Corporate discursive power and human rights
By Katherine McDonnell
Those who work on human rights know that corporate power plays out in various ways, drawing from different sources. Some of these are easy to identify, like money, but others are more difficult to articulate even when we know they are happening. One of these is corporate discursive power, which I’ve experienced in my years as a human rights advocate and pursued a PhD to better understand.
While material sources of power draw from the financial and structural positioning of corporations, discursive power uses ideas and perceptions. It is not just about ensuring a corporate-friendly policy change, but also about making those changes seem like the “right” or “only” option.
According to the late John Ruggie, the architect of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), corporate discursive power can “shape ideas that then come to be taken for granted as the way things should be done.” Discursive power has an effect of normalizing potentially harmful ideas and framing them as uncontestable realities.
How corporate discursive power works
Corporate discursive power attempts to influence how issues are framed and how we perceive problems and solutions. It also aims to influence perceptions of people, groups, and institutions.
This power operates in two mutually reinforcing ways. One is by influencing the discourse, for example by successfully creating biased narratives and/or shifting how we interpret existing concepts. The other way is when corporate interests use those biased narratives and distorted interpretations to paint themselves in a good light and justify their actions, often while simultaneously painting others in a bad light, and to give false legitimacy to harmful structures.
ESCR-net’s corporate capture project and Sherpa’s description highlight some of the ways that corporate actors practice discursive power: for instance by capturing academic institutions and media, waging disinformation campaigns and “image laundering.” All of these tactics aim to frame issues by controlling what information we have access to and how it is interpreted, and by showing corporate actors in a positive light.
Here are some examples of corporate discursive power that I’ve seen and experienced in my own advocacy work and research:
Shaping a narrative that voluntary, non-binding grievance mechanisms offer the best route for remedying corporate human rights harms.
The extensive involvement of companies and business interest groups in the development of the UNGPs ensured that there were no binding obligations on companies.
These groups pushed forward a narrative that a voluntary and interest-based approach to remedy would serve rights-holders better. They also successfully sidestepped concerns about conflicts of interest and convinced many that it is perfectly reasonable for the company - the party responsible for causing the harm - to be allowed, even expected, to design and operate the remedial mechanism handling those harms, without oversight.
Framing corporations as solution-providers and collaborators.
Corporate actors use multi-stakeholder spaces like the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights as platforms for public relations and image-laundering.
In attending and speaking at the Forum, I have watched the representatives of companies which are actively involved in human rights controversies and/or litigation confidently speak about the importance of human rights, and I have seen business interest groups call for collaboration to “address global challenges” - in other words, cleaning up their own mess.
Framing civil society as overly dogmatic, adversarial or manipulative.
Corporations and their consultants may draw on these stereotypes, whether directly or by making subtle jabs which attempt to delegitimize human rights work and the civil society representatives involved in it.
At a business and human rights conference, for example, I watched representatives of a mining company repeatedly disparage civil society and imply that large extractive companies are the ones doing more good for communities.
Corporate actors may even convince mediators to deny civil society representatives the ability to attend mediated dialogues with their rights-holder clients by arguing that these representatives will manipulate the process.
Pushing narratives about “floodgates,” “vexatious claims,” and “anti-development agendas” to frame victims negatively.
As we see in the ongoing practices of intimidation, legal retaliation, physical attacks against and killings of victims of human rights abuses, human rights defenders, and others who challenge harmful business activities, the often-used stereotype that these actors are “anti-development” comes with significant risk.
I saw in my own work and heard from many colleagues and research participants how victims who have been harmed by business activities and are seeking remedy are also treated as greedy, ungrateful or inclined to abuse remedial processes, meaning they are forced to work harder to be taken seriously.
Challenging corporate discursive power
Because of its subtle nature and ability to make ideas seem taken-for-granted, discursive power is notoriously difficult to identify and challenge. Corporate actors may be able to exercise it successfully because their actions may not be perceived as a practice of power, or noticed at all.
This is further enabled by what scholars describe as willful ignorance, or at least a failure to question problematic narratives, which well-meaning actors such as policy-makers, international institutions and even those of us working in human rights may inadvertently contribute to.
Discursive power interacts closely with other types of power. Material power allows companies and business interest groups to lead, take part in and/or fund events and initiatives that ultimately provide them with additional discursive power. They can both control the agenda and appear to be acting as good-faith human rights actors.
The growing industry of business and human rights creates financial incentives for consultants to reproduce corporate-friendly narratives that imply legitimacy. The growth in business-focused NGOs which increasingly saturate spaces like the UN Forum further entrenches narratives that collaboration, not confrontations, with companies is the best -- or only -- way to improve human rights.
These are all bolstered by long-standing, though contested neoliberal assumptions which have themselves been created by discursive power, such as that market actors can improve public life more efficiently than states.
To challenge corporate discursive power, rights holders, human rights defenders, and civil society not only have to identify it and call it out, but must also push back against unchallenged assumptions and inaccurate stereotypes. Many civil society groups and communities are already doing work to “change narratives,” and others use research data to challenge mis-and disinformation by corporate actors.
We all may challenge corporate discursive power in different ways. Speaking truth to power is in itself an exercise of countervailing discursive power, so calling out harmful practices and publicly challenging narratives can help.
We can also work to minimize corporate actors’ reproduction of their discursive power in certain spaces, either by seeking to change how those spaces operate or refusing to engage in them.
Each strategy has its benefits and challenges and may be suitable for different actors in different contexts. At the very least, efforts to confront corporate discursive power should involve adopting a skepticism of corporate-led solutions and questioning the validity of corporate-friendly narratives.
Katherine McDonnell is a recent PhD graduate with a research focus on power and epistemic injustice in the context of business and human rights. Prior to this, Katherine worked as a human rights advocate supporting rights holders impacted by business activities and development projects.