TY - JOUR
T1 - Detachment as a Corporate Ethic
T2 - Materializing CSR in the Diamond Supply Chain
AU - Cross, Jamie
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - This article examines efforts by De Beers, the world's largest supplier of rough diamonds, to better regulate the conditions under which its stones are cut and polished across a global network of buyers, contractors, and subcontractors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at an offshore processing unit in South India that was built to service De Beers' buyers, this article explores how ethical accounting regimes are materialized on the floor of a global factory and how they are grounded in an industrial bureaucracy. In a global supply chain like this one, I argue, codes of practice and audit checklists demand to be understood as material technologies that afford companies and individuals new purchase on an ethic of detachment.
AB - This article examines efforts by De Beers, the world's largest supplier of rough diamonds, to better regulate the conditions under which its stones are cut and polished across a global network of buyers, contractors, and subcontractors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at an offshore processing unit in South India that was built to service De Beers' buyers, this article explores how ethical accounting regimes are materialized on the floor of a global factory and how they are grounded in an industrial bureaucracy. In a global supply chain like this one, I argue, codes of practice and audit checklists demand to be understood as material technologies that afford companies and individuals new purchase on an ethic of detachment.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=82255182814&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3167/fcl.2011.600104
DO - 10.3167/fcl.2011.600104
M3 - Article
SN - 1558-5263
VL - 2011
SP - 34
EP - 46
JO - Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology (Focaal)
JF - Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology (Focaal)
IS - 60
ER -