Privilege.
I remember the first time my mother told me to never, ever, ever drink bottled water- I was a sophomore in high school and Take Back the Tap was going viral, especially amongst environmentalist circles. I never really drank bottled water growing up, since we had a nice BRITA filter on our tap and Idaho water is pretty pristine. What I did eat a lot of, though, was canned tuna fish, but in our household the biggest concern around canned tuna was the possible radiation harbored by tuna flesh from the Pacific Ocean. I don’t know how realistic of a concern that is though.
This week, we utilized two mind maps when discussing various actors in the tuna and bottled water networks. The tuna actor network tended toward economic and international relations concerns, as well as various biological, food-chain-oriented aspects. Our bottled water network on the other hand centered in on the “isms” that appear once we reveal the different connections surrounding the bottled water industry, mindset, and privilege.
Privilege in a huge player in all three of our objects for this week. How removed are the consumers of canned tuna from the actual fishing industry and the local communities dependent on tuna revenue? A group of “green consumers” can demand that their caned tuna be “dolphin safe” without understanding the implications of this (arbitrary???) label for the people on the other end, the southeast Asian fisherman who are just trying to make a living fishing in an over-fished and commercialized ocean.
We discussed how lawns originated in the 1920’s as people began living suburban lifestyles. I grew up with a beautiful lawn in a neighborhood of beautiful lawns surrounded by a perfectly lawned golf course. In the desert in Idaho. Somehow, we have artificially created a “lawn-norm” in a place only sagebrush should grow “naturally.” Privilege comes into play when we see lawns a a status symbol of good neighborliness and a requirement for property value.
Bottled water can be a status symbol and great privilege of those with the wealth and privilege of choice to choose San Peligrino or Dasani over the likely safe H2O coming out of the tap. Bottled water can also be the only option for humans in developing nations without infrastructure to provide clean, safe, reliable, drinking water. This duality makes the privilege of bottled H20 even more nuanced.