In 1988, Merrell Dow, an American transnational company, proposed to build a chemical factory in a dairy farming locality in County Cork, Ireland. Local residents organized a social protest movement to defend their economic livelihood and rural way of life. Their campaign forced a public hearing before Ireland's national planning review body, to try to overturn early county council permission to go ahead with the corporation's plan. This anthropological study demonstrates how subtle persuasion in a controlled context helps to create, maintain, produce, and reproduce hegemony in social democratic politics.