Chevron's gift of CSR: moral economies of connection and disconnection in a transnational Bangladeshi village

Abstract

Based on ethnographic material gathered from villages surrounding the Bibiyana gas field operated by Chevron in north east Bangladesh, this paper explores the apparent paradox between the corporation's programmes of development and the response of residents who insist that the company ‘should do more’. The paper draws upon theories of the development gift which focus upon the ethics and moralities of corporate giving and the ways in which development gifts extend capitalist power, re-embed morality in the market and bind recipients into hierarchical positions of unequal exchange. In contrast, we know significantly less about the moralities and motivations of the populations to whom the gifts are offered. Aiming to fill the lacunae, the paper shows how at Bibiyana the ‘community engagement’ programmes take place in a specific moral terrain which pre-dates the arrival of Chevron and has profoundly affected how their development goods are perceived, utilized and contested. Whilst Chevron's ‘community engagement’ programme is underlain by ethics of detachment and aims to create disconnection via discourses of empowerment and sustainability, this is at odds with the local moral economy of connection, which is underlain by the ethics of Islamic charity and patronage, and in which hierarchical differences are explicit.