The Dark Side of Tobacco Industry's CSR: A Socio-Legal Analysis of the Indonesian Corporate Hegemony Campaign

Abstract

This paper aims to seek the legal substance's core problem to reveal how the hegemony latently operates. By doing so, it deconstructs the established dogma about the industry's misperceived social reputation that frequently serves as justifications favoring the industry. As the only country in the Asia-Pacific region that has not yet accessed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), Indonesia faces an alarming smoking prevalence rate. The situation has worsened during the COVID-19 outbreak because excessive tobacco smoking behavior increases people’s health vulnerability. Despite the destructive impact, most Indonesian citizens share a common belief about the tobacco industry's importance to the economy. Narratives on economic contribution and the industry’s philanthropic campaigns display the industry as the protagonist sector and play a significant role in creating a false public opinion on the tobacco industry's reputation. Using a qualitative socio-legal approach, this paper critically describes how the industry uses the hegemonic methods manifested in CSR campaigns, which contradict the ethical principle to secure its market dominance. As a result, the partial legal approach to tobacco control regarding CSR encountered minimalist market interventions from the government, which emerges as the main causes of such an anomaly. As the tobacco control challenge predictably gets more difficult on the verge of an economic downturn, the urgency of accessing the FCTC is highly crucial to saving us from the upcoming demographic calamity.
 KEYWORDS: Tobacco Industry, Business & Human Rights, Corporate Hegemony.