PESTICIDES IN COCA-COLA AND PEPSI - Cultural Anthropology

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 22:4
678
The stories that the newspapers told about pesticides in Coca-Cola and Pepsi
are largly about the promise of consumerism thwarted. But they also agree that far
from being an incurable condition, it is an aberration, which is, ultimately, remediable
on its own terms. The romance of brands, that some fear might produce a
political paralysis, retains its inventory of contradictory impulses with their incendiary
potential intact. The successful trajectory of the CSE campaign is proof that
even in the present hegemonic moment the multiple disjunctures that constitute the
experience of consumerism can generate a charge potent enough for a way forward.
ABSTRACT
In India, and elsewhere, the effects of globalization, especially increased consumerism,
in expanding the circulation of branded goods, has produced a complex mix of responses
and readings that are often contradictory. In striving to make sense of the apparently
autonomous and often-dizzying pace of economic and cultural change, media and other
discourses utilize narratives and strategies that, although located in symbolic–political
fields, remain contingent in their specific configurations. Coca-Cola and Pepsi as brands
are hybrid embodiments of the larger dissonances constitutive of the present moment in
Indian modernity. On the basis of an analysis primarily of media commentary about
a recent environmental campaign to highlight the presence of pesticides in Coca-Cola
and Pepsi products, this article charts out the recurring discursive motifs that illustrate
the political potential and limitations of the evolving sociopolitical fields, encompassing
such contested categories as the state, multinational corporations, and the consumer,
and their interrelationships in a globalizing India.
Keywords: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, consumerism, brand image, India, liberalization,
environmentalism
NOTES
Acknowledgments. I wish to thank the CSE for their assistance with the research of this article. Partial
funding for this project was provided by a Montclair State University grant, and it is gratefully
acknowledged.
1. The opening heading is derived from the article “Of fuzzy laws and fuzzy drinks” (Girimaji
2003).
2. In an interview the official in charge of the Coca-Cola–Pepsi campaign at CSE described the
publicity generated by the revelations as having exceeded their expectations.
3. Gillespie and Cheesman see middle-class consumerism in aesthetic–cultural terms rather than
as a political force: “If the cosmopolitanism of middle-class India is consumerist rather than
political, generated by media and consumerism rather than by political philosophy or ethics,
what hope is there for the media inspiring alternative political imaginaries?” (2002:129).
4. The Internet has emerged as the hub for sharing of information related to the activities of
the MNCs and for networking of activist groups. One such website is for the India Resource
Center (n.d.), which is a clearinghouse for information about developments pertaining to the
so-called “Coke-India campaign.”