Why were we all drinking bottled water? Was it just nefarious marketing, or was it something deeper?
Andrew Szasz thinks it's because it feels more reassuring to buy a solution to an environmental problem. Drinking bottled water--or eating organic food--is a way to maintain individual purity in the face of a overwhelmingly toxic environment. As Szasz writes, it's not possible to hold your breath every time you go outside, but it is possible to only eat organic foods, or drink bottled water. And that's exactly what some try to do. According to Szasz, "inverted quarantine" is the futile act of trying to isolate yourself within a hostile world.
Szasz claims the scale of the problems that we face are too big to solve by aggregating individual action. We need regulation, so that there are fewer toxic compounds in the air, testing, so we know what the ones in the air are doing to us, and standards, so that the organic produce you're buying actually is better for the environment than conventional.
What we get instead of that, Szasz claims, is an organic "movement" that puts products in front of us, like bottled water, that make us feel better in the short term, but actually do further harm in the long term. But if we "define situations as real, they are real in their consequences," says W. I. Thomas, an early sociologist. Therefore, when we buy bottled water, we think of it as a real solution to the problem of pollution.
Read the entire article (it's fairly short and well worth it) at The Chronicle Review.
It's not that we should all give up on organic produce, but rather that we should think carefully about the idea that we can buy our way out of this problem -- and reconsider our roles are as citizens, not just consumers.
Image by adamci via sxc.hu.
That's a thought provoking article. As a consumer of organic food, filtered water, and other "green" products, I have to say that I've never thought that buying these things was a replacement for real environmental reform. I think part of why I do these things is that it is a small piece of the picture that I actually do have control over, while getting the Bush administration to change it's ways and institute real ecological reform seems, quite honestly, hopeless.
Also, I think eating organic helps the environment in general, not just my health. Keeping pesticides out of the system helps everyone, not just myself.
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I completely agree with SFGail. I don't believe most people who buy organic and "green" products think it's a substitute for real change or not putting toxins in our environment in the first place. It's just one small way to control our own personal impact to ourselves and others.
It's puzzling to me that so many people treat organic as a new trend. Szasz wrote, "Not that long ago, 'natural' food was a marginal, niche consumer item, found only in small, specialized stores." Well, ok, if you only look back 15 years or so. But if think about it, before World War II, most people ate "organic" most of the time. But back then, they didn't think of it as organic - it was just the normal, natural way food and most products were produced. So maybe the real "trend" is a toxic, pesticide sprayed, chemical filled society. And maybe that's a trend people are over. It's a trend I'd be happy to see go out of fashion.
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