Modern politics, as well as development discourse, have grown increasingly fond of the word ‘stakeholders’ in recent years. This, I will argue, is a tactic that serves to divorce people and consequence, as it singles out small groups who are the only considered victims in a situation – and hence makes the larger Society Inc., or Nature Inc., into bodies that have neither stakes nor responsibilities for what happens to this particular group.
Consider the following scenario in Dnalgne. Dnalgne is not a country, but a name I have invented for the purposes of this piece. It is a developing country in South-East Asia, a recipient of foreign aid, and in dire need of foreign investment. A large corporation has recently pitched a bid to the government to start logging rubber trees, and the government is considering giving them entry to the country. This assessment requires them to consider the various ‘stakeholders’, including local farmers, citizens of nearby cities, and small bands of hunter-gatherers that live in the midst of the proposed logging area. It is thought that the first group will not suffer much. The second group, it is assumed, will benefit from the investment. Workers and lorries will leave money and give locals a chance to engage in market relations and sell their goods – a potential benefit also for those of the farms that produce a surplus of goods.
The third group is a bigger problem, which presents two choices: to relocate them, or to leave them be. The logging zone is huge, and it seems that both strategies will be needed, depending on which area of the country they live in. The problem is that the government has no exact record of where they live, what areas they use, or how to relocate them. They are ‘stakeholders’, but with no real input. Some spokesmen are consulted, but have little influence over the outcome. Economic interest in a despairing country seems more important than the habitat of a few hundred people.
The deal is signed. And that’s the end for the government. Cities grow. Some farms prosper – others disappear. No one hears from the hunter-gatherers, apart from a few activists and anthropologists who make it their mission to fight for the tribes in the area. They run campaigns and ask for international solidarity. They stand on roads to block trucks. They get arrested. They are set free. They write articles filled with indignation. And they fight on behalf of ‘stakeholders’ who were previously no part of the discourse that made their displacement possible.
They make some progress. They slow the process down. They raise awareness. But ultimately, they are powerless against the big corporations and the government who signed the contract. The hunter-gatherers were the smallest group of stakeholders. Ruthless business concealed as utilitarianism – claiming to provide jobs and boost the economy – prevailed.
The notion of ‘stakeholder’, then, transforms wider concerns and human beings into entities and groups that can be ‘managed’: controlled, shifted, sold or disposed of. Assigning groups with these labels makes it possible for words on paper and decisions in offices to have effects without the decision-makers feeling directly responsible. It is not their worlds that are disrupted, and having successfully transformed other human beings into inhabitants of other worlds that are declared inferior and disposable, the processes are put into practice.
So where is the link with Occupy? Occupy took to the streets, directly challenging these systems. Beyond civil disobedience, we did not only ‘protest’, but undertook the beginning of a radical transformation of selves and society from the tough position of the boundary between inside and outside, opposition and assimilation. Challenged by the courts, Occupy decided, as an assemblage, to transform into a movement that could be taken to court. The loss of the case had a double effect. On the one hand, it was recognition of what the movement stood for, but it also reconfigured Occupy the London Stock Exchange as a ‘stakeholder’ in the battle for public space at St Paul’s. The movement played by the rules of the big corporations – and it lost. Like the hunter-gatherers in Dnalgne, the camp at St Paul’s became a manageable, recognized group that operates in known waters, never actually challenging the system they operate within.
But the war is not over, even if the battle is lost. The strength of Occupy has been its resistance to categories, its refusal to be put into a box. A large part of the movement had already moved on from St Paul’s. They were no longer stakeholders, and could not be stopped by eviction. Like nomads, Occupy resisted complete assignment to a category, and as an assemblage of disparate and different individuals and groups, there is no simple way to bring them under control. And this is how it has to stay.
The constant concern by police, government and media to ‘label’ the movement, for it to make ‘demands’, is an attempt to transform it from an assemblage into a group of stakeholders that can be boxed away – another ‘campaign’ for social justice that can be listened to with one ear whilst ignored in the real decision-making process. Whether hunter-gatherers, their activist friends in Dnalgne, or a minority group in England, these groups are vulnerable because they are recognized. They hold stakes, but because they ‘hold’ them, they can be listened to – or ignored.
Occupy, however, has operated differently. The stakes they highlighted cannot be assigned to groups. We do not ‘hold’ them in common interest groups, small islands of separate causes, but rather we share them all in a sea of uproar. And as preparations for May are underway, the waves are ready to hit the shores of clear-cut categories. The outcome depends on the movement’s ability to maintain its heterogeneous core of stakes without stakeholders and demands without five-year management plans.
Islands can be managed, but the power of the sea cannot be stopped. The stakes are there, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not belong to groups of ‘stakeholders’ that we can choose to listen to – or sweep aside. They concern our future, and they are shared by us all.
By Ragnhild Freng Dale
This is an interesting piece that I need to think about a bit more closely. I have felt for a while that the concept of the ‘stakeholder’ is, if anything, rather underused. If we consider, for example, last summer’s riots in certain UK cities, many people asked why the rioters were destroying their own communities. The causes were, of course, manifold and not completely understood, but I suspect that part of the problem is that many young people especially are not ‘stakeholders’. Whether they think of it in these terms or not is irrelevant – quite simply they do not feel they are smashing up their own communities, because they don’t actually have a stake. This does not solve the problem, but provides a way into looking for a solution.
Having read this article, it seems that the problem is not with the concept of the ‘stakeholder’, but the way that concept is used. Governments and business will always find ways of exploiting the marginalised, and since the nineties have been quite good at inventing jargon to justify it.
I agree, thought-provoking piece, but I also agree (so far, need to think more) with Jason that the problem is not with the idea of stakeholders but with agreeing to take a role in the formal process. This is why sometimes people refuse to recognise the courts they are brought up in front of – or refuse to vote. Whoever you vote for, the government gets in, as we’ve said for years.
It is the case that sometimes real change, as opposed to merely cosmetic change, can be brought about by engaging within a system, but it’s also true that it’s the classic trap to coopt those who want to change the rules by which something operates – get them inside and make them follow the rules. Reform or revolution, and there’s no blanket right answer, as those who espouse reform would claim – let’s not fall into their trap in agreeing even to that.
I hate the term ‘stakeholder’ but compared to the days before the idea existed it is an improvement. It at least recognises that there is likely to be a wide range of different interest groups beyond the mandated (or self-mandated) decision-makers. Ragnild’s piece shows that the next level issue is the different weightings given to different stakeholders, which brings us back to issues of power. Whether being recognised as a stakeholder confers a potential degree of power in a situation that would otherwise be entirely absent is a moot point.
Damn, life’s hard to work out!
Extremely interesting comments!
Your observation is acute about categories being divisive, and stakeholders, now almost synonymous with the exploitable. Exactly as you’ve put it, the Occupy Movement resists definition and invites the occasional accusation of being perplexing and vague. Yet, to risk labelling OM, this is actually curiously symptomatic of a postmodern movement, and it might be useful to conceive of Occupy emerging now as a mostly anti-ideology entity. But this runs contrary to its strong moralistic stance, in the positive sense, against very real issues of corruption, poverty, and inequality. The movement is onto something here, and I think some of the Occupiers themselves sense the significance as well, and it is very encouraging to see such careful and considered thinking about what OM can be.
Let’s take a look at the void some has purported it to be. Consider that voids are good for filling. Rather than remaining as nothing, the continuous destruction of old categories invite the creation of different or multiple ones. The force of the sea comes not from stagnancy, but from its multitude of lapping waves. Its cyclical undercurrents are what create life. I might posit that it takes acuity to know when and what categories need to be created, and when they become a drag, needs to be torn down and recreated. And the deep blue sea of ‘Uncategorised’, whilst freeing the imagination, is akin to the point at the beginning of Big Bang – itself theorised to collapse and expand indefinitely.
Moreover, other nouns such as poverty, corruption, and inequality with assigned negative moral values make it difficult to see that these are relative and not absolute. Do we follow values of poverty set by the same mechanisms that seek to label what wealth is? Consider the Dharavi slums and its very own system. It would be poor and unequal in the eyes of the world, but it should never be brought to that comparison in the first place if it means the modernised and the industrialised should insist on infrastructural reforms that the people are not ready to adapt to. Dharavi has a system that evolved organically out of localised capabilites. I think it could bear some useful lessons for the OM community to gain different lenses to view stakeholders in different contexts and systems.
Whilst the word itself, Stakeholders, like many other words which started with good intentions, have been perverted. As you’ve pointed out, while OM cannot be seen as just another negligible stakeholder, this does not remove its original meaning of carrying a voice and a responsibility. Stakes come with risks. There are risks in making commitments to pursue clear goals for the world and for one self, and risks in not doing so. OM carries with it a huge stake (around the world, mind you) whether it chooses to exercise it or not, and will soon be considering the legacy it leaves and how to create the space for the next wave. We never actually live to see the end of change, but one great space, a much-needed void is open. If OM stands for one hell of an education for humanity, we will need to define its syllabus for the students, and we would need more educators. It is through your engaging with people and especially the young to continuously question and collapse any disempowering categories and the status quo, recognise greed and hatred for what it is, not just in banks and parliaments, but also in everyday relations, and learn about the power of ones thoughts, words, and actions.
Within the fragmented voice created and appropriated by media representations of OM, and the multitude of beliefs of Occupiers – what remains is that we are at a point of a great reset.