Packaging water: plastic bottles as market and public devices

Abstract

The emergence of bottled water as one of the fastest growing markets in the global beverage industry has attracted much attention, most of it negative. It seems that no sooner had the plastic bottle of water appeared as a mass rather than a boutique commodity than it became a matter of concern. A huge variety of activist campaigns have sprung up against bottles, focusing on everything from plastic wastes to chemical leaching. There is now no question that, in many places, diverse environmental publics stalk this commodity. How then does the framing of bottled water as a controversial issue interact with its markets? Using a range of examples, this paper investigates Callon's idea of markets as hybrid forums and key sites for the proliferation of the social. However, rather than focus on the deliberative processes of democracy the idea of hybrid forums is extended with an analysis of how affect, vital materiality and the evanescence of publics can reveal the fecundity of an issue. By sticking to the bottle the aim is to understand how, in particular arrangements, the vital materialism of plastic can be unleashed, inviting consumers to reflect on its origins and afterlife, long after games of value are exhausted. Analysis of affective modulation and vital materialism extends debates in economic sociology in critical ways. First, it shows how objects can acquire political capacity, how their material force, or ‘thing-power’ as Jane Bennett calls it, can become ethically and politically potent. Second, it reveals more-than-human politics and publics as often affective, as caught up in the play of ontological meaning and disturbance.

Keywords:

• hybrid forum
• markets
• vital materiality
• publics
• affective force

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Noortje Marres and Rosalyn Diprose for helping me think through the argument of this paper and for the very incisive readers’ reports. I am particularly grateful to the reviewer who suggested the idea of the ‘infrapublic’ and hope my elaboration of it does it justice.