Globalisering, etnicitet og politisk praksis i Nicaragua

The aim of this paper is to seek further understanding of the environmental role of transnational corporations (TNCs) in India. The focus is set on foreign direct investment (FDI) as FDI constitutes the mere existence of TNCs and enable the transfer of not only finance, but also technological, organizational, managerial and human resources to strengthen local practices of affiliated units in India. The overall question of the paper is to discuss to what extent and how local environmental practices at affiliated units are influenced by TNC headquarters. The study finds significant evidence that environmental management at TNC affiliated units in India are strongly influenced by their parent’s polices and standards. However, it is also found that there often are significant deviations from intentions and policy commitments stated at corporate headquarters and the actual implementation at the affiliate level in India. Thus, the main conclusion is that institutional factors related to the intra-firm dynamics are significant, but that local contextual factors still counts in regard to the content and nature of environmental management at TNC affiliates in India and that local practice is not necessarily a replicate of HQ practices.This paper reflects upon some theoretical and methodological issues related to the study of globalization, ethnicity and political practice on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. In deconstructing the antinomy of ethnic activity (mobilization) and ethnic passivity well-established within Rational Choice Theories and Competition theories of ethnicity the paper elaborates on a more dynamic concept of political practice, which regards it as a fenomenon of connected series of actions. People are not passive just because they dont mobilize. The construction of ethnic consciousness, for example, is a practice exposing important political connotations. This concept is the starting point of a theory of social structure and power, which mediate between action and structure and which does not regard social structure as something fixed and given. The concept of power is harnessed to actors transformative capacity (Giddens 1979 and 1984) and, thus, power is not just a trickle down- fenomenon of compulsion and domination it is also a proces through which meaning is being contested and continously redefined.