L'entreprise verte et les boues rouges. Les pratiques controversées de la responsabilité sociétale à l'usine d'alumine de Gardanne (1960-1966)

Sometimes regarded as a phenomenon of fashion, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has deep but largely ignored historical roots. The object of this article is precisely to illustrate, through a detailed case study, how a firm tried, from the 1960s, to manage a problem of environment between will of anticipation and constraints. In order to be authorized to tip industrial wastes, called “red muds”, in the Mediterranean Sea, a large corporation used anticipatory but confined practices of social responsibility. The opponents’ contestations led the company to a real socio-technical controversy about its practices of responsibility. This one faced it up thanks to methods this time unevenly responsible. Beyond the historicity of CSR, this paper shows finally that the practical construction of this responsibility constitutes a difficult exercise and a complex phenomenon, even for a company initially full of willingness.