Multinationale Unternehmen in der Weltpolitik

Since the 1990s, multinational enterprises have received significantly more attention both academically and in public discourse. In particular, global governance has framed and discussed these actors in terms of their potential to close governance gaps and provide public services. The debates surrounding their role and responsibilities as well as how different disciplines engage with these actors and thereby ascribe meaning to them constitutes the twofold point of departure for this study. Following a detailed reconstruction of how different disciplines conceptualise enterprises as economic, legal, historical and political actors, the book, by drawing on American Pragmatism in particular, develops an actor image that allows us to consider enterprises in terms of their social, creative and ultimately contingent acts of interpretation and designation of social expectations. This perspective is illustrated in two case studies by reconstructing documents from Shell in Nigeria and ExxonMobil in Indonesia in terms of the meanings and selfunderstanding both enterprises advance in these contexts in response to crises. Based on these illustrations, the notion of viewing Shell and ExxonMobil as meaningfully integrated into structures of global governance and thereby understanding them as global governors is questioned.