Coca-Globalization: Following Soft Drinks from New York to New GuineaChapter 5 (Robert Foster)

Amanda Kierszenblat

Author● Robert Foster

○ Anthropologist ■ Research Interests: political economy, material

culture globalization, corporations, commercial media

■ Coca-Globalization: Following Soft Drinks from New York to New Guinea (2008), Materializing the Nation: Commodities, Consumption and Media in Papua New Guinea (2002) Nation Making: Emergent Identities in Postcolonial Melanesia (1995), Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia: Mortuary Ritual, Gift Exchange and Custom in the Tanga Islands (1995)

Key Points:● “Corporate Citizenship” ● “Consumer Citizenship”

○ 2002■ “Social irresponsibility” VS “Social irresponsibility”

● “Two forms of activism engage each other” (153) ○ Both Strategies

Corporate Citizenship ● “Activities of the corporate person”● Responsibility to the Shareholders ● Responsibility to the Stakeholders● Paradox b/w the two → liable to both?

○ “Managers are legally beholden not to spend money on causes which do not enhance shareholder assets”■ Coca Cola does both...

Coca Cola and Corporate Citizenship ● “Living our Values”

○ An effort to “balance and align the pursuits of shareholder value with stakeholder values”

○ “Consumers now make purchase decisions on the basis of company’s social contributions”

○ Programs■ “Microenterprise in vietnam” → “improve economic

opportunities for women.”○ “Corporate citizenship always serves the interest of

shareholder value: socially responsible initiatives(s)... double as marketing opportunities.”

Coca Cola and Corporate Citizenship ● Multitude of Initiatives

○ http://www.coca-colacompany.com/topics/sustainability

Question: Is it important to you to buy from companies that are socially responsible?

Corporations as Citizens ● Corporations can play roles as citizens

○ Filled with citizens ○ Helps creates “entities that administer and guarantee rights”

■ A lot like States ● “Entities such as the Coca Cola company… become integral parts

of transnational apparatus of governmentality” ● Rice Farmer example → “the gift of water”

○ Environmental Sustainability

Consumer Citizenship ● “Engages Individuals in their roles as market agents” ● Serves as a type of government

○ Frustration with the govt● Political Consumerism

○ “The species of consumer citizenship in which individuals exercise political will via purchasing”■ Form of “individualized collective action”

● Politics of Products

Consumer Citizenship/ Political Consumerism Example

Soft Drink Perspectives on Political Consumerism● “Boycott Coca Cola”● Negative Political Consumerism

○ Boycotts■ “Many are complete failures because they are

ill-conceived… and are short lived”

Ethical or Smart Shopping: The New Anti Coca Colas● “Consumers will buy a particular brand of goods because some

portion of the sales process will be donated to a particular cause”○ Campaign w/ Mother's Against Drunk Driving

● Mecca- Cola

De- Coca- Colonization or Culture Jamming● “Culture products that emanating from abroad are put to uses that

are neither intended nor anticipated by their original producers” ○ Cildo Meireles

● Culture Jamming ○ “Refers to the use of existing mass media forms for the

express purpose of subverting those very forms through a process of “denaturalization,” of making taken-for-granted images appear strange and unfamiliar.”

Culture Jamming