organization has the ability toact and so can be called to account for her or its actions. While of-ten oriented towards blame (such as in legal contexts) it can alsorefer to a forward looking orientation that enjoins persons to act(Young, 2004). However, conceiving of responsibility as a key ele-ment in networks opens up a series of further questions, such as:Who in a network should be considered, or consider herselfresponsible? and what sorts of roles and relations to others in net-works does such responsibility imply? Current legal systems, com-mercial activities, CSR and the ideals of human rights and solidarityactivists imply answers to these questions. In what follows I intro-duce a range of social theoretic approaches that t within GPNsbroad relational framework (Coe et al., 2008, p. 272) and whichthe case study uses to analyze how different concepts of responsi-bility bear on relationships in networks.niche markets and governance systems were created (Hughesand Reimer, 2004; Hughes, 2006, 2007; Mutersbaugh, 2005; Re-nard, 2005; Taylor, 2005; Freidberg, 2007; Ponte, 2007). Moreover,such products also played negatively with issues of personal iden-tity and moral values: Ethical goods at times were used to con-struct consumer concern as part of competitive market strategy(Guthman, 2008). Some such goods reworked unappealing tropesof neo-colonialism and NorthSouth domination: For instance,labels such as rainforest friendly employed edenic myth-making(Bryant and Goodman, 2004) and origin-identifying Canadian(white, Northern) diamonds suggests not only African diamonds(but the dark continent as a whole) were tainted by violence (LeBillon, 2006).

The GPN approach offers the potential for reconciling these dif-ferent approaches. GPN analysts borrow from not only politicaleconomy approaches but also post-structuralist approaches suchas Actor-Network Theory. These theories stress how persons iden-tities are formed through the relationships networks create andhow power may be dispersed and contested through disparatesites. Networks are understood as hybrid collectives of material,technical, logistical, legal, procedural elements and human beingsthat are contingently assembled and impermanently stabilized

2 (2011) 451461 453Networks involve distributed action whereby decision-makingroles are distributed to different people under different legal ormoral regimes (Dugdale et al., 1999; Wieser et al., 2004; Karner

m 4and Wieser, 2006). Following this logic, Wieser et al. (2004) ana-lyze prenatal testing and the consent process as provided underAustrian law. While prenatal testing occurs against the backdropof complex scientic evidence and networks of medical personneland procedures, decisions that might be made by doctors is for-mally assigned by Austrian law to patients: Responsibility is anobject of a transfer process: the physician hands over his or herresponsibility for what he or she does in the course of a prenatalexamination to the patient (p. 8).

Re-reading literature on commodity governance also reveals awide variety of ways in which legal codes, values and social insti-tutions distribute, or fail to distribute, action. In nineteenth centuryEngland and America the common law (and laissez-faire capitalist)principle of caveat emptor (buyer beware) assigned to consum-ers responsibility for ascertaining important quality aspects ofproducts, such as whether they were safe to eat. By the twentiethcentury this had shifted to a mix of labeling laws and consumerprotection that transferred responsibility for product safety toother participants in the network store owners and manufactur-ers (Atiyah, 1979). A Foucauldian-inspired governmentality litera-ture emphasizes how in areas of sustainable consumption in the2000s (where consumers choose more environmentally responsi-ble goods) responsibility for environmental change was delegatedto consumers and away from legal institutions, states or corpora-tions (Hobson, 2004; Slocum, 2004; Aylett and Rutland, 2008;Guthman, 2008). Alternatively, failures to allocate responsibility such as where global production networks do not account fortheir signicant environmental and social harms give rise tothe problem of unstructured collectives (Kutz, 2000, p. 6). Theseare situations where people act together, but where there is a lackof allocation of roles to ensure harms do not occur. ChristopherKutz argues that in such cases and especially where large num-bers of participants are involved it might be difcult to singleanyone out as responsible in the sense of playing a dening causalrole. Instead, Kutz argues each is complicit, and complicity is adening concept of contemporary commodity ows. Many Canadi-ans were complicit in the AlcanUtkal investment, and each of theve ways of seeing responsibility represented ways of envisioningre-structuring the collective to allocate roles and resolve complic-ity problems.

Persons relationships in networks also involve power relations(Yeung, 2005), and different interpretations of responsibility canlegitimate or perpetuate such relations. Raghuram et al. (2009)and others in the Geoforum themed issue on Postcoloniality,Responsibility and Care take up critical approaches to responsi-bility, analyzing the terms role in forms of evolving relationalitywhich are also historicised, fractured and contested relations(Raghuram et al., 2009, p. 9). They thus seek to interrogate the con-cept to reveal not only the intimacies and generosities withinexisting practices of care and responsibility, but also expose theirpolitical contestations and the pain and the absences that underpinglobal relationships (p. 6). In an applied case study of this ap-proach, Power (2009) shows how invocations of responsibilityin international development, and in particular in policy docu-ments of the British Commonwealth, facilitate paternalistic andneocolonial forms of responsibility for and over post-colonial Afri-ca (p. 15). This contextualizes uses of responsibility not onlyagainst the backdrop of how users stand in long-term geo-politicalrelationships but also how forms of allocating responsibility canimply a for and over and so work to perpetuate power relations.

Global production and investment networks feature systems ofknowledge which provide information to actors concerning howthe network is structured and its effects. Systems of knowledge

454 N. Quastel / Geoforuoperate to stabilize networks as both elements within networks,and as overarching modes of ordering (Whatmore and Thorpe,1997, p. 294). Such knowledge systems may also be central tohow responsibility is understood: For instance, activists networksoften give a central role to informing the public about particularinvestments or products and counteracting corporate and govern-ment representations of the effects of FDI. Certication standards,verication procedures, reports, documents, newspaper storiesand advertisements are active participants in networks: They pro-vide narratives of how the network operates and ought to operateand in doing so they also constitute the network, its structures andeffects. Knowledge production and dissemination are not onlyforms of relationship but also ways of stabilizing and ordering net-works. I thus analyze how knowledge production was central tomaking Alcans network responsible: Taking testimonials and dis-seminating reports were central to human rights and solidarityorganizations as well as Alcans CSR as its public relations staffworked to offer their own representations of the Utkal project.

Knowledge systems may work to strengthen fractured, con-tested and power-laden forms of responsibility. In analyzing CSRI draw on work which looks at corporate and institutional environ-mental knowledge as forms of maintaining power. Braun (2002)documents how Canadian forest companies used advertising andpublic relations to construct cultural and epistemic space, whichuse a variety of terms, and strategic silences, through which thecompany establishes its authority (p. 36) in efforts to control rep-resentations of production methods, and so carry on business asusual. Likewise, Goldman (2001, 2006) stresses how the WorldBank came in the late 1990s to rely on expert environmental andsocial impact studies to deect growing criticism of its activities.These would use social and natural science expertise to produceknowledge of local conditions and contexts and so enable newdevelopment projects in the face of growing social and environ-mental oversight. What both Braun and Goldman help show is thathaving and exhibiting knowledge is central to being seen asresponsible, and that the form and content of such knowledgesystems can be tailored to portray institutions as actingresponsibly.

Finally, interpreting FDI as a network of relations suggests dif-cult tensions created by what can be called structured relational-ity. This term is meant to contrast, on the one hand, the ways inwhich individual agents in networks participate in, are formedthrough, and relate to others through network connections, andon the other hand, the ways networks are complex social organiza-tions subject to myriad regulatory frameworks, market conven-tions and global economic structures. While we participate inthese networks they are not of our own making, yet we also strug-gle at times to reform them. Structured relationality also affectshow we understand responsibility: Traditional structures of eco-nomic regulation and practice conceive of responsibility primarilyin terms of duties to family, to workplaces, contractual partnersand to nation-state legal systems and not in terms of responsibili-ties to distant others. This poses signicant challenges for the claimthat networks should be reformed to reect relational ethics. Onechallenge concerns the degree to which such networks can be suf-ciently reformed or whether responsibility may simply be re-worked through the ethical complex to facilitate suchcommercial networks. There are further conceptual challengesconcerning whether commercial relations should be viewed asthe source of moral obligation given the sorts of relationships theyfoster and their potentially transitory nature. Human rights organi-zations, for instance, argue that responsibility is based on interna-tional principles of human rights rather than particular networkties. Their concern is that the relationships that networks fosterbe structured to ensure rights are respected: It is not particularnetwork ties that give rise to responsibility but rather the fact that

2 (2011) 451461persons in networks are members of a larger human community.Following the case study I offer further reections on these chal-lenges. In the case study, and in the conclusion I discuss the ways

torate (gram sabha) would be consulted and could reject projects.While an Environmental Impact Assessment was submitted in

company, its workers and shareholders, its home city of Montreal(and wider province and country of Quebec and Canada), Indian

m 41996 (after project approval) it was never made public, making itdifcult for non-governmental organizations, or advocates,let alone the villagers themselves, to understand the potential im-pacts of the project (IPT, 2006, p. 5 and 31).

Community opposition formed early as villagers resolved notin which solidarity and human rights activists in the AlcanUtkalcase sought not only to transform the global production andinvestment network, but also to build their own networks linkingKashipur and Canada and in so doing re-imagine and re-create tieson terms distinct from that of the investment network.

4. Alcan in India

The initial plans for the Utkal project called for an open-cast (oropen pit) mine on the Baphalimali Hill, a 20 kilometer causewayfor transporting bauxite, and a smelter for converting bauxite intoalumina. From early on there were signicant concerns that theproject would transform local ecologies and displace the areas lar-gely tribal (Adivasi) populations. Kond and Paroja (Jhodia) peoplesaccounted for over 60% of the population, while another 14% wereDalits (known in the West still as Hindu untouchables). Largeamounts of y ash (estimated at 1000 tons per day) and red muddischarge threatened air quality and the areas water supply, while25 square kilometers of land would be appropriated (Khatua andStanley, 2006; PUDR, 2005). As late as 2006, the proponentsclaimed only 147 families would be affected and so be eligiblefor any compensation, while local groups put the numbers at over5000 in 66 villages. Most of the land had not been comprehensivelysurveyed and many villagers depended on public or customaryusage rights that would be affected by the project. Further disrup-tion and displacement would be caused by the open pit mine con-verting a hill area commons held sacred by the locals (PUDR, 2005).While the normal process for such projects was to offer rehabilita-tion and restitution packages, most of the affected peoples werenot compensated and those who did receive offers of compensa-tion were promised resettlement homes (but not new farmland)and lump sum packages that most felt were too low (IPT, 2006).Because the populations were largely illiterate and had skill setsrestricted to farming, they would be unlikely to nd paid work pro-viding adequate wages (Khatua and Stanley, 2006, p. 150; see alsoSiddan, 2003; Kalshian, 2007).

The actual administrative process of governmental approvalwas fraught with illegalities. Schedule V of the Indian Constitutionprohibited tribal land from being sold to non tribals. This was re-ected in the Orissa Scheduled Areas and Transfer of ImmovableProperty (By Scheduled Tribes) Regulation, 1956. In the SupremeCourt of India decision in Samatha v. State of Andra Pradesh(1997) Schedule V was interpreted to forbid the transfer of miningleases to non-tribal individuals or societies (IPT, 2006, p. 20). Yetthe federal government in Delhi (through the Ministry of Forests)permitted the Baphalimali Hill mine site in 1994, and the reneryat Dorugada in 1995 without also checking these areas status asprotected tribal lands. The Ministry of Forests gave an environmen-tal clearance in 1995 despite the fact that the required Environ-mental Impact Assessments and Environmental Managementplans were not provided by UAIL a total abdication of its over-sight responsibilities (IPT, 2006, p. 26). The Land Acquisition Act(1984) laid down specic procedures for consulting local peopleswhose lands would be affected. The Panchayat (Extension toScheduled Areas) Act (PESA) (1996) provided that the village elec-

N. Quastel / Geoforuto submit to a fate thrust upon them by cold blooded market arith-metic, and began with petitions and appeals to the administra-tion and the state, and went onto peaceful demonstrations,industrial companies and rural Orissa. From 1993 to 2000 this tookthe form of Alcans majority ownership of the Indian AluminiumCo. (Indal) which was at the time a major partner in UAIL(Montreal Gazette, 2000). After 2000 Alcan sold its stake in Indal,but then became a joint partner in UAIL, with its stake rising to45% by 2003 after Norsk Hydro left in response to Norwegianactivist pressure (Girard, 2005).

Alcans investment was made possible in part by a series ofCanadian legal frameworks which carried their own imaginariesof responsibility. Within Canada, a combination of criminal law,property and expropriation laws, environmental regulation andthe political process make the Utkal situation unlikely. While inthe 1990s there were many conicts involving resource corpora-tions and indigenous land rights, Canadian courts have slowlycome to accept that domestic First Nations have rights to prior con-sultation (analogous to the internationally known principle of freeprior informed consent): This became the norm just as Alcan facedthe worst protests in 2005 and 2006 (Tsilhqotin Nation v. BritishColumbia, 2007).

However, legal redress for victims of human rights abuses orenvironmental damages by corporations acting abroad is close toimpossible in the current Canadian legal climate (Recherches Inter-nationales Quebec v. Cambior Inc, 1998; Scott and Wai, 2004;Piedra v. Copper Mesa Mining Corporation, 2010) and criminallaw mechanisms only apply in rare cases of genocide, crimesagainst humanity or child pornography (Gagnon et al., 2003). Legalresponsibilities for overseas operations are governed by commer-rallies and road blocks, as the state continued in its indifference(Das, 2006, p. 21). From 1995 to 2000 there were a series of massdemonstrations in central towns, unlawful arrests of civil societyorganizers (such as the villagers organization opposing the project,the Prakrutik Smapada Surahsha Parisah, PSSP), police lathi (ba-ton) charges, and tear gas and mercenaries attacking villagers.

The Makainch Massacre resulted in judicial commissions andproject delays for four years (PUDR, 2005). However, widespreadpolitical support in Orissa for mining development projects en-sured failure for the villagers: The movement has little politicalsupport, with the Congress, Biju Janata Dal and Bharatiya JanataParty openly backing the corporations. Civil society organizationsin Orissa have also sought to distance themselves from the Kashi-pur movement, fearing a state backlash (Das, 2006, p. 38). Theunhinging of the development process from judicial oversight, cou-pled with the notorious corruption of the judicial system, left activ-ists without reliable legal channels. By September 2004 the UAILand the District Collector were working to obtain the consent of lo-cals aided by 500 police ofcers (IPT, 2006, p. 13). While protestscontinued through 2007, they were increasingly restricted to a fewholdout villages such as Kuchiepadar. Evictions, rehabilitation andresettlement work was started at the plant and mine sites in thatyear (Goodland, 2007). Completion was scheduled for 2010(Hindalco, 2007), but later pushed to 2012 with nancing arrangedfor a nearby alumina renery (Economic Times, 2010). By 2010 awikimap dedicated website showed the plant site using Googlessatellite imagery (Wikimapia, 2010).

5. Responsibilities in Canada

5.1. Commercial responsibility

Alcans investment decision set up capital networks linking the

2 (2011) 451461 455cial law norms. However, contract law, the law of Sale of Goods,and international lex mercatoria work from a concept of respon-sibility in networks that reduce responsibility to a concern to meet

explicit agreements between nodes of exchange in networks: Suchnodes are usually imagined to be structured in terms of the narrowcommercial self-interest of autonomous individuals (Kasteley,1995; Cutler, 2003). State territory-based human rights and envi-ronmental legal frameworks fail to reach the deterritorializedows of international commercial relations, symptomatic of whatEric Swyngedouw has labeled as the tensions between the scalesof regulation and the rhizomatic rescaling of economic net-

from Norwegian organizations who lobbied for Norsk Hydros

456 N. Quastel / Geoforum 4divestment prior to its December 2001 withdrawal (Rnning,1998; Stave, 2001). The web pages of groups such as MiningWatch, Amnesty International and Mines and Communities are or-ganized around vigilance over such networks and referenced andprovided links to Indian non-governmental organization reports,

1 In March 2009 the Canadian government issued a policy statement supportingvoluntary but not mandatory guidelines for Canadian extractive companies abroad.This was panned by the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA, 2009).In October 2009 Marketa Evans was appointed as a new Corporate SocialResponsibility Advisor with a passive consulting role (DFAIT, 2009). This was widelypanned by civil society groups as toothless for requiring consent from a miningcompany before allegations could be reviewed (Popplewell, 2009). In this same perioda private members bill (Bill C-300) adopting many of the Roundtable Recommen-dations was tabled in Parliament and strongly supported by environmental and globalworks (Swyngedouw, 2004, p. 33). This uneven regulatory space characterized as governance gaps by business and humanrights experts (Ruggie, 2008, p. 3) forms the backdrop for Cana-dian opposition to Alcans capital network and the efforts to createmore answerable investment networks.

5.2. Human rights

In Canada there is a broad network of solidarity, advocacy andnon-governmental organizations such as Rights and Democracy,Amnesty International, Mining Watch and the Halifax Initiativewhich work under the umbrella of the Canadian Network on Cor-porate Accountability. Faced with increases in Canadian based for-eign direct investment and offshore resource extraction, they arguethat the Canadian state should enforce human rights standards forCanadian companies abroad (Development and Peace, 2007). Theconsensus based report of the Canadian National Roundtable onCorporate Social Responsibility (2007) suggested imposing a lim-ited human rights framework, with an ombudsman to hear com-plaints of overseas violations, and the removal of state support(such as through export credit agencies) where violations werefound. This limited human rights approach was not adopted bythe Canadian government but does provide one vision of how torestructure networks.1 Human rights groups such as Amnesty Inter-national accept a wide body of human rights, including social andeconomic rights and work with the assumption that each of ushas the duty to stand up, not just for our own rights, but also forthose of others and that rights abuses anywhere are the concernof people everywhere (Amnesty International, 2009). While seeingrights recognition as a mode of social inclusion and recognition ofdignity, they look to legal processes to enshrine rights, and to createstability in rights protection through reliable monitoring and penaltysystems. Responsibility is allocated to companies to abide by (pro-posed) law and to states to provide judicial surveillance throughnarrowly codied strictures concerning what types of conduct areunacceptable.

Canadian and international mining watchdog groups and hu-man rights organizations publicized the Utkal project controver-sies soon after the Maikanch Massacre in 2000. They couldalready draw on considerable materials and campaign experiencejustice organizations. However, the Bill faced strong opposition from the miningsector and was defeated in the Fall of 2010 amidst heavy lobbying (Bagnal, 2010;Curry, 2010).newspaper reports, independent media and press releases con-cerned with the Utkal case (Mines and Communities, 2008; MiningWatch blog, 2007; Amnesty International Canada, 2006). As part oftransnational activist networks characterized by voluntary, reci-procal and horizontal exchanges of information and services(Keck and Sikkink, 1998, p. 200) and organization via communica-tion systems as opposed to communication merely reecting oramplifying political organization (Bennett, 2003, p. 150) theywere able to draw on Indian human rights reports, communicativelinks and personal connections with Indian organizations to forgeinternational collective action. Likewise, in India we see growinghuman rights non-governmental organization interest working toframe the issues in terms of human rights and the rule of lawand forming reports which Canadian organizations could later use.

Through 2005 we see outside groups making investigations andmissions: At least six Indian organizations made reports that cor-roborate one another, including the Peoples Union for DemocraticRights, The Peoples Union for Civil Liberty, Association for Protec-tion of Democratic Rights, Human Rights Forum, The Indian SocialAction Forum, and later, the Peoples Tribunal for Human Rightsand the Environment which provides the best argued and mostcomprehensive of the reports (IPT, 2006). Lawyers and legal advo-cates from Delhi with the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties narratedhow they decided to go for a fact nding mission in the Kashipurregion and provided vivid accounts of police repression. Theyfound the area to be under siege and people to be living in a cli-mate of fear affecting their freedom to give consent. A Peoples Un-ion for Democratic Rights team visited Kashipur in 2001 andagain in 2005 to examine the reported ongoing police repression(PUDR, 2005, p. 3). They found that the village Collector had toldarea residents in 1998 that If you dont vacate the land and takecompensation, we will acquire it forcefully (PUDR, 2005, p. 15).

Testimonials could be easily packaged into human rights re-ports. Indian and Canadian organizations then used the internetto distribute these as mobile artifacts. These drew on legal court-room procedure (even where actual judicial process was unavail-able), and provide key pieces of evidence to show police abuse orcoercion in obtaining villagers consent to the projects. As juridicalforms for truth telling, activist groups mobilize these to give truthcommissions, church reports, and human rights reports the gravitythat they feel state legal inquiry should have (Ogilvy, 2007). Theyworked to allow NGOs to forge loose coalitions around their con-cerns about the network as a particular issue (Bennett, 2003).

A comprehensive citation of testimonials of police and companyabuse are set out in the comprehensive India Peoples Tribunal re-port of October 2006 as part of its extended argument for why thegovernment of Orissa should have ended the project outright. Togive one example, Shanka Prasa Prasa Muduli of Baririjhola villagenarrated how police threatened, looted and beat villages duringraids on December 5, 2004. The report paraphrased: Some 100CID personnel under the leadership of Tikiri Police Station Ofcerin Charge Sri Kishore Chandra Munda entered Baririjhola villagewith guns and threatened the villagers. They told the villagers ifyou oppose the company, you will be shot dead... The villagerswere so terried that they ed and did not return for 3 to 4 days(IPT, 2006, p. 67). Testimonials handled in this way showed thatparticular wrongs violations of human rights principles hadbeen suffered by individuals. Human rights activists networkscould then transport these across space and work to assure theywere heard.

5.3. Solidarity organizations

2 (2011) 451461From2003 onwards theMontreal, Quebec based solidarity groupAlcant in India held demonstrations and vigils, sent delegates toKashipur, wrote articles, posted bulletins, reports, timelines, and

links to other sympathetic organizations on its website and heldconferences, including one with the noted Indian scientist andactivist Vandana Shiva (Alcant in India, 2008). Taking the position

N. Quastel / Geoforum 4of solidarity activists in an international indigenous struggleandso making explicit the links between resource companies and theiruse of Native land in Canada and Indiathey sought to relay villag-ers concern that the project be fully stopped and Alcan leave. Herethe aim was to end, rather than reform the capital network. Key forAlcant was the idea that thiswas not, as Alcan claimed, exclusivelyan Indian issue. As Tamara Herman argued this is very much aMontreal issue. It is Montreal-backed nancing that is developingthe UAIL project, for the sake of Montreal prot (Alcant in India,2005). Responsibility is cast into the mold of solidarity as activismin one locationgeographical, socio-economic, politicalthatworks to defend the interests, rights, and identities of people inother locations (Sundberg, 2007, p. 147). However, this also refo-cuses responsibility onto individual citizens and places. By citingMontreal this locates the responsibility in place (Bosco Fernando,2001; Escobar, 2001; Massey, 2004), conrming the city as not onlya corporate headquarters, but as one in which political actors standin relationship, as a locus of action that unites political actors, and asa meeting place where diverse persons can come together in action(Routledge, 2003b). Solidarity is thus construed in the fashion ofYoungs political responsibility a generalized concern for othersthroughout the world, but based on acknowledging that one par-ticipates in social processes that have some unjust outcomes(Young, 2004, p. 381). In the case of Alcan, its considerable linkagesto Canada and Montreal resulting in blurring the distinction be-tween a generalized political responsibility and Canadians complic-ity through a material actor network.

The solidarity work of Alcant in India was intensely focused onmobilizing truths about the capital network. Kashipur and the lar-ger Rayagada District of Orissa were virtually unheard of in Canadabefore Alcans involvement.2 Activists and campaigners traveled toKashipur to get testimonials, reproduced human rights reports, andheld demonstrations, press conferences and letter writing campaignsto make these truths public. The results were major investigativearticles in the Toronto Star (Cohn, 2004), and the alternative press,such as the Montreal Mirror (Sidaway, 2003). In January 2005 BrookThorndycraft and Tamara Herman, working with Alcant in India,traveled to Kashipur, writing articles (Herman and Thorndycraft,2005a) and recording interviews for radio (Herman andThorndycraft, 2005b). The nal radio show, broadcast in Montrealand also posted to the internet features villagers and local advocates,with an English language voice over, explaining how the consentprocess in 2004 was coerced. Subram Night narrates how the gramsabha in September 2004 involved only 147 families, with othershaving no chance to attend: The police people surrounded themeeting. They came with 9 big vans. The 147 people could not sayanything, in the presence of these ofcers, and they were asked togive their signatures and leave. So it was a kind of forced meetingthat was organized by the police ofcers.

In mobilizing these truths, Alcant extended a relational per-spective to knowledge production itself. In the hands of courtsand some human rights reports, the production of testimony mayomit local contexts, knowledges or perspectives and be producedto serve the interests of judges, lawyers or non-governmental orga-nization workers. Alternatively, Herman and Thorndycraft workedin their radio show to convey the experience of villagers and life inKashipur, using local music, and sounds and pacing the show to

2 A content analysis was performed of Canadian newspapers and magazines, usingthe Canadian Newstand Database. Of 30 articles found from 1993 to 2008 that

mentioned Rayagada district (with a population of 80,000) or its towns and villages(including Kashipur), 29 concerned Alcans investment or Canadian opposition to it,and 1 a cholera outbreak.reect the conversational patterns of a rural oral society. This caststestimonials as serving a larger purpose of building solidarity andso new forms of network connection. Testimonials worked to en-able people to tell their own story (Slaughter, 1997), to carry thepower of witnessing (Beverley, 2004; Warren, 1997), and symbol-ized a revolt against invisibility (Routledge, 2003a, p. 262). Whilethe work of Alcant displayed reection on the power dynamics ofrepresentation (and its role in structuring network relations) theirwork also effectively framed responsibility in terms of responsi-bility for another, one who needed help in being heard.Geographers seeking responsible forms of representation have cel-ebrated contexts where villagers speak out about their own situa-tion in their own organizing meetings (Routledge, 2003a, p. 261),or stressed that mutuality in solidarity encourages individualsand collectives to speak for themselves (Sundberg, 2007, p. 162).However, the material conditions of the AlcanUtkal global invest-ment network worked to separate Alcants activism from thatideal. It was Alcant members who spoke in Montreal and producedand distributed the radio shows. Alcants minimal solidaritynetwork was made up of a few Canadian volunteers with littlemoney or time for extended organizing, weak ties to Orissa markedby language differences, massive economic disparities, and longdistance reach.

5.4. Shareholder activism

Alcans general meetings from 2003 onwards featured streetdemonstrations (Sidaway, 2003) shareholders questions andresolutions, and attracted media attention. Alcant in Indias mem-bership included Alcan shareholders Frederic Dubois and Abhima-nyu Sud, allowing it access to Alcan AGMs (Alcant in India, 2004,2005; Melnbardis, 2005). The Regroupement pour la responsabilitsociale des enterprises (RRSE), representing a group of Catholicnuns (the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate) attended share-holder meetings from 2003 onwards to ask Alcan senior manage-ment about its response to lack of consent on the project, andprovided detailed proposals for how to conduct new social andeconomic impact assessments (Parent, 2005). Herman and Thorn-dycraft traveled back to Montreal to attend and present their nd-ings to the 2005 Alcan AGM (Alcant in India, 2005). In the run upto the 2005 shareholders meeting, Alcan workers in Kitimat, BritishColumbia passed a motion in solidarity (with Alcant in India andthe villagers of Kashipur) to refuse to smelt any alumina that mightcome from the Utkal project: This was particularly effective in gar-nering media attention (Montreal Gazette, 2005) as were the pro-tests at the 2005 AGM (Melnbardis, 2005; Marotte, 2005).

In 2006 a group of shareholder activists including private mem-bers, Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE),Ethical Funds Inc., and RRSE were able to get a shareholder pro-posal before the annual general meeting. Citing the January 2005report of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, the resolution askedfor Alcan to sponsor an independent advisory committee thatwould recommend ways the project could gain free, prior and in-formed consent of the population (SHARE, 2008). It received 37%of the vote (Swift, 2006). This is one of the highest rates of successSHARE had achieved for a social activist shareholder proposal inCanada (SHARE, 2008).

Shareholder activism involves multiple overlapping concepts ofresponsibility, tempered by the movements structural commit-ment to capital network reform. Usually individual consumers ororganizations (union controlled pension funds or religious orders)choose to purchase shares in ethical or activist oriented funds.Such funds own and trade shares for prot, but also provide

2 (2011) 451461 457screens against certain practices and strategically buy and sellshares and participate in shareholder proposals as a way to pres-sure companies on their ethics. This implies a scaling down of

m 4responsibility to shift concerns to the personal politics and virtuesof day to day commercial decisions (Micheletti, 2003; Abbey,2004). In large part values are expressed as general guidelines toabide by principles of international human rights. Consumers thenentrust or subcontract ethical action to various shareholder organi-zations that draft shareholder proposals and monitor corporateactivities. There are wide variations in motives and politics be-tween organizations such as the union funded and based SHAREand the more activist and rights oriented RRSE. This can be inferredfrom the different values embedded in the screening processes forshares and proxy voting guidelines (which instruct fund managershow to intervene in shareholder resolutions). Because of the freeplay of what counts as risk, and the mediating role of public opin-ion on prots, human rights concerns can t into shareholder res-olutions. Organizations such as Amnesty International Canada(through its Sharepower campaign) also participate in share-holder activism, and backed the 2006 shareholder resolutions con-cerning the Utkal project (Amnesty International Canada, 2006).

Consumer led systems of responsibility are widely critiqued asthey redistribute responsibility to individual consumers. Consum-ers are implored (interpolated) to responsibilize themselveswithin market conditions leading to individualized action that re-enacts market logics (Hobson, 2004; Slocum, 2004; Guthman,2008; Quastel, 2008). However, such ethical consumption may alsoat times help consumers give voice to and act closer to their values(Clarke et al., 2007; Barnett et al., 2011). Shareholder activism mayalso seek to broaden the range of what counts as risk for companiesto include social and environmental risk and so shift discourse ofappropriate corporate behavior (Abbey, 2004). However, share-holder activism is not directed towards, and is different in kindfrom, advocacy for state regulation of corporate behavior. Whilecorporate law may be exible enough to accommodate persistentand widely held shareholder ethical demands (Lee, 2005) in prac-tice there is a widely held assumption that corporations are towork towards prot maximization and this constrains corporateaction that explicitly conict with such goals (Bakan, 2005).

5.5. Alcans social responsibility

International organizations such as the World Bank and compa-nies such as Alcan came in the last decade to adopt internationalbest practices and voluntary standards, environmental manage-ment systems and codes of conduct: These developed relativelyquickly in the years prior to 2006 and came to constitute newmodes of regulation and network conguration (Wood, 2003;Goldman, 2006; Hughes, 2006). Initiatives such as the Global Com-pact, the Equator Principles and the World Banks nancial armsPerformance Standards emerged as prominent CSR norms, andprovided frameworks (and promises) for companies to respectinternational rights norms, implement environmental manage-ment systems and do due diligence to ensure this happens (HalifaxInitiative, 2006b; Morgera, 2007). The principle that Alcan wouldfollow local laws, if not explicit in its CSR framework is certainlyimplied throughout its WorldWide Code of Employee and BusinessConduct. Human rights critics indicate that the prominent CSRnorms fail to provide mandatory language, enforcement mecha-nisms, or third party transparency (Gagnon et. al., 2003; GlobalWitness, 2007). Nothing in Alcans CSR framework provided mech-anisms for victims to seek compensation. By providing the appear-ance of taking on responsibility, companies hope to minimize riskthrough responsibilizing themselves, deect the state from impos-ing limiting measures on them, and appear as suitably responsibleagents to protect their role in existing social divisions of labor. As

458 N. Quastel / Geoforusuch they dovetail with neoliberal strategies in advanced capital-ism to move responsibilities from the state to the economicsphere (Rose, 1999). From 2001 on Alcan sought to transform itselfusing CSR, including joining the Global Compact. By 2007 its web-page boasted that the sustainability message is now an integralpart of everything we do at Alcan, from strategy development atthe executive level to improvements initiated by our operatingteams around the globe. . ..We view sustainability as an enormousopportunity to reinforce our competitive edge (Alcan, 2007).Through working with CSR and sustainability codes, conductingimpact assessments and publicizing this work through public rela-tions departments Alcan aligned its technologies and expert sys-tems with international best practices such as those of theWorld Bank (Goldman, 2006).

In the six years of active Canadian campaigning from 2001 to2007 Alcans strategy in dealing with the Utkal Project and itsmany opponents worked together with its sustainability projectto create a complex geographic imaginary which operated to ob-scure rather than disclose the events in Kashipur. Alcan playedon mixtures of silences and controlled representations of the pro-ject activities. As the spaces of Kashipur became spaces of risk, Al-can needed to either silence or contain these network res in anopposite movement from that of the emerging testimonials andhuman rights reports.

Early on Alcan set down a two pronged approach which it stuckto. The rst arm can be found in its annual reviews for 2004 and2005, on its website, and in the annual general meetings. This fea-tured defending the projects rehabilitation and restitution packageand environmental and social record, in part by making referenceto the companys social responsibility standards. The 2005 Sustain-ability Report explicitly mentions the Utkal project: Alcan under-stands the importance of balancing growth and prot with theneeds of its stakeholder groups (Alcan, 2005, p. 41) and as suchall project-affected people would be eligible for benets stem-ming from a mutually agreed upon rehabilitation and resettlementpackage (p. 41).

Likewise, at the 2006 Stakeholders Forum, hastily organized andheld immediately prior to the 2006 AGM and in response to ashareholders proposal about Utkal, (and in materials on its webpage referencing that forum) Alcan could assemble its own arsenalof imaginaries and instruments. In its slide show presentation itrepeatedly references its own sustainability frameworks and mem-bership in global CSR initiatives, inviting the audience to concernitself with Alcans intentions rather than analyzing the effects ofAlcans actions in Kashipur. Unlike traditional Canadian resourceextraction companies whose public relations employ the conven-tional, but remarkably effective, tropes of scientic and technolog-ical progress (Braun, 2002, p. 37), Alcan reshaped this toconcentrate on its management of the ethical quandaries and risksof an interdependent world. Alcan could then project its own CSRstandards as reecting ethical expertiseindustry best practice.Responsibility became recast as responsiveness, a form of publicrelations whereby what matters is having considered and navi-gated the issues and successfully self-responsibilized.

This strategy required the mobilization of silences. Alcanclaimed that the project was endorsed at an all-party conventionin November 2004 (Alcan, 2006c, p. 3): This clearly ignored thevarious testimonials of coercion in the consent process. Alcanclaimed that the project provides 180 families (revised upwardsdue to population growth) and provides them with new model vil-lages, the promise of one job per household and some rudimentaryhealth and school facilities (Alcan, 2006b). This omits the variouscustomary, non-registered and collective forms of land usage andownership which gave weight to the claim that thousands morepeople were affected (PUDR, 2005, p. 11). This land was purpose-fully cast as of little value due to the poor quality of the soil and

2 (2011) 451461the lack of irrigation (Alcan, 2005, p. 4). This ignored the history,ethnicity, languages, farming practices or socio-economic condi-tions of the villages in and around the site, and especially the fact

Ofcer in 2005, Thomas Engen, told reporters that while therehad been violence associated with the Utkal site Resolution of

suggest that responsibility attach to global production and invest-ment networks because such networks are the source of new forms

m 4these fundamental issues must come in India, not New York orMontreal (Gibbens, 2005). Alternatively, in response to journalistsor campaigners critical of the project, senior Alcan executives inthe Montreal ofce would admit that the project was troubledbut also say that Alcan had not yet made a decision as to whetherto proceed. If it were to proceed, it would be on the basis of freeand informed choice, or after a new environmental and social im-pact analysis (Mining Watch blog, 2007; Melnbardis, 2005). Here,the strategic and ethical issues revolved over whether Alcan shouldjoin the project. Key to this consideration was the relatively passiverole Alcan would play: With or without Alcan, the Project willlikely proceed (Alcan, 2006b). If Alcan did decide to be part ofthe project given its recognized standards in the area of sustain-ability, its participation would bring added value to the local com-munity and region (Alcan, 2006b, slide 15; 2006c, p. 3). On theother hand, Alcan would only proceed once there was an indepen-dent assessment of the social and environmental dimensions(Alcan, 2006b, Slide 3).

Collectively, the combined focus on responsibility did havematerial effects. Alcans CSR messaging ultimately created a sys-tem of legitimation which rendered Alcan vulnerable to immanentcritique. By 2007 there was a large body of evidence marshaled bysolidarity and human rights organizations showing that consentwas illegitimately and violently obtained. Alcan had to then actresponsibly: As Jacynthe Ct, president and chief executive ofcerof Alcans bauxite and alumina division told a mining conference,Alcan left the project due to constraints within the governancestructure that limited Alcans ability to participate in key decisions,including but certainly not exclusively related to sustainability(Ct, 2007). For the social activists and human rights groups in-volved this was only a partial victory as of the time of writingthe project was nearing completion, Alcan has continued to pro-vide technical advise, and most of the project affected villagers ofKashipur remained without avenues for reparation. Activists thenwere largely unsuccessful in stopping the project and only partiallysuccessful in transforming Alcans (and so Canadians) networklinks to the project.

6. Conclusion

The case study mapped disparate and conicting uses ofresponsibility as used by social actors, focusing on how a globalinvestment and production network become bound up with theterm. Each of ve distinct approaches to responsibility werelinked to different institutions and organizations (commerciallaw, human rights groups, solidarity organizations, shareholderactivists, and CSR). I analyzed and compared the approaches interms of their implications for network structure and governance,knowledge production and approaches to potential distant harms.that these limited crops amount to villagers subsistence (PUDR2005, p. 11). The Baphalimali Hill was described as an uninhabitedhill (Alcan, 2005, p. 3), while villagers such as Supram Night de-scribed the entire hill as sacred (Thorndycraft and Herman,2005b), Alcan re-interpreted this as a legitimate claim by villagersto access a small reserve on the sites north end.

The second strategy of Alcan was to re-interpret the geogra-phies of the network links. One approach consisted of insisting thatthe issues were Indian issues and (by implication) not for Alcan todecide. Implicitly referencing the status quo logics of sovereigntyand territorial division of responsibilities, Alcan Chief Executive

N. Quastel / GeoforuWhile CSR has come to dominate public discourse around regulat-ing FDI, the human rights and solidarity activists working to pub-licize and change Alcans investment provided alternative visions.of social relationships. However, global production and investmentnetworks create very specic forms of social relationship domi-nated by commercial norms. Investment networks are centeredon the expansion of capital and its geographic reach is based onnding sources of prot. If it is blocked through one channel it willow to other sites (Harvey, 2006). If the forms of relationality de-manded by an ethical complex become too constraining, capitalmay simply withdraw, thereby ending, rather than reforming therelationship. This creates basic tensions and contradictions for aca-demics or activists who wish to re-imagine such relationships asalso of care and connection.

Here it is relevant that the human rights and solidarity activiststhat worked to transform Alcans investment emphasized broadersources of moral obligation and also worked to create new forms ofnetwork links between Canada and Orissa. Human rights groupssuch as Amnesty International are interested in securing rightsfor everyone, everywhere, and Alcant spoke in the name of inter-national solidarity. These forms of activism swing free of the con-tingency of global investment and production network links andare motivated by notions of shared human dignity and rectifyingstructural injustice. On the basis of these ideals, they sought to cre-ate structures for (or, in the case of Alcant, simply end) the invest-ment network on the basis of these ideals. In doing so, theseactivist organizations worked to create new networks which al-lowed for relationships on terms different from that of global pro-duction and investment networks. For such networks were basedon the idea that persons and environments were worthy of concernregardless of whether they were linked through trade relations to,or were the source of prot for Canadians. These approaches sug-gest rethinking geographies of responsibility. It is not particularnetwork ties that give rise to responsibility. Rather, persons andplaces in networks are persons and things we already have reasonto care about and we should ensure our relationships with suchpersons and things reect our values. We need to work to makemore just the relationalities in which we are entangled, but we alsoneed to address the structural injustices of the global economy thatgive rise to unjust social relations.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to: (a) those who introduced me to the problem Lise Parent (Regroupement pour la responsabilit sociale desenterprises) and Tara Scurr (campaigner for Amnesty InternationalCanadas Business and Human Rights section); (b)those who lis-tened to me present the ideas participants in the seminar Envi-ronment, Development and Security (UBC Geography, 2007), theGlobalized Asia Conference (UBC Institute for Asian Research,February 2829, 2008), Law Without Borders Conference (UBCLaw, May 12, 2008), Kwantlen University Philosophy DepartmentAlcans FDI was subject to an ethical complex of solidarity activists,human rights defenders and others who recognize their networkedconnections to distant others. Alcan, through its CSR, sought toboth incorporate and deect such concern. Responsibility be-came a sword for activists to challenge Alcans actions, a shieldfor Alcan to protect its position and as a key word in networkregulation.

However, the fact that Alcan withdrew, did not compensate vil-lagers and the project continued suggests signicant problemswith the forms of relationality created by global production andinvestment networks. Relational approaches (such as Masseys)

2 (2011) 451461 459Colloqium (September 5, 2009); and (c) those who read and gaveconstructive criticisms on drafts Christian Berndt, Phillip LeBillon, Rosemary Collard, Sarah Koopman, Pablo Mendez, Elliot

m 4Siemiatycki, Michael Samers at Geoforum and the anonymousreviewers.

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This is a Montreal Issue: Negotiating responsibility in global production and investment networks1 Introduction2 Bringing responsibility into global production and investment networks3 Rethinking responsibility in global production networks4 Alcan in India5 Responsibilities in Canada5.1 Commercial responsibility5.2 Human rights5.3 Solidarity organizations5.4 Shareholder activism5.5 Alcans social responsibility

6 ConclusionAcknowledgmentsReferences