Coca-Cola and the Moral Economy of Rural Development in India

Abstract

This paper examines the knowledge-practices used by rural activists to raise public concerns about the use of water and land resources by a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Uttar Pradesh, India, between 2004 and 2014. These knowledge-practices included the use of semiotics and carefully crafted discourses—such as slogans and protest songs—to produce knowledge about villagers’ rights to rural subsistence and survival. An aim of this paper is to show the impressive ways in which the social movement persevered by building both public claims to a moral economy as well as village-level practices and institutions that helped to enact visions of what a moral economy could or should be. Of particular significance were activists’ efforts to frame rural water extraction and water rights through a subsistence-focused morality of rural development. This moral economy underscores villager-articulated desires for beneficial forms of economic activity that support rural livelihoods rather than prioritising environmentally destructive corporate activities.