This thesis is concerned with the discourse and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Through a multi-sited ethnography of the world's third biggest mining company (Anglo American PIc) the thesis traces the trans-local aspects of a transnational mining corporation in pursuit of the slippety notion of CSR- a movement devoted to harnessing the g/cl;d reach and resources of 1NCs in the service of kx:al development and social improvement. The ethnography tracks these processes across a geographically diverse set of sites, from the corporate boardrooms of the companys headquarters, and the broader 'global' arenas of CSR in which the company is engaged, in London; to their headquaners in Johannesburg and those of their subsidiaty (Anglo Platinum); and ultimately to the toWIl of Rustenburg, the urban hub of South Africa's platinum belt. As such, the company provides a lens through which to reflect on the wider global CSR movement. The aims of this thesis are twofold. Firstly, the goal of this research is to contribute an understanding of the way in which c01porations, as architects and agents of development, generate new kinds of relationships between the private sector, the state and civil society. In bringing ethnographic approaches to bear on corporate capitalism, I examine haw power is accumulated and exercised in ethical regimes such as 'corporate responsibilitY, and in the discursive practices to which they give rise. The ethnographic study of CSR aims to shed light on these new regimes of authority and the ways in which they are authenticated and naturalised through the appeal to a moral discourse of responsibility. In so doing, this research aims, secondly, to advance anthropological debates on the relationship between, on the one hand the s.upposed amorality of 'the Market' and, on the other, the discourse of morality.