This article examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) through the lens of political ontology. We contend that CSR is not only a discursive mean of legitimization but an inherently ontological practice through which particular worlds become real. CSR enables the politics of place-making, connecting humans and nonhumans in specific territorial configurations in accordance with corporate needs and interests. We discuss three CSR mechanisms of singularization that create a particular corporate ontology in place: (1) community engagements that form ‘stakeholders’; (2) CSR standards and certifications that produce singular sustainable environments; and (3) CSR reporting that erases ontological conflicts and enables the singularized representation (of the environment and the community) to travel to other locations of the corporate world. We argue that these ontological CSR practices obscure the pluriverse of other world and place-making practices that would create different kinds of sustainabilities based on less extractive and non-corporate ways of being in place.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the politics involved in local struggles against forestry extractivism. The forestry sector is dependent on vast areas of land for tree plantations. This creates deep-rooted conflicts between global corporations that seek access to natural resources and locals whose way of life requires the use of the same land.Design/methodology/approach: This study draws on a political ontology frame of reference and storytelling methodology to build on testimonies of three small-scale farmers who actively seek to resist forestry plantations next to their land in rural Uruguay. The stories reveal the impossibilities they face when raising claims in the public political sphere and how they lack the means to organise strong collective resistance.Findings: One of the testimonies reveals how the farmers engage in a form of “politics of place” (Escobar, 2001, 2008) to counter the power of the proponents of forestry and the further expansion of plantations. This form of politics strengthens and politicises the ontological difference between extractive and non-extractive worlds. The farmers seek to build new imaginations of rural living and sustainable futures without the presence of extractive corporations. They fulfil this aim by designing community projects that aim to revitalise ancient indigenous legends, set up agro-ecological farms, and teach schoolchildren about the environment.Originality/value: The struggles of the farmers indicate the territorial transformations involved in (un)making (non)extractive places and the need to expand the analysis of the politics involved in struggles against extractivism beyond social struggles.

How does transformative change that restructures humans’ relations to the Earth come into being? The proposal for degrowth calls for a drastic reorganization of societies in order to deal with the current planetary socioecological and climate crises. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of how such socioecological transformations are brought into being. In this article, we examine prefigurative processes of socioecological transformations. We introduce the concept of the act of (de)growing, a prefigurative practice in which individuals engage at a personal level as they disentangle from organizational spaces governed by growth (act of degrowing), while entangling with nonhumans (cows, sheep, plants and seeds) to consciously make something else grow (act of growing) in the place that they inhabit. Drawing on 10 personal stories of degrowth in the Nordics, we identify four interlinked dimensions of socioecological transformations that bring new degrowth inspired organizational landscapes into being (disentangling from growth; organizing with nonhumans in place; the emergence of novel subjectivities in place; and the formation of translocal networks of support). We discuss the implications that these dispersed situated forms of socioecological transformations have for breaking with the systemic inertia of societal institutions built on economic growth.

The aim of this paper is to examine how territorial movements, as distinct forms of place-based social movements, organise in defence of life against the threat of resource extraction on their land. Based on the experiences of Indigenous Lafkenche-Mapuche members of a protracted struggle against a pulp mill in southern Chile, the study seeks to address the following research questions: (1) How do territorial movements emerge and organise the defence of their threatened lives? and (2) How do diverging (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) territorial relations shape the dynamics of the struggle? Combining insights from Enrique Dussel’s ‘ethics of liberation’ with that of Indigenous ontologies, this study suggests that territorial movements emerge out of the awakening of a critical consciousness of the threat of death and the collective ‘desire to live’ that define the dynamics of the struggle. The findings demonstrate how the diverging territorial relations, the societally embedded ‘coloniality of power’, and the state and corporate induced violence shape the movement dynamics. Changes in the movement dynamics also occur as a result of the struggle itself, as the movement actors’ unified desire to live continuously transforms the people and shapes the territory they inhabit.