ABSTRACT
Our ethnographic and linguistic research has amply confirmed the existence, vitality, and relative coherence of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement. This chapter reports a companion empirical study of the movement in action that employs the methods of anthropology and linguistics. It presents our analysis of the discourse of CSR reporting and considers its implications. The chapter discusses new governance theory and assesses CSR practice as a test case. It reviews both the promise and the dangers posed by governance using the CSR model. A "CSR community" has clearly emerged both in the United States and Europe, constituting itself as a coherent cultural entity complete with rituals and language. At the theoretical level, the CSR movement is a monolith of like-minded people who engage in uniformly positive rhetoric. Governments, corporations, and their stakeholder critics take it seriously at the rhetorical level.
