Critical perspectives on CSR and development: what we know, what we don't know, and what we need to know

The May 2005 issue of International Affairs addressed the theme of critical perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the developing world. The aim of this article is to take the debate a step further. Five researchers and practitioners on corporate social responsibility and development in various regions in the developing world—Central America, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, Argentina and India—using knowledge gained by their empirical research, argue that the management-oriented perspective on CSR and development is one-sided. While recognizing that critical approaches to the question have emerged, there is still a need to know which issues should form part of a critical research agenda on CSR and development.
In this article the authors seek to fill this gap in order to facilitate a more in-depth investigation of what CSR initiatives can or cannot achieve in relation to improving conditions of workers and communities in the global South. They suggest that a critical research agenda on CSR and development should encompass four areas: a) the relationship between business and poverty reduction; b) the impact of CSR initiatives; c) governance dimensions of CSR; and d) power and participation in CSR. Such an alternative critical approach focuses on society's most vulnerable groups and adopts a 'people-centred' perspective as a counterbalance to the dominant 'business case' perspective. The authors conclude that this has significant implications for CSR practice.     

Historical limits: narrowing possibilities in ‘Ontario's most historic town’

Place branding in heritage tourism development is presented as a strategy that opens up new possibilities for attracting investors and visitors by distilling, capturing and shaping what is distinctive about a place. This representational fix is an efficient marketing device in the sense that it represents places through widely intelligible symbols. Branding is also a limiting activity that locks places in time and class relations. While place branding has always had this dual effect, we argue that it has particularly insidious and limiting consequences for local development under current conditions of roll‐out neoliberalism. Beginning in the 1960s, several prominent residents and outsiders initiated efforts to transform the Town of Cobalt, Ontario, into a mining heritage tourism destination. In 2001, the town entered and won a contest to be named Ontario's Most Historic Town. The following year it persuaded Parks Canada to designate it as a national historic site. These two events provided renewed external validation for the efforts to brand Cobalt as a heritage site and began a new cycle of mining heritage tourism development. However, instead of breaking the dependency relationships that characterize resource regions, the current round of place branding has acted to circumscribe the range of possible economic development options.     

Wrestling with the integrity of a nation: the disputed internal boundaries in Iraq

The disputed internal boundaries in northern Iraq between the Kurds and the Arabs have been a persistent fault‐line in the state's history and have rapidly emerged as a core dispute since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Kurds underwrote, more than any other constituency, the democratic project in the new Iraq and contrived an ambitious constitutional route through Article 140 to place Kirkuk and other disputed areas under the administration of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) by December 2007. Article 140 was designed to resolve the issue in the Kurds favour once and for all, to circumvent yet another tedious negotiation round with the Arabs and to quarantine the Kurdish project from regional interference, particularly Turkey. On all three counts the strategy failed. This is primarily because of the complexity of the issue but there is also evidence of internal Kurdish discord with the strategy concerning the restoration of Kirkuk governorate's boundaries. The years 2007–2008 were a watershed for Kurdish designs to incorporate Kirkuk through a constitutional process and since then the disputed boundaries question has been left in a state of suspended animation. However, if a negotiating framework were to emerge the contours of a ‘deal’ have begun to crystallize and there is scope to move from management of the issue to resolution. Answers to the questions of when and how will depend on the shape of the complete package, the new government constellation and the extent that Turkey and Iran reveal themselves in the political marketplace.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews in this Article: Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages,. David Levine, Reproducing Families. The political economy of English population history. Mikiso Hane, Reflections on the Way to the Callows: Rebel Women in Pre-war Japan. Sandra M Gilbert and Susan Gubar, No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism. Brian Harrison, Prudent Revolutionaries, Portraits of British Feminists between the Wars. Birgit Sawyer and Anita Goransson (eds), Manliga strukturer och kvinnliga strategier. Susan Bridger, Women in the Soviet Countryside: women's roles in rural development in the Soviet Union. Veronica Strong-Boag, The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English Canada, 1919–1939.     

Un Estat de Prelacie: Church and Crown in England under Winchelsey and Reynolds

J. H. D enton : Robert Winchelsey and the Crown, 1294–1313: A Study in the Defence of Ecclesiastical Liberty .
J. R. W right : The Church and the English Crown, 1305–1344: A Study Based on the Register of Archbiship Walter Reynolds .     

THE SEVEN THEMES OF MUSIC GEOGRAPHY*

Music geography first emerged as a subfield of cultural geography c. 1970, During the past 25 years, a significant body of research has been published in scholarly journals, books, and reference works. Seven major themes are outlined in the formation of music geography: I - origins (non-‘geographical’); II - world distribution and types; III - location analysis; IV-source areas of musical activities; V - trends based on electricity; VI - impact of music on landscapes; and VII - global music. A view is offered of how an eighth theme (technological innovations) might develop on the basis of recent observations. La géographiede la musique est apparueau début comme un sous-domaine de la géographie de la culture aux alentours de 1970. Au cours des vingt-cinq dernières années, un grand nombre de travaux sur ce sujet a été publié dans des revues scientifiques, des livres et des ouvrages de référence. On peut cerner sept thèmes principauxdans la formation de la géographie de la musique: 1. les origines (non ‘géographiques’); 2. la répartition mondiale et les genres; 3. /‘analyse de /‘emplacement; 4. les sources régionales des activités musicales; 5. les tendances fondées sur l'électricité; 6. l'impact de la musique sur les paysages; 7. la musique globale. À partir de récentes observations, on propose une perspective sur l'élaboration éventuelle d'un huitième thème, à savoir les innovations technologiques. Mots-clés:géographie de la musique, géographie de la culture, sources régionales, paysage sonore, musique globale.