Sovereignty and subterranean resources: An institutional ethnography of Repsol’s corporate social responsibility programs in Ecuador

Abstract

State mandated corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs emerged in Ecuador in the 1990s, following indigenous protests rooted in social and environmental impacts of oil extraction. CSR programs aim to deflect blame for a company’s operations, by providing development or infrastructural improvements in indigenous communities, including micro-credit projects, potable water systems, and electricity. Through an institutional ethnography of CSR programs of the Spanish owned multinational oil company, Repsol, I explore how companies intervene in transformations of social life challenging the roles of the state in securing its territorial sovereignty linked to subterranean oil resources. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis of company and state documents, my analysis demonstrates how CSR programs allow companies to secure their presence in the region, even in the face of shifting regimes of governance. In this article, I provide more insight into Ecuador’s transition from neoliberal to post-neoliberal eras, by calling attention to social processes that seek to legitimize expansion of corporate capital in spaces of sovereignty. If state control over subterranean resources is still crucial to understanding forms of sovereignty, then the extension of that control via CSR programs represents new relationships of power that construct the company as an expert in the region. Exploring the everyday processes of these legal relationships of sovereignty through an institutional ethnography of CSR programs uncovers the programs’ impacts and effects that seek to consolidate power in the company, undermine indigenous rights, and discipline the state.