Reviews
Multinational Monitor, January 2003
Battling Big Business
Essential Information
Editor Eveline Lubbers writes that the aim of Battling Big Business "is to expose those companies that present themselves as born-again ethical enterprises while at the same time resorting to a bag of dirty tricks."
In the spirit of John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's Toxic Sludge is Good for You, the book highlights corporate initiatives to undermine citizen campaigns for corporate accountability. The theory, argues Lubbers, is that "understanding corporate deception can help people to recognize such manipulation in order to do something about it."
Battling Big Business contains essays from activists and journalists from Europe, Australia and the United States that reveal a panoply of corporate feints and dirty tricks, with close case studies that explain how the tactics work, how they distract or undermine activist efforts, and what can be done to counter them.
The tactics run from cooptation to infiltration.
Andy Rowell explores how Chevron entered into a partnership arrangement with the World Wildlife Fund, purportedly designed to protect the environment in Papua New Guinea (PNG), as a way to stave off protests in Australia and the United States, as well as PNG, against the oil giant's operations in PNG. In a separate essay, Rowell explores the growing use of the "stakeholder dialogue" -- employed by such companies as Shell and Monsanto -- to drain activists' time and offer the appearance of corporate concern.
Further toward the dirty tricks end of the spectrum, Franny Armstrong and Will Ross examine the use of libel suits to silence company critics. Lubbers recounts McDonald's use of spies to infiltrate a small animal rights/environmental organization -- a comedic overdeployment that was revealed in the infamous McLibel trial, a two-year trial brought in the UK by McDonald's against activists for handing out critical leaflets outside of McDonald's restaurants. Sheila O'Donnell recounts Alaska oil companies' use of Wackenhut private investigators to surveil and obtain phone records from one of their leading critics, Charles Hamel. Hamel has been a funnel for charges of wrongdoing aired anonymously by whistleblowers within the Alyeska oil consortium.
Battling Big Business devotes a substantial amount of attention to use of the Internet, both to efforts by companies to track and interfere with Internet activism, and the ways in which the Internet can facilitate efforts to counter business power.
"We'd better start using technology more creatively," Lubbers writes. "We've got expectations to live up to. Public affairs advisers are writing things like this: 'With each passing month, an advocacy group (usually anti-corporate) comes up with a new way of using information technology to advance its public policy agenda. Companies need to watch what others are doing and think creatively about how to develop innovative ways to connect with supporters."'