In this new history of corporate environmentalism, Geoffrey Jones shows the value of studying failure. Inhabiting a rare middle ground between celebrating businesses with an ecological ethic and critiquing all corporate sustainability efforts as “greenwashing,” Jones calls (by example) for more scholarship on the actual material and social impacts of businesses with environmental aims. To do so, he approaches “green businesses” as historical and cultural phenomena, with diverse ideological roots and paths of dissemination. The key value of this book is its insistence that there are varieties of green business and that the way in which ideas of “green business” have traveled and touched down in specific contexts matters greatly for what these businesses have been able to accomplish. Jones pursues this agenda in two ways: first, by challenging the common perception that “business responsibility for the natural environment … [is] a recent phenomenon”; and second, by raising concerns that despite its long history and recent proliferation, corporate sustainability has not “stopped the continued deterioration of the environment” (pp. 18, 19). His response is to offer a history that traces the challenges, contradictions, and incomplete adoptions of green business ethics over time.
The book proceeds through a set of globe-spanning case studies across different sectors. Chapters on Costa Rican ecotourism and outdoor-apparel companies Patagonia and The North Face offer the most direct discussion of the limits of green business in markets catering to a disposable consumer culture. Chapters on organic wine and New Zealand food markets explore the frictions that arise in translating sustainability concepts across nations and industries (for example, the uneasy relationship between “organic” and terroir). Finally, chapters on municipal waste management, solar power, and sustainable financing focus on the challenges of scaling environmental ethics within infrastructural systems.
Chapter 8, on Patagonia and The North Face, raises particularly interesting questions about the jurisdiction of green businesses. Here, Jones and chapter coauthor Ben Gettinger pose a dilemma: Can a corporation do the most environmental good by transforming business practice—for example, by “greening” production and educating consumers—or by channeling profits toward removing ecologically sensitive areas from the commodity supply chain? Following The North Face founder Doug Tompkins down the latter path, the authors find that direct environmental protection at the scale that corporate profits allow raises challenging questions of sovereignty. They quote a skeptical journalist: “No one could come to Chile and buy such a great piece of land so close to the frontier with Argentina for love of nature alone” (p. 234). Though Tompkins donated much of the acreage he purchased for conservation to the Chilean and Argentinian governments and foundations, the case study invites reflection on corporate control of environmental resources more generally. Other, more mainstream corporations (and individuals whose wealth comes from corporate investment) also own millions of acres of land apiece—are these also challenges to state sovereignty? Is it a sovereignty concern for a company like Coca-Cola to have an annual water consumption equivalent to “the annual cooking, cleaning, and drinking needs of over 2 billion people” (Bartow J. Elmore, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism [2016], p. 18)? Is “the love of profit” less of a territorial power grab than “the love of nature,” or are they equivalent? The relationship of territorial sovereignty and environmental protection is no less complicated for Tompkins's ultimate transfer of the lands “back to the public commons” (p. 242). One need only think about the shifting American politics around Bears Ears National Monument to question “the state” as an uncomplicated steward of ecologically important territory. Engagements such as this one that muddy the boundaries between state, corporation, and concerned private individual reinforce Jones's argument that meaningful environmental protection is much more complex than simply starting a company with an environmental ethic.
I also appreciate the book's unique approach to authorship, in that Jones acknowledges coauthors for almost every chapter. Because the nature of these collaborations is not spelled out, however, it is hard to tell whether this is an edited volume with a particularly heavy editorial hand or if Jones is more generous than most about acknowledging research assistance (a quick googling suggests the latter). Either way, I wish Jones (et al.) had discussed this collaborative approach as a methodological experiment and reflected on its pros and cons.
The main weakness of the book, which seems to stem from this collaborative methodology, is its limited synthesis beyond/between case studies. The three-page postscript mainly summarizes, and while Jones's introductory chapter provides an engaging history of corporate social responsibility, it is more reticent on the philosophical influences behind green business specifically. The introductory chapter could have benefited from more discussion of the technics of the corporation as a legal and institutional entity, extending its brief discussion of “quarterly capitalism” and typologies of profits (p. 17). More engagement here with histories of the evolution of corporate structure and global markets might have helped readers draw broader structural lessons from the successes and failures in the book's case studies. For example, Jones might have linked productively to Jonathan Levy's work on the changing legal status of corporations from state concessions for “public purpose” to personhood (“From Fiscal Triangle to Passing Through: The Rise of the Nonprofit Corporation,” in Corporations and American Democracy [2017]). Histories of the financialization of the modern corporation; the changing power dynamics of shareholders, owners, and managers; and the institutionalization of global supply chains could also have better situated “green business” (see Greta R. Krippner, “The Financialization of the American Economy,” Socio-Economic Review [2005]). This more technical discussion would have set the stage for Jones to introduce upfront some of the alternative environmental philosophies that flow throughout the book—for example, anthroposophy and biodynamics, a set of principles building on the early twentieth-century philosophies of Austrian social reformer Rudolph Steiner, which appear in several chapters as a foundational influence on a diverse set of “green businesses,” from ethical investing to food distribution in New Zealand. Introducing this and other recurring influences early on would have helped draw clearer connections between case studies and place them in context as part of a global history.
In summary, this book provides richly researched case studies of attempts to create “for-profit businesses which were more sustainable and responsible than the prevailing norms” and the diverse challenges these enterprises faced throughout modern history (p. 252). As each chapter stands on its own, it would make an excellent resource for classes in business or environmental studies, as well as serve as a useful reference for corporate sustainability professionals and “green entrepreneurs” looking for guidance about why achieving real environmental quality has proven to be so challenging.
Finally, I hope this book will encourage more intellectual histories of green business philosophies and the frictions that arise in different disseminations. As Varieties of Green Business makes clear, the vocabulary, assumption, and methods of corporate sustainability have multiple and often-obscured origins, have traveled prolifically over time, and have done quite different work in different national contexts. More nuanced historical work on corporate environmentalism is sorely needed if we are to ever create, as Jones calls for, a “new form of capitalism which addresses, rather than exacerbates, the environmental challenges and societal inequalities of the world” (p. 252).
