Rochelle Spencer

Feminist theory has long been concerned with the anthropogenic impact of human development on the environment. This essay draws on gender research in northern Vietnam with Thai ethnic minority coffee farmers. I reflect on the use of gender transformative approaches (GTAs) and feminist participatory action research (FPAR) as tools that centre gender and women’s experiences in rural development, both theoretically and practically; tools that place women’s relationships at the heart of how development in this age of the Anthropocene can be practised. GTAs can be considered a feminist response to the techno-normative approaches to development at a time of polycrisis where conflict, extreme weather, and pandemic events are exacerbating poverty and inequality. I offer empirical evidence for how GTAs in rural development actively examine, question, and seek to change unequal gender norms as a means of achieving sectoral (productivity, food security, market access) and gender equality outcomes. I also introduce and reflect on using an FPAR conceptual framework for its attempt to blend feminist theories and research with participatory action research. I propose that these two feminist approaches—GTAs and FPAR—contribute to an ‘Anthropocene Feminism’ to highlight the alternatives a feminist lens can offer us for thinking relationally about achieving progress in gender equality specific to this age of the Anthropocene.

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have gained traction in recent years as effective capital pools created by governments to invest surplus funds in markets, both internationally and domestically. This chapter looks at the role that SWFs can play in Australia’s next resources boom, and whether SWFs can provide a sustainable development pathway through an alternative and innovative investment structure such as social impact investing. We shed light on the dynamics and role of SWFs in promoting sustainable development in Australia and the role of impact investing for accelerating sustainable development.

This concluding chapter surveys the importance of the extractive industries across twelve countries in terms of their level of (national) dependence on those industries and their role as global providers. We then consider some of the lessons generated by comparing the results offered in the preceding 35 chapters, in terms of their implementation of sovereign wealth funds, local content policies and corporate social responsibility.

The complicity of business schools in corporate wrong-doing has long been receiving public attention (Orr 1994), especially in more recent years following the collapse of companies like Enron, Tyco and WorldCom and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (Crane and Matten 2016). Perceptions of widespread corporate malfeasance have triggered growing calls—inter alia—for a greater emphasis on ethics in management education (Swanson and Frederick 2003; Alsop 2006; Crane 2004; Cornelius et al. 2007). Further compounding the moral dilemma of business schools are mounting socio-ecological problems globally, which have at their core the very economic model enshrined in business curricula world-wide (Willard 2004; Hart 2007; von der Heidt and Lamberton 2011; Godemann et al. 2014). Thus, places of higher education, and business schools in particular (especially since they attract the largest student numbers) are called upon not only to help students build their ethical identities (Swanson and Dahler-Larsen 2008), but also to equip them with the requisite tools to become earth-literate future leaders (after Martin and Jucker 2005) able to navigate and manage the complex challenges that have come to characterise this era (Lozano et al. 2015) we tellingly call the Anthropocene (see Steffen et al. 2011). It is considered a moral imperative but also a question of social relevance that business schools uphold their identity as places of learning with a conscience and purpose; driving positive social change by way of informing and shaping managerial and professional attitudes and practices (Adams et al. 2011; José Chiappetta Jabbour 2010; Tilbury et al. 2004; Green et al. 2017). As suggested by Setó-Pamies and Papaoikonomou (2016: 524):

Academic institutions help shape the attitudes and behaviour of business leaders through business education, research, management development programs, training, and other pervasive, but less tangible, activities, such as the spread and advocacy of new values and ideas. Through these means, academic institutions have the potential to generate a wave of positive change, thereby helping to ensure a world where both enterprises and societies can flourish.

Today’s global challenges not only threaten humanity’s survival but also that of millions of other species. It is generally agreed that these challenges are the product of anthropogenic impacts on the planet through humanity’s pursuit of economic ends. Due to the intractable nature of these challenges they are often referred to as wicked problems as their complexity and scale are “interconnected, contradictory, located in an uncertain environment and embedded in landscapes that are rapidly changing” (Sardar 2010: 183). However, the global pursuit of economic growth not only threatens to bring about ecological brinkmanship it also produces large societal costs. Dominant neoliberal development policies have largely failed to adequately address inequality or reduce poverty in an age of plenty, which suggests—as argued widely (Kates et al. 2000; Barth et al. 2007; Vare and Scott 2007; Rieckmann 2012; Barth and Rieckmann 2012; Thomas et al. 2013)—that future human wellbeing within environmental limits requires a fundamentally new and different approach; for the purposes of this book we regarded the concepts of responsible citizenship, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development as expressions of this new approach and the kind of social change agendas that share a vision of a more socially and environmentally just future. It has been the premise of this volume that universities have both the capacity and the responsibility to be the drivers of change towards this vision (Kates et al. 2000).

Dieses Kapitel gibt Einblicke in den Stand der CSR Integration an australischen Hochschulen. Im internationalen Vergleich wird der Integrationsprozess als langsam gewertet, was auf universitätsexterne und -interne Barrieren zur CSR-Agenda an australischen Hochschulen zurückgeführt wird. Speziell im Kontext eines starken Neoliberalisierungsdruckes auf die Hochschulen, der die Curriculum-Reform erschwert, wird eine akademische Aktivistenkultur als mögliche Antwort auf den CSR-Mangel an australischen Universitäten vorgestellt.

An anthropology of development perspective on corporate social responsibility (CSR ) seeks to unveil unintended outcomes of CSR initiatives, to unpack its discourses and the assumptions that CSR is a driver of sustainable development and poverty reduction. The central question underpinning analyses of CSR from this perspective is what the implications might be of the private sector as an agent of development. The shift in the perceived role of business as only a profit -driven tool of development to that of development agent is vividly illustrated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs ). The SDGs emphasise that governments and multilateral development agencies cannot achieve the 2030 development agenda alone and that the private sector has the capital , resources and power to take on a central role in poverty reduction. This chapter presents the anthropology of development concerns with how the CSR apparatus utilises a sustainable development discourse to support the development encounter between corporations of the global North working in communities of the global South. From this anthropology of development perspective several concerns are brought to the forefront of CSR debates: the contested nature of both CSR and sustainable development; the taken-for-granted assumptions that the private sector and poverty reduction are compatible; and the unintended consequences of CSR activities despite well-meaning intentions.