Eco-Identity as Discursive Struggle: Royal Dutch/Shell, Brent Spar, and Nigeria

Abstract

This paper addresses eco-discourse by the corporate rhetor that emerged in the wake of two environmental disputes. While such green business rhetoric might be conventionally viewed as a category of crisis communication, it is treated here as an instrument of corporate sensemaking and discursive struggle. Specifically, I analyze the "language games" between the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and its critics that arose over Shell UK's plans to decommission the Brent Spar and Shell Nige ria's operations in Ogoniland, a tribal community in the Niger Delta. I demon strate that Shell's rhetorical contests had constitutive effects on its environmental and human rights policies and practices and led to its cautious embrace of the language of sustainable development. Combining sensemaking and Foucauldian approaches, I argue that such local conflicts over meaning-making around the nat ural environment must be understood in terms of discursive struggle at the socio- political level where they both reflect and influence the dynamics of cultural and institutional change.