Delinking Legitimacies: A Pluriversal Perspective on Political CSR

Abstract This study critically examines the concept of political CSR, or legitimacy creation through deliberation, as something that can be universally agreed upon in places where incommensurable differences exist. Through a comparative case study of two local stakeholder groups – one urban and one rural – involved in a conflict over a pulp mill in the south of Chile, this paper asks: 1) why did the two groups choose different participation strategies in the deliberation over the desirability of the mill? Based on multiple data sources, the study finds differences in how each community made sense of the world through place‐bound social imaginaries, which affected the stakeholders’ willingness to participate in deliberation. The findings suggest that legitimacy cannot be universally secured through dialogues that seek consensus at the expense of occluded imaginaries, rather it exists as a pluriversal construct. If political CSR is to play a role in legitimacy creation across imaginaries, the focus should be on constructing economic alternatives embedded in place that supports the co‐existence of different forms of life.