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Protest Inc.: The Corporatization of Activism
Mass protests have raged since the global financial crisis of 2008. Across the world students and workers and environmentalists are taking to the streets. Discontent is seething even in the wealthiest countries, as the world saw with Occupy Wall Street in 2011.
Protest Inc. tells a disturbingly different story of global activism. As millions of grassroots activists rally against capitalism, activism more broadly is increasingly mirroring business management and echoing calls for market-based solutions. The past decade has seen nongovernmental organizations partner with oil companies like ExxonMobil, discount retailers like Walmart, fast-food chains like McDonald’s, and brand manufacturers like Nike and Coca-Cola. NGOs are courting billionaire philanthropists, branding causes, and turning to consumers as wellsprings of reform.
Are “career” activists selling out to pay staff and fund programs? Partly. But far more is going on. Political and socioeconomic changes are enhancing the power of business to corporatize activism, including a worldwide crackdown on dissent, a strengthening of consumerism, a privatization of daily life, and a shifting of activism into business-style institutions. Grassroots activists are fighting back. Yet, even as protestors march and occupy cities, more and more activist organizations are collaborating with business and advocating for corporate-friendly “solutions.” This landmark book sounds the alarm about the dangers of this corporatizing trend for the future of transformative change in world politics.
Protest Inc. tells a disturbingly different story of global activism. As millions of grassroots activists rally against capitalism, activism more broadly is increasingly mirroring business management and echoing calls for market-based solutions. The past decade has seen nongovernmental organizations partner with oil companies like ExxonMobil, discount retailers like Walmart, fast-food chains like McDonald’s, and brand manufacturers like Nike and Coca-Cola. NGOs are courting billionaire philanthropists, branding causes, and turning to consumers as wellsprings of reform.
Are “career” activists selling out to pay staff and fund programs? Partly. But far more is going on. Political and socioeconomic changes are enhancing the power of business to corporatize activism, including a worldwide crackdown on dissent, a strengthening of consumerism, a privatization of daily life, and a shifting of activism into business-style institutions. Grassroots activists are fighting back. Yet, even as protestors march and occupy cities, more and more activist organizations are collaborating with business and advocating for corporate-friendly “solutions.” This landmark book sounds the alarm about the dangers of this corporatizing trend for the future of transformative change in world politics.
200 pages, Paperback
First published February 18, 2014
7 people are currently reading
128 people want to read
About the author
Peter Dauvergne
19 books10 followersPeter Dauvergne is Professor of International Relations at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of the award-winning books, Shadows in the Forest (MIT Press, 1997) and The Shadows of Consumption (MIT Press, 2008), as well as Loggers and Degradation in the Asia-Pacific (Cambridge, 2001), and (with Jane Lister) Timber (Polity, 2011). His most recent books are (with Jane Lister) Eco-Business (MIT Press, 2013) and (with Genevieve LeBaron) Protest Inc. (Polity, 2014). In addition to publishing 13 books and more than 50 refereed journal articles and book chapters, he is the founding and past editor (1999-2007) of the MIT Press journal Global Environmental Politics.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 9, 2017
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
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March 13, 2024
ما در میانهی جنگیم، جنگ رسانهها و ابرشرکتها و برندها. علیالخصوص در خاورمیانه و البته در ایران فعلی این کتاب باید خوانده شود.
بهتبع این کتاب را به تمام ایرانیهایی که خارج از ایران زندگی میکنند و دست و دلشان برای برندهای حقوقبشری و اشخاص حقیقی و حقوقی و آپوزیشن(نما) میلرزد... توصیه میکنم.
ارزش چندباره خواندن را دارد.
بهتبع این کتاب را به تمام ایرانیهایی که خارج از ایران زندگی میکنند و دست و دلشان برای برندهای حقوقبشری و اشخاص حقیقی و حقوقی و آپوزیشن(نما) میلرزد... توصیه میکنم.
ارزش چندباره خواندن را دارد.
October 14, 2021
great insights about the world of activism and how it got sucked in into the corporate world, that has been an interesting read indeed.
April 25, 2015
In a time of what seems to be a rise in global activism, this book presents a very different view.
Things are not at the point of "Greenpeace/Pepsico" or "Amnesty International (A Division of Unilever)," but a person could be forgiven for thinking that such a day is coming. Major NGOs have entered into multi- million dollar partnerships with corporations like Shell, Coca-Cola or Walmart (they certainly have more global reach than the United Nations). These corporate partners are going to expect more business-like behavior out of what, twenty years ago, was a rag-tag bunch of activists. Groups like the Sierra Club or World Wildlife Fund now have multi-million dollar annual budgets, boards of directors, offices all over the world and hundreds (or thousands) of employees. A growing number of organizations are interested in "corporate friendly" activism.
The consumerizing of activism is another growing trend. Purchase a certain item (usually made in China) and a portion of the money will be donated to some worthy cause. It helps the retailer to look good, and the worthy cause may get a small amount of extra money in their bank account. On the other hand, is more consumerism really the answer for world hunger or cancer research?
When dealing with the police or city officials, taking the streets has never been easy. Post-9/11, new laws have been passed which make it nearly impossible. Almost any public protest or disruption of daily activity can be equated with terrorism. Facing a police force that dresses and acts like the military, courtesy of surplus equipment from the Defense Department, certainly doesn't help.
In the middle of the 20th Century, there was much more of a social interest in getting together, like at the local union hall, to discuss the state of society. Those days are gone. Today, society is much more atomized. People are working two jobs, just to make ends meet, or they are spending their free time playing video games, so getting together to better society is low on the list of priorities.
This is a gem of a book, though also rather disheartening. It is a huge eye-opener, and should be read by all parts of society, including activists and non-activists.
Things are not at the point of "Greenpeace/Pepsico" or "Amnesty International (A Division of Unilever)," but a person could be forgiven for thinking that such a day is coming. Major NGOs have entered into multi- million dollar partnerships with corporations like Shell, Coca-Cola or Walmart (they certainly have more global reach than the United Nations). These corporate partners are going to expect more business-like behavior out of what, twenty years ago, was a rag-tag bunch of activists. Groups like the Sierra Club or World Wildlife Fund now have multi-million dollar annual budgets, boards of directors, offices all over the world and hundreds (or thousands) of employees. A growing number of organizations are interested in "corporate friendly" activism.
The consumerizing of activism is another growing trend. Purchase a certain item (usually made in China) and a portion of the money will be donated to some worthy cause. It helps the retailer to look good, and the worthy cause may get a small amount of extra money in their bank account. On the other hand, is more consumerism really the answer for world hunger or cancer research?
When dealing with the police or city officials, taking the streets has never been easy. Post-9/11, new laws have been passed which make it nearly impossible. Almost any public protest or disruption of daily activity can be equated with terrorism. Facing a police force that dresses and acts like the military, courtesy of surplus equipment from the Defense Department, certainly doesn't help.
In the middle of the 20th Century, there was much more of a social interest in getting together, like at the local union hall, to discuss the state of society. Those days are gone. Today, society is much more atomized. People are working two jobs, just to make ends meet, or they are spending their free time playing video games, so getting together to better society is low on the list of priorities.
This is a gem of a book, though also rather disheartening. It is a huge eye-opener, and should be read by all parts of society, including activists and non-activists.
June 16, 2016
A very useful book to help see how the non-profit industrial complex is operating in the post-financial meltdown economy. Spoiler alert - it's flourishing.
Cause marketing and corporate philanthropy provide easy ways for the rich to keep on getting richer, but this way they get to feel like they kept their hands clean on the way. Collective action gives way to individual acts that can be paraded, monetized and bought. Formerly grassroots organizations move to "compromise agendas" in order to maintain funding from conservative corporate sponsors. The systems meant to be challenged are actually reinforced and legitimized.
I did find some of the main arguments to be rather repetitive, but that sort of helped me internalize the finer points. It's a relatively accessible read and one that made a distinct impression. Definitely worth reading if you have ever been a bit skeptical of trendy philanthropic causes (i.e. no, buying a Coke doesn't *really* save a polar bear).
Cause marketing and corporate philanthropy provide easy ways for the rich to keep on getting richer, but this way they get to feel like they kept their hands clean on the way. Collective action gives way to individual acts that can be paraded, monetized and bought. Formerly grassroots organizations move to "compromise agendas" in order to maintain funding from conservative corporate sponsors. The systems meant to be challenged are actually reinforced and legitimized.
I did find some of the main arguments to be rather repetitive, but that sort of helped me internalize the finer points. It's a relatively accessible read and one that made a distinct impression. Definitely worth reading if you have ever been a bit skeptical of trendy philanthropic causes (i.e. no, buying a Coke doesn't *really* save a polar bear).
July 12, 2016
On the plus side, the authors' approach to the 'corporatization of activism' is well-researched and interesting. However, the 'descriptive' research (poorly) conceals a rather strident 'prescriptive' political agenda (these authors are 'eleventh thesis' folks for sure) as the text cycles again and again between inciting outrage and hinting that behind each protest agenda, capitalism is really THE PROBLEM, which, presumably, must be...solved? The work is theory-impoverished and simultaneously heavy on Marxist assumptions. Weighing in on this work as a polemic, it epitomizes the quixotic slant of a certain strand of radicalism, and its ideological distance from the left-center, which serves to alienate potential sympathizers by making the perfect the enemy of the good (to paraphrase Voltaire).
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews