Gay Hawkins – författare

How and why branded bottles of water have insinuated themselves into our daily lives, and what the implications are for safe urban water supplies.

How did branded bottles of water insinuate themselves into our daily lives? Why did water become an economic good—no longer a common resource but a commercial product, in industry parlance a “fast moving consumer good,” or FMCG? Plastic Water examines the processes behind this transformation. It goes beyond the usual political and environmental critiques of bottled water to investigate its multiplicity, examining a bottle of water''s simultaneous existence as, among other things, a product, personal health resource, object of boycotts, and part of accumulating waste matter. Throughout, the book focuses on the ontological dimensions of drinking bottled water—the ways in which this habit enacts new relations and meanings that may interfere with other drinking water practices.

The book considers the assemblage and emergence of a mass market for water, from the invention of the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle in 1973 to the development of “hydration science” that accompanied the rise of jogging in the United States. It looks at what bottles do in the world, tracing drinking and disposal practices in three Asian cities with unreliable access to safe water: Bangkok, Chennai, and Hanoi. And it considers the possibility of ethical drinking, examining campaigns to “say no” to the bottle and promote the consumption of tap water in Canada, the United States, and Australia.

The increasing significance of managing or changing habits is evident across a range of pressing contemporary issues: climate change, waste management, travel practices, and crowd control. Assembling and Governing Habits engages with the diverse ways in which habits are governed through the knowledge practices and technologies that have been brought to bear on them.

The volume addresses three main concerns. The first focuses on how the habit discourses proposed by a range of disciplines have informed the ways in which different forms of expertise have shaped the ways in which habits have been managed or changed to bring about specific social objectives. The second concerns the ways in which habits are acted on as aspects of infrastructures which constitute the interfaces through which technical systems, human conducts and environments are acted on simultaneously. The third concerns the specific ways in which habit discourses and habit infrastructures are brought together in the regulation of ‘city habits’: that is, habits which have specific qualities arising out of the specific conditions – the rhythms and densities – of urban life and ones which, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been profoundly disrupted.

Written in a clear and direct style, the book will appeal to students and scholars with an interest in cultural studies, sociology, cultural geography, history of the sciences, and posthuman studies.

The increasing significance of managing or changing habits is evident across a range of pressing contemporary issues: climate change, waste management, travel practices, and crowd control. Assembling and Governing Habits engages with the diverse ways in which habits are governed through the knowledge practices and technologies that have been brought to bear on them.

The volume addresses three main concerns. The first focuses on how the habit discourses proposed by a range of disciplines have informed the ways in which different forms of expertise have shaped the ways in which habits have been managed or changed to bring about specific social objectives. The second concerns the ways in which habits are acted on as aspects of infrastructures which constitute the interfaces through which technical systems, human conducts and environments are acted on simultaneously. The third concerns the specific ways in which habit discourses and habit infrastructures are brought together in the regulation of ‘city habits’: that is, habits which have specific qualities arising out of the specific conditions – the rhythms and densities – of urban life and ones which, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been profoundly disrupted.

Written in a clear and direct style, the book will appeal to students and scholars with an interest in cultural studies, sociology, cultural geography, history of the sciences, and posthuman studies.

While the dynamics of market attachments have been extensively analyzed, the implied other to this – market detachments – have not. This book addresses this imbalance and investigates economies of detachment or the processes whereby various elements or relations in markets are removed or severed.

Market organizations and dynamics involve myriad processes of attachment – good and bad. Recent work within the new economic sociology has documented how the arts of attachment are implicated in the technical, organizational and social functions of markets. This work highlights the complexities of market attachments as both material links and subjective or affective ties. It also foregrounds attachment as a variable relation, often dependent on its implied other: detachment. However, while the first term of this relation is relatively well known, the second is seriously under-researched and deserves far more attention. Key questions explored are: what is detachment; how does it work and what are the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this concept? How do practices and strategies of detachment configure and ‘re-agence’ markets? How do markets provoke attitudes and dispositions of detachment? How do detachment strategies become qualified as political and with what consequences?

The authors in this unique collection explore these questions using an array of empirical cases ranging from fast fashion to food supply chains, energy savings schemes to unpackaged food. Working across economic sociology, science and technology studies (STS), cultural studies, politics and consumer research they highlight the complexities, significance and impacts of ‘letting go’ in market configurations.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Consumption, Markets & Culture.

While the dynamics of market attachments have been extensively analyzed, the implied other to this – market detachments – have not. This book addresses this imbalance and investigates economies of detachment or the processes whereby various elements or relations in markets are removed or severed.

Market organizations and dynamics involve myriad processes of attachment – good and bad. Recent work within the new economic sociology has documented how the arts of attachment are implicated in the technical, organizational and social functions of markets. This work highlights the complexities of market attachments as both material links and subjective or affective ties. It also foregrounds attachment as a variable relation, often dependent on its implied other: detachment. However, while the first term of this relation is relatively well known, the second is seriously under-researched and deserves far more attention. Key questions explored are: what is detachment; how does it work and what are the theoretical underpinnings and implications of this concept? How do practices and strategies of detachment configure and ‘re-agence’ markets? How do markets provoke attitudes and dispositions of detachment? How do detachment strategies become qualified as political and with what consequences?

The authors in this unique collection explore these questions using an array of empirical cases ranging from fast fashion to food supply chains, energy savings schemes to unpackaged food. Working across economic sociology, science and technology studies (STS), cultural studies, politics and consumer research they highlight the complexities, significance and impacts of ‘letting go’ in market configurations.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Consumption, Markets & Culture.

From food punnets to credit cards, plastic facilitates every part of our daily lives. It has become central to processes of contemporary socio-material living. Universalised and abstracted, it is often treated as the passive object of political deliberations, or a problematic material demanding human management. But in what ways might a ''politics of plastics'' deal with both its specific manifestation in particular artefacts and events, and its complex dispersed heterogeneity?

Accumulation explores the vitality and complexity of plastic. This interdisciplinary collection focuses on how the presence and recalcitrance of plastic reveals the relational exchanges across human and synthetic materialities. It captures multiplicity by engaging with the processual materialities or plasticity of plastic. Through a series of themed essays on plastic materialities, plastic economies, plastic bodies and new articulations of plastic, the editors and chapter authors examine specific aspects of plastic in action. How are multiple plastic realities enacted? What are their effects?

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, human and cultural geography, environmental studies, consumption studies, science and technology studies, design, and political theory.

From food punnets to credit cards, plastic facilitates every part of our daily lives. It has become central to processes of contemporary socio-material living. Universalised and abstracted, it is often treated as the passive object of political deliberations, or a problematic material demanding human management. But in what ways might a ''politics of plastics'' deal with both its specific manifestation in particular artefacts and events, and its complex dispersed heterogeneity?

Accumulation explores the vitality and complexity of plastic. This interdisciplinary collection focuses on how the presence and recalcitrance of plastic reveals the relational exchanges across human and synthetic materialities. It captures multiplicity by engaging with the processual materialities or plasticity of plastic. Through a series of themed essays on plastic materialities, plastic economies, plastic bodies and new articulations of plastic, the editors and chapter authors examine specific aspects of plastic in action. How are multiple plastic realities enacted? What are their effects?

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, human and cultural geography, environmental studies, consumption studies, science and technology studies, design, and political theory.