THE POLITICS OF BOTTLED WATER

Gay Hawkins

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2009, vol. 2, issue 1-2, 183-195

Abstract: This paper investigates the rise of bottled water as a commodity that has inaugurated distinct drinking conducts and material politics. Rather than reiterate existing critiques of this phenomenon based on exposing the political economy of the industry, the focus, here, is on the constitutive role of bottles in social and political life. In seeking to understand the potency of bottles in various forms of everyday conduct the paper analyses the diversity of associations between humans and bottles and the ways in which the bottle, in some arrangements, can be understood as having political capacities. Once the bottle's contingent materiality is recognized, it ceases to be simply an inert bad object and becomes, instead, a heterogeneous and complex artefact that participates in political process in different ways; something that is, quite literally, the stuff of politics.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1080/17530350903064196

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