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I n t e r n a t i o n a l Water Management I n s t i t u t e years IWMI Celebrating Working PapersThe publications in this series record the work and thinking of IWMI researchers, and knowledge that the Institute's scientific management feels is worthy of documenting. This series will ensure that scientific data and other information gathered or prepared as a part of the research work of the Institute are recorded and referenced. Working Papers could include project reports, case studies, conference or workshop proceedings, discussion papers or reports on progress of research, country-specific research reports, monographs, etc. Working Papers may be copublished, by IWMI and partner organizations.Although most of the reports are published by IWMI staff and their collaborators, we welcome contributions from others. Each report is reviewed internally by IWMI staff. The reports are published and distributed both in hard copy and electronically (www.iwmi.org) and where possible all data and analyses will be available as separate downloadable files. Reports may be copied freely and cited with due acknowledgment. About IWMIIWMI's mission is to improve the management of land and water resources for food, livelihoods and the environment. In serving this mission, IWMI concentrates on the integration of policies, technologies and management systems to achieve workable solutions to real problems-practical, relevant results in the field of irrigation and water and land resources.

This paper expands our understandings of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a form of roll-out neoliberalism, building on analyses of CSR initiatives as elements of a capitalist system actively working to create its own social regularisationto secure a socio-politico-economic context supporting capitalist development. Using an ethnographic analysis of the rise and fall of an indigenous protest group that targeted a multinational mining project in New Caledonia, this paper has two theoretical aims. First, it builds on literature that analyses neoliberalism as 'articulating' with particular politico-economic conditions in order to argue that such articulation is also, necessarily, cultural. I describe how the mining company undercut and ultimately co-opted local resistance, largely by successfully capturing culturally-based ideologies of customary and indigenous legitimacy. Thus, neoliberalisation's articulations may involve attempts to capture not only formal but also informal regulation or regulators, through direct personal benefits and also indirectly through the capture of culturally valued ideologies. These ideologies, in turn, are caught up in culturally grounded hegemonic processes. This leads to the paper's second theoretical aim, which is to explore what happens when different forms of hegemony, based in distinct cultural formations, encounter each other as well as counter-hegemonic forces. In engaging directly with customary authorities rather than exclusively with activists, the company re-legitimised itself by delegitimising its activist opponents, repositioning them as subordinates within their own culturally informed social hierarchy, and reinstating customary authorities' privileged hegemonic status. Thus, multiple, culturally distinct hegemonic processes may co-exist and interact; here, they reinforced each other by suppressing counter-hegemonic activities. However, some customary authorities still sympathised with the protestors' aims and perceived potential threats from the company's expanding economic power. I end by suggesting that counter-hegemonic possibilities reside in the perpetual dynamism of cultures.

This study of resistance to multinational mining in New Caledonia expands actor-network theory's concept of translation by exploring ways that power dynamics affect alliances and the translations that both support and challenge them. Examining relationships among an indigenous protest group, environmentalist grassroots organizations, a human rights lawyer, the mining company, and the provincial government, I argue that power often requires alliances, mediated by compatible translations. However, if alliances are to succeed, at least temporarily, these translations must be made compatible through a process of translation alignment. Ironically, this alignment inevitably alters at least one of the translations, diminishing the power of the actor-network that articulated it to achieve its original goals. This paper's findings also enhance radical geographical understandings of capitalism's infrastructure, as uneven development increasingly relies upon-yet finds it increasingly difficult to achieve-the alignment of local communities' translations with those of the agents of industry.