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This paper aims to introduce the special issue “Extractivism and the Links between International Business and People’s Struggles,” which is part of our joint research efforts oriented to advance critical knowledge on the impacts and strategies of extractive transnational corporations and social struggles against them.

This paper presents and discusses contemporary aspects of extractivism and their impacts on nature and livelihood. In a second moment, it introduces and reflects on the four articles that compose the special issue “Extractivism and the Links between International Business and People’s Struggles”.

Extractivism is destructive of nature and livelihoods. As reaction to its destructive logic, millions of people have organized to struggle against extractivist projects around the world. The publication of this special issue is part of authors’ joint research efforts oriented to advance critical knowledge on the impacts and strategies of extractive corporations and social struggles against them. The lessons that the authors learned in their research and their experiences in these struggles were the key motivating factors that led them to organize this special issue, exploring radical alternatives to extractivism, alternatives that have as fundamental criterion the production and reproduction of life.

The value of this introduction is to present and discuss the four articles of the special issue “Extractivism and the Links between International Business and People’s Struggles,” which compose a rich mosaic of themes that emerge in the struggles against extractive projects worldwide, creating a relevant picture of the main defies imposed by extractivism and its negative impacts, from political corporate social responsibility to discourses, from relational ontology to the relations among state, corporations and social movements.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a socio-ecological counter account of the role that agroecology plays in supporting the sustainable livelihoods of a co-operative of smallholder coffee farmers, where very little value is created at their end of the coffee commodity chain. Agroecology may be defined as the science that provides the ecological principles and concepts for the design and management of productive agricultural ecosystems that conserve natural resources.

This study uses a case study design of a coffee-producing co-operative in India using data collected from participant observation, focus groups and unstructured interviews with indigenous smallholder farmers. It combines the science of agroecology with the labour theory of value as a theoretical framework.

An agroecological approach supports agricultural biodiversity, while promoting sustainable livelihoods since members of the co-operative are able to reduce their use of external inputs. However, an agroecological transformation is curtailed by the continued dependence on corporate value chains. A framework using the labour theory of value is used to explain the extraction of surplus value from the labour of both the smallholder farmers as well as nature. This study provides evidence of the role of government policy and practice in perpetuating the status quo by not promoting either research on agroecology or direct consumer to producer value chains while providing subsidies for the inputs of industrial agriculture.

There have been very few studies that have provided an account of the limited value generated in agricultural commodity chains for smallholder farmers due to the need to purchase the inputs of industrial agriculture supported by government subsidies. This study extends the field of accounting for biodiversity into agriculture using the science of agroecology to explain the role played by biodiversity in increasing the amount of value generated by smallholder farmers. By utilising the labour theory of value, the authors have introduced the notion of the labour power of nature as represented by the environmental services that nature provides.

This paper aims to link the process of “transition”, which started in the former Soviet system about 20 years ago, to the recent global financial and economic crisis. The paper considers “transition” as a shift from one socio‐economic “dreamworld” to another, rather than as a real change towards freedom and democracy, as most mainstream commentators would have it. The argument is that this “transition” to a capitalist, free market society was bound up with a host of dream‐like imaginations of social and economic progress, which were also found on the imaginary horizon of the Soviet system. It is argued that the two systems, and hence also the recent global capitalist crisis, can be understood as being determined by complementary economies of desires, which, however, cannot be fulfilled.

The paper combines a critical theory perspective, influenced by Buck‐Morss and Benjamin, with a Lacanian analysis of subjectivity to critically analyze collective fantasies as the key organizational principle behind the workings and eventual demise of the socialist utopia as well as the more recent downfall of the neoliberal discourse.

The paper demonstrates why both socialism and capitalism can be understood as “real existing” systems where social processes, institutions, ideologies and identities are organized at the interface of political‐agonistic and symbolic‐imaginary dimensions.

The paper calls for assuming responsibility for our work as public intellectuals and academics, aiming at the continuous unmasking of illusions, fantasies and ideologies at work in society, which we see as politics proper.

The paper uses critical‐theoretic, psychoanalytic and post‐structuralist frames in order to unravel the fantasmatic kernel at work of both socialist and capitalist utopias. These fantasies do not only struggle to uphold their hegemonic grip on the economy but on the very production of subjectivity.

Aims to discuss the relationship between the recent G8 summit of 2005, held at Gleneagles, Scotland, and events occurring around the same time in the world of academe and in the global media.

Draws upon personal experience and interpretation in order to raise issues for critical discussion and reflection, in relation to the impact and effectiveness of resistance movements within academe, activist counter‐movements, and in society at large.

It is argued that high‐profile media presentations of “big wins” and of major change to “first world” policy in relation to “third world” poverty and development mask a situation of no real change to structural factors of global economics and political power, and that this is an area which should be addressed by the academic community.

Discusses issues of contemporary relevance, and seeks to stimulate further debate and discourse in the academic arena.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the organisation of the Bolivian “water war” in Cochabamba that saw a social movement resist international business and the privatisation of public goods. The implications for the study of resistance in management and organisation studies will be evaluated.

Laclau's discourse theory is used to analyse the organisation of resistance and the establishment of a new discourse of “the people”. A range of primary and secondary data are drawn upon.

The study shows how the resistance movement was successfully organised in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Through various “horizontal” and “vertical” methods of organising, the Coordinadora, the overarching resistance organisation, was able to unite formerly disparate discourses into a single demand. This establishment of a united front was a key element in the formation of the discourse of “the people”, which successfully challenged neo‐liberal privatisation and management discourses put forward by the government, multinational companies and international finance institutions.

The research was primarily focused on studying the discursive shift that occurred during the Bolivian “water war” in 1999 and 2000. The paper was not able to discuss the aftermath of the successful resistance movement, and the various problems the new municipal water organisation ran into after it regained control of the water resources in Cochabamba.

The primary audience of practitioners are participants in social movements that are engaged in resistance struggles against multinational companies and governments. Drawing on the experiences from the Bolivian “water war”, the paper offers a range of practical insights into how to effectively organise resistance movements. This paper might also be useful to policy makers and managers in the area of water management.

This is one of the first papers that analyses the Bolivian “water war” to consider its implications for the study of resistance within management and organisation studies.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the politics of and in organizational transformations in the wake of the fall of the Berlin wall and Germany's reunification.

The paper juxtaposes a political‐philosophical perspective informed by Rancière – what we call a dramaturgy of politics – with the findings of an ethnographic study conducted in the Berlin State Library in 2002/2003.

The paper outlines a reading of the event of November 9, 1989 and its aftermath as a dissensual event of politics proper, i.e. the emergence of a new political subjectivity, followed by a consensual process of social organization. In the state library, both the consensual “fantasy of the organizational One” as well its disruption are causing struggles over what is visible and sayable. A dramaturgy of politics thus encourages us to add our voices to the specific time‐spaces in which an excess of words, signs and forms alters the configuration of what is visible and expressible.

The usual disclaimers about the limits of ethnographic research apply. The paper calls for further inquiries into the dramaturgy of organizational politics. It also reflects upon the “Western gaze” and the problematic of “speaking for” the presumably dominated.

It is hoped that the paper contributes to the understanding of the politics of organization (theory) by outlining an alternative conceptual approach and confronting it with ethnographic findings.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand the process of successful introduction of total quality management (TQM) in Poland and the way in which it impacted on identity of Polish managers.

The study is based on a combination of ethnographic research and repertory grid interviews.

The process of TQM introduction and implementation is examined through the application of translation as a model incorporating cultural and socio‐economical dimensions in addition to individual and organizational levels that shaped the development of TQM in Poland. It then draws on the idea of fantasy as theorized in Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to incorporate the unconscious element of translation process which is missing from Latour's theorization and which forms an important aspect of adoption of new technology and the emergence of a new post‐transition generation of managers in Poland. The paper argues that a complex combination of contextual factors, amongst them the notion of fantasy shaped the process of translation of TQM to Poland, the identity formation of Polish managers and to the emergence of a new post‐transition generation of managers in Poland.

This paper contributes to the literature on the post‐command transition by illustrating this process through the fantasy of total quality management explored in a specific socio‐cultural and geographical context and by combining the idea of Latour's translation with Lacanian fantasy.

The development of Tanzanian civil society is widely understood to be one of the key processes in the democratization of the country, and this vision is also shared by the World Bank. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the intention and impact of World Bank policies aimed at supporting Tanzanian civil society organizations.

The paper uses the Lacanian psychoanalytic approach combined with Foucault's notion of governmentality as a conceptual tool. Within this theoretical framework, a specific World Bank programme in Tanzania, the Social Development Civil Society Fund, is analyzed.

Developed democratic states produce, through the World Bank, the desires of not‐yet‐fully democratic countries to embrace the benefits that (democratic) development can bring. The World Bank programme aimed at the development of Tanzanian civil society is formulated in a way that posits Tanzania as a not‐yet‐fully democratic country. This is achieved through the World Bank's advice and recommendations, which trigger the desires of Tanzanians to participate in development and thus to achieve (always elusive) prosperity and democracy. Moreover, the World Bank programme can be seen as an ensemble of governmental practices advancing the idea of self‐empowerment through which Tanzanians are made governable.

The paper contributes to the understanding of democratic transition, from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis, as a social fantasy that plays a crucial role in the constitution of global hierarchical relationships and in the construction of the identities of so‐called democratic states and not‐yet‐fully democratic countries. Within this scheme, the World Bank's policies are governmental technologies that trigger desires of not‐yet‐fully democratic countries.