Doing Plastic Bottled Water Differently? The Role of Social Entrepreneurship in Delivering Community-Managed Infrastructures - Isaac Lynne
Date: Thursday 23 May 2019
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EZ.G.23, Parramatta campus (South), Western Sydney University
Doing Plastic Bottled Water Differently? The Role of Social Entrepreneurship in Delivering Community-Managed Infrastructures
Presenters: Dr Isaac Lynne
Discussant: Professor Gay Hawkins
Abstract
This paper investigates the rise of a new model of social enterprise in rural Cambodia that is delivering drinking water to communities using 20 L or 5 gallon refillable plastic bottles. This model brings a constellation of policy actors, international development agencies and supportive business foundations into contact with commune level entrepreneurship and local and national politics. In analysing this growing trend towards packaged water as the basic form of potable water infrastructure, Pacheco-Vega (2019, p. 2) poses the question as to whether ‘an industry that makes money from packaging a scarce resource [is] compatible with …the human right to water?’ I address this question by taking into consideration ethical economic coordinates related to surpluses (Gibson-Graham & Roelvink 2010) and by analysis of how a social enterprise model creates social value, or ‘something out of nothing’ by bringing surface water into viable public use as a source of drinking water. Optimism is tempered, however, as questions emerge relating to the trust of alternatives, the role of marketing, self-quarantine and the environmental impacts of plastic infrastructures. Equally significant is the way this ‘innovation’ impacts on community relationships and obligations that are usually integral to resilience.
Biography
Dr Isaac Lyne is a part-time post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society funded by the SeedBox Environmental Humanities Collaboratory. His two research projects relate to plastic bottled water delivered by social enterprise in rural areas and the viability of a plastic-free enterprise in the tourism sector. Isaac did his PhD at ICS on social enterprise as a means for community development in two Cambodian villages. He was also involved in the making of a forthcoming documentary called “The Bamboo Bridge” close to where his PhD fieldwork was undertaken. He has authored and co-authored articles in Journal for Enterprising Communities, Asia Pacific Viewpoint and Education, Knowledge and Economy and two chapters are forthcoming in a book titled Social Enterprise in Asia: Theory, Models and Practice (Routledge) that will be published in May 2019.
References
Gibson-Graham, JK & Roelvink, G 2010, 'An economic ethics for the Anthropocene', Antipode, vol. 41, pp. 320-46.
Pacheco-Vega, R 2019, '(Re) theorizing the politics of bottled water: water insecurity in the context of weak regulatory regimes', Water, vol. 11, no. 4, p. 658.
