W

e live in a world increasingly integrated into the circuits (and logic) of late capitalism, with its proliferation of hybrids that blur the separation between

Nature and Culture, its claims to a global (and thus universal) scale and its fantastical and spectacular mode of accumulation. Yet, as Anna Tsing warns, attempts to understand this emerging global form often fall back on a dichotomy that opposes the local (contingent, engaged, and specific) and the global (homogenous and universal) (Tsing 2005:58). Therefore, it is crucial to look at how these processes, while defined by claims to a global scale, are always already integrated in and defined by specific histories and local contexts. This essay seeks to explore the some of the locally situated meaning and contexts that that the most successful imported bottled water brand, FIJI Natural Artesian Water, engages with both in Western markets and on the islands of Fiji (Spin the Bottle). The guiding question is how water, a substance so abundant that it falls from the sky, becomes transformed into an expensive commodity consumed by people willing to pay enough to have it shipped across the world and how this transformation effects and is effected by the local Fijian context where it is bottle. Thus, this essay thus seeks to trace the outlines of a transnational biography of FIJI Water along the lines of Martha Kaplans 2007 article, Fijian Water in Fiji and New York: Local Politics and a Global Commodity, in order to explore the contingency of the emerging global capitalist form. In doing so, I will begin in Western markets, at the site of consumption, paying attention to how two divergent Edenic narratives are employed in the construction of the pure commodity of FIJI water. Then I will move to Fiji to demonstrate how FIJI Water, despite its marketing attempts to erase the presence of Fijians, is from its inception

engaged in a history of contestation and collaboration with the people of Fiji, one that is situated in complex local political circumstances and histories. One cannot be satisfied, as anthropologist Kaushik Rajan points out, by simply tracing the circuits traveled by various forms of commodity (2007:18). This is because the at the core of the commodities is a value that is derived not solely from the intrinsic material properties but from their mystical and magical nature, an intangible abstraction (18). Perhaps never is this more the case than with water, a material so ubiquitous and mundane that understanding its material properties alone could not explain the global circuits of trade it is integrated into. Certainly there are many places in the world where potable water is rare and thus has great value, however this is not the case in the markets where FIJI Bottled water is sold. FIJI water is thus nearly as close as we can come to a pure commodity, a commodity whose value derives not from the materiality of the commodity but the intangible branding and marketing. In describing this intangible aspect of the commodity recourse is often made to metaphors of performance and magic. Marx discusses the metaphysical subtitles and theological niceties of the commodity, Rajan uses vision, hype and promise and Tsing uses the metaphor of conjuring (Rajan 2007:18, Tsing 2005:58-59). While this aspect of the commodity can be traced back to the Marx and early theories of the commodity, the conscious manipulation of the intangible part of the commodity occurred more recently with the advent of consumer capitalism and the rise of advertising. In his prescient analysis of consumer capitalism, Society of the Spectacle, Marxist theorist Guy Debord brought this aspect of the commodity to the forefront, declaring its ascendance as the

material world is replaced by a selection of images (2005:7) 1. These images, created by people, conjure an abstract imaginary world, the spectacle, which dominates and mediates social relations by showing us a world that we desire yet can never truly inhabit. In her book, No Logo, Naomi Klein dives into the world where these images are created, focusing on the rise of the concept of the brand in advertising. Abstract brands representing experience and lifestyle replace material products as the item being sold (2009:21). In branding water from Fiji, advertisers and marketers were successful in conjuring a spectacular world to be experienced by consuming the pure commodity of FIJI Natural Artesian Water. To understand power behind the spectacular, intangible nature of FIJI Natural Artesian Water, it is necessary to understand this abstraction as a semiotic process, indexing specific cultural meanings and taking part in the complex history and cultural politics that accompany these meanings. Anthropologist Richard Wilk, in his article Bottled Water: The Pure Commodity in the Age of Branding, argues that in the West water is usually seen as the substance of the natural world (2006:308). This connection comes from a long history of water-related body practices in both Christian and pagan traditions where the power of nature is

Anthropologist William Mozzarella attacks readings of the commodity where there is abstraction without remainder as participating in a capitalist totalizing narrative (2003:42-43). However, he misses the central point of these analyses, which is not that the commodity magically dematerializes leaving nothing behind but that in this form of capitalism the relative importance of the spectacular and intangible aspect of the commoditys value outweighs its material value. Of course the process by which this happens is grounded in material and concrete processes (which is why Debord speaks so frequently of the production of images) and have tangible results as the material world is reshaped and exploited in service of these conjured abstractions. This complex dialectical relationship between materiality and abstraction, which Rajan places at the center of his reading of historical materialism, must not be ignored (2007:15-17). 3

transmitted through the contagious magic of baptism, libation, bathing and drinking (308). Indeed, early brands of water, like Perrier and Vichy, were bottled at spas that claimed carried prestige and claimed magical healing powers and were themselves founded at the sites of ancient springs and wells which people had visited for centuries to be blessed, healed and fortified. (309) By bottling water, the magic and curative properties in the original natural sites could be transferred on to the branded image of global corporations (308). One FIJI Water magazine ad (Appendix, Fig.1), has the image of a FIJI Water bottle alongside the statement 100% Natural. To better understand the full meaning of the concept of nature in the West, it is useful to turn to the work of the historian and philosopher Caroline Merchant. Merchant argues that the concept of nature is inextricably linked to the story of the Garden of Eden, which has shaped Western cultures since earliest times (2003:2). Two specific narratives concerning the Garden of Eden can be identified. The first is what she identifies as the Recovery of Eden narrative; an enlightenment narrative of progress where through technological intervention untamed wilderness can be mastered and Eden can be reclaimed (2). This dominant narrative however, spawns a counter narrative, identified by prominent environmental historians like William Cronin and Donald Worster as a declensionist narrative where the original natural Garden of Eden has been desecrated by human intervention (3,5). Both narratives separate us temporally from some ideal nature, one in the future only to be realized through human involvement and the other in the past a pristine garden, now sullied by human involvement. Both narratives also come with ethics about the use of nature, the first endorsing utilitarian use and bureaucratic control while the second

imbues the remaining natural world with the ability to connect us to a transcendent and universal sacredness and brings with it the imperative to preserve natural areas free from humans (Tsing 2005:97-100). Robert Wilk implicates water in each of these two narratives: Firstly, as an object of a modern scientific and technocratic project that serves to control water through such projects as channeling, damming, chemical treatment, purification and organized distribution and secondly as a pure substance that connects people to the power of nature (2006:308). The marketing of FIJI Water subtly interweaves these two narratives. The back of one FIJI Water bottle bears the slogan Untouched by Man. Until you drink it. Here, FIJI Water is again a pure commodity, but this time at a more literal, semantic level. The water is pure because it is untouched (see title page), from an aquifer in a virgin ecosystem at the edge of a primitive rainforest, thousands of miles away from the nearest industrialized continent (FIJI Water Bottle). The island of Fiji is thus presented as an exotic primitive island preserved from the corrosive effects of man on the industrialized continents. Not only is FIJI Water coming from a different place, but as seen in the magazine ad (Fig.1) it comes from a different time: Until you unscrew the cap, FIJI Water never meets the compromised air of the 21st century. Fiji in many ways is presented as the lost Garden of Eden from the declensionist counter narrative, a natural paradise in the past, which has been lost due to the corrosive presence of man and industry. The Untouched By Man. Until you drink it. slogan suggests another purity, not only is FIJI Water the essence of a pure Edenic nature but it is also pure because it is

undefiled and virginal. The text on the bottle, which follows the slogan, is ripe with sexual innuendo: FIJI Water comes from an aquifer deep within the earth on the islands of Fiji. Bottled at the source, the water is forced by natural artesian pressure through a sealed delivery system free of human contact. FIJI Water is never exposed to the environment. At least, until you unscrew the cap. (FIJI Water bottle, italics mine) The natural purity of the water is equated with a sexual purity, allowing the Western viewer-consumer-drinker the experience of being the first Man to touch it (Kaplan 2007:696-7). Drinking FIJI Water thus becomes an experience that is at once a sexual and spiritual encounter with purity, a communion with a transcendent natural Edenic imaginary and a sexual conquest. The object or image of the water bottle itself contains this message. Immediately recognizable due to its square shape, its purity is established by its clear plastic and blue background. The pink flower on the front of the bottle against a palm background indexes both the pure Edenic nature and places sex and reproduction in the consumers mind. The image of the bottle is the center of FIJI Waters advertising, building a recognizable brand through its presence on posters, billboards and magazine ads. Furthermore, an aggressive product placement campaign that has put the bottle in hands of everybody from the Obamas to Paris and Nicole and Diddy and Kimora associates the bottle with prestige and makes it an object of conspicuous consumption (Spin the Bottle). Yet reflection on the bottle reveals a paradoxical flipside to the marketing of romantic natural purity. The bottle itself is a technology and alludes to another form of purity. While consumers may like the thought of drinking pure natural and romantic

water, they would never actually drink such water unless they were assured of its safety. FIJI Water is careful to emphasize in its advertising how the water is drawn into [a] plant using a completely sealed delivery system, designed to prevent any possibility of human contact. (fig. 1) While the water inside the bottle remains from a pristine nature untouched by industry or the 21st century, the bottling is a technological intervention, a designed delivery system with the precision and certainty of scientific discourse. This allows FIJI Water to give scientific and technological authority to the uncontaminated purity of the water without specifically intervening in the naturalness of the water. FIJI Water thus summons both the romantic imaginary of the untouched Garden of Eden in its water and the utopian possibility of technology to intervene in and control nature in the water bottling process. Bottled water, including FIJI Water, is located at the intersection of these two narratives (Wilk 2006:310). In A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway playfully asserts that a politically necessary modern ontology is a cyborg one, one located in the confusions of the boundaries between machine and organism (2004:8). Rather than pick a side, forcing FIJI Water into one narrative and purifying it of any trace of the other, it is analytical useful to see it as itself a sort of cyborg (though an inanimate one). Such an analysis would place FIJI Water as outside both narratives that would portray it either as a natural resource appropriated for the production of culture in a global circuit or the essence of an natural organic whole (8-9). The telos of both narratives is thus usurped, the first that pushes forward with increasing scientific and technocratic intervention in an attempt to (re)create an Edenic garden and the other which

would seek to erase the destructive presence of man that is portrayed as a destroying a pure Edenic nature (8-9). While such an analytic approach is necessary, it is clearly not the way in which FIJI Water engages with these narratives. Rather, in a distinctly modern way, the two narratives are kept separate and pure even as they are both at play (Latour 1993:3). The domain of the scientific is the bottle and its transportation, the domain of natural is the water contained in the bottle. Never are the two seen to mix, a startling example of which is the elaborate lengths FIJI Water goes to in order to hide the filtration process the water goes through. On its website, FIJI Water claims repeatedly that the water is purified by a natural filtration processes whether it be the winds that carry the water there, the rainforests the water trickles into or the volcanic rock and silt the water passes through above the aquifer. In some advertising, like that quoted above, they even go as far as to suggest that the bottling process merely guides the water, forced by natural artesian pressure into the bottle. It is only in the legally mandated California Water Quality Report, after several paragraphs of repeating the same marketing points, that FIJI Water admit that, The water is filtered to remove any particulate matter, micron-filtered to remove microbiological particles and ultra violet light is applied to insure disinfection. One potent political danger of such purified and separate realms of the narratives comes upon a closer inspection of the way in which the claims to naturalness are constructed. By asserting that FIJI Water is natural because it is Untouched by Man., FIJI Water erases actual Fijians from their purified and untouched Edenic imaginary. This is not particularly surprising given visions of pure and untrampled nature have a long history of erasing the presence of indigenous people, even going as far as projects

which removed indigenous people so that cosmopolitan settlers could experience their wilderness imaginary2. By doing so however, FIJI Water conveniently manages to pass over questions about their implications in the Fijian past and present. Contrary to FIJI Waters claims to Fiji as a remote and exotic island covered in primitive rainforests, the people of Fiji have a long history exporting commodities desired in other parts of the globe (Kaplan 2007:687). Fijis human history of course begins with unimaginable Pacific travel and continues through a complex political and economic relation among islands in Fiji as well as with the neighboring Tonga islands (687). In the 1800s, Fiji, along with other Pacific islands, became involved in the sandalwood trade with China. White settlers experimented with various crops and eventually, in 1874, Fiji became a British sugar colony (687). Producing sugar on plantations that employed imported South Asian laborers, was how Fiji first became involved in the global beverage flows, providing the raw materials to sweeten the tea for the British proletariat (687, Mintz 1986). While no longer a traditional colony, Fiji today is victim to neocolonialism as it is an impoverished nation whose economy relies on the export of raw materials and tourism (687). FIJI Water has its roots in this neocolonial history. In 1969, David Gilmour, with the financial backing of Saudi oil princes, founded Fijis tourism industry with the creation of the Southern Pacific Hotel Corporation3. He later expanded his Fiji tourism businesses to include the elite Wayaka Club Resort, while globally he became incredibly

For a fascinating example of this see Mark Spences excellent book, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. 3 Ironically, this venture failed when, in 1971, the oil crisis created in part by the same Saudi princes temporarily stopped planes flying to Fiji. (The Water Man) 9

successful as the co-founder4 of the Barrick Gold (Water Man, Kaplan 2007:690). While staying on his resort, he came upon the idea of bottling water in Fiji instead of importing expensive European brands (Spin the Bottle, Kaplan 2007:690). Using his close connection to then Prime Minister Ratu Mara and the expertise of geologists from Barrick, he founded FIJI Water in 1996 bypassing the indigenous Vatukaloko to acquire a lease of the land above the aquifer from the Fiji government (690). The Vatukaloko bring us back to the indigenous Fijians erased by FIJI waters marketing. However, the Vatukaloko people are not simply victims of centuries of colonialism but rather people who have a long history of engagement with and resistance to colonialism. This history goes back to the 1860s and 1870s when, led by a charismatic oracle priest named Navosavakadua, the Vatukaloko people asserted themselves as autonomous people with greater claims to the land than the Christian missionaries and British colonists (Kaplan 2007:689). This had disastrous effects as it lead to their temporary deportation during the time period the British colonial government registered traditional land holdings, dispossessing the Vatukaloko of their land (689). The land passed to a sugar refining monopoly and then to the newly established Fiji government, though all the while the Vatukaloko continued to make claims to the land (689,691). Since its inception, the FIJI Water company has had to engage with the Vatukaloko. This history is one of both collaboration and contestation. The Vatukalokos successes and failures have been wrapped up the local specificities of their own history and the larger contemporary political circumstances. From the beginning in 1996 many Vatukaloko worked for the company and the Vatukaloko people set up their own
4

Interestingly, most of Gilmours projects have been cofounded with a lifelong business partner Peter Munk (for more on Munk and Barrick see Tsing 2005:61-73) 10

corporation to provide security, maintenance and grounds keeping, laundry, and meals service to the FIJI Water company (Kaplan 2007:690). However, the FIJI Water company has had to be careful with their relations to the Vatukaloko in the context of the charged climate of ethno-nationalist post-colonial politics following the 2000 coupdtat where ethnically Fijian military ousted the democratically elected multi-ethnic labor party government citing the historic contribution of their land as justification for governance by ethnic Fijians (692). During this coup, villagers, most of whom where part of Navosavakaduas kin group, armed with spear guns, knives and sticks seized the FIJI Water factory (691). A spokesman for the villagers claimed that the land is sacred and central to our continued existence and identity and that no Fijian should live off the breadcrumbs of past colonial injustices. (Spin the Bottle). Their demands included jobs in management as well as labor, a share in Fiji waters profits and a meeting with Fijis (new ethnically Fijian) government to discuss their land claims. FIJI Waters response was creating the Vatukaloko Trust Fund, a local development charity that apparently receives 0.15% of its Fijian operations net revenue (Kaplan 2007:691). While FIJI Water mentions programs in surrounding villages in the corporate social responsibility section of its website, it conveniently elides any mention of the Vatukaloko people or their role in pushing for these programs. It is not just the Vatukaloko people who are erased from Fiji by FIJI Waters marketing but the entire population of the islands. Yet, as with the case of the erased Vatukaloko, the reality of the situation appears very different from what FIJI Water advertises. There is, once again, a complex history of collaboration and contestation

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wrapped up in a historical and political climate that is local and specific to Fiji. While there is much intrigue surrounding various interactions between the government of Fiji and FIJI Water, I will focus solely on the issue of taxes. To encourage the success of the business, FIJI Water was granted a twelve-year tax-exempt status when it was founded in 1996 (Spin the Bottle). While the explicit reason for this was the riskiness of starting such a company, the close relationship between David Gilmour and Prime Minister Ratu Mara likely played a key role (Spin the Bottle, Kaplan 2007:690). When in 2006, there was yet another military coup by ethnic Fijians, the government attempted to raise taxes on the FIJI Water company (Spin the Bottle). The company called these taxes draconian and proceeded to temporarily shut down their plant in protest, leading the government to cease its attempts at taxation (Spin the Bottle). However, in 2010, the Fijian government again raised the taxes for FIJI Water to 15 cents per liter extracted. Again, FIJI Water closed its plant, dismissing the four hundred workers, and many media outlets published stories about the end of FIJI Water in Fiji (FIJI Water Announces). The Fijian government called FIJI Waters bluff and, recognizing the value of the FIJI Water brand, called for international tenders from credible and reputable private sector companies to extract this valuable resource." (ibid) FIJI Water, recognizing the threat to their carefully constructed brand, was forced to immediately reopen their factory two days later (Re Opens). The contested tax-exempt status of FIJI Water and the surrounding events highlights two important aspects of the contingency of FIJI Waters global status. First of all, as with the case of the Vatukaloko, FIJI Water is revealed not as a hegemonic global

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corporation but one that functions fundamentally through frictioned engagement with local actors. Secondly, the global status and recognition of the spectacular pure commodity of FIJI Water is not something entirely under the control of the FIJI Water corporation. Rather it is a construction that can be contested and laid claim to by other actors like when the Fijian government threaten to sell Fijian water to other reputable private sector companies. However, these overlapping claims to the pure commodity of Fiji Water do not however have to be in conflict. David Gilmour once quipped that the FIJI Water bottles were little ambassadors for the small nation (Spin the Bottle). The Fijian state seems to agree. Acknowledging the global recognition the bottled water gives them, the government of Fiji has created a series of FIJI Water stamps and an image of a FIJI Water bottle is featured on their embassys website (Fig. 3,4). The Fijian ambassador even stated, Learning from the lessons of products, we must brand ourselves. (Spin the Bottle) The power of the image of FIJI Water is however double-edged, capable of being wielded against the Fijian government as well as for it. The FIJI Water bottle has been the target of dtournment (see fig.5), a technique pioneered by Guy Debord where a preexisting image is altered to give it new meaning (Debord 2005:112-114). This image demonstrates how FIJI Water can serve as a resource for activists and governments alike in their attempts to gain global recognition. This final role of FIJI Water on a global stage, a constructed pure commodity that is utilized by governments, activists and a corporation, demonstrates the interconnection that occurs as commodities such as water are branded and integrated into

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global circuits of trade. Yet these global circuits are not homogenizing and hegemonic entities. By tracing a transnational biography of FIJI Water that looked both at the role of situated Western narratives about nature in the conjuring of the pure commodity of FIJI water and the frictioned engagement, involvement that entailed both collaboration and contestation, of the FIJI Water company with the Vatukaloko people and the nation of Fiji, I seek to convey the contingency of these global circuits. In doing so, this emerging global capitalist form is revealed not to be an abstract and guiding force but one that is always situated in specific contexts. By showing that engagement across a variety of contexts is what constitutes these global circuits, new possibilities of alter-globalization are opened up. The spectacular nature of the FIJI Water corporation that conjures images and imaginaries allowing it to mobilize vast resources to bottle, ship and sell water across the globe is revealed to be not outside of our domain but within it. Demystifying the power that produces such imaginaries opens up new possibilities of resistance that target both the abstract spectacular nature of the commodity and the material processes underlying its creation.

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Works Cited Bottled Water Report. Rep. FIJI Water Company. Web. 4 May 2012. <http://www.fijiwater.com/media/newsroom/FW_waterquality.pdf>. "Bye, Bye, Fiji: Water Bottler Moving Out?" CBS News. CBS, 29 Nov. 2010. Web. 05 May 2012. <http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500395_162-7100232.html>. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Ken Knabb. London: Rebel, 2005. Print. "FIJI Water." FIJI Water. Web. 4 May 2012. <http://www.fijiwater.com/water/>. Haraway, Donna Jeanne. The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. Kaplan, Martha. "FIJIAN WATER IN FIJI AND NEW YORK: Local Politics and a Global Commodity." Cultural Anthropology 22.4 (2007): 685-706. Print. Klein, Naomi. No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs. New York: Picador, 2009. Print. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993. Print. Lenzer, Anne. "Fiji Water Announces Shutdown. World Freaks?" Mother Jones. Web. 05 May 2012. <http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2010/11/fiji-waterannounces-shutdown-world-freaks>. Lenzer, Anne. "Fiji Water Closes, Fires Workforce... Re-Opens?" Mother Jones. Web. 06 May 2012. <http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2010/11/fiji-water-closesfires-workforce-re-opens>. Lenzer, Anne. "Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle." Mother Jones. Web. 4 May 2012. <http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/fiji-spin-bottle>. Mazzarella, William. Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Print. Merchant, Carolyn. Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print. Mintz, Sidney Wilfred. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin, 1986. Print. Sunder, Rajan Kaushik. Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life. Durham, NC Duke Univ., 2007. Print. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005. Print. "The Water Man Speaks." Fiji Times. Web. 04 May 2012. <http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=97166>. "What Makes This FIJI Water Different From All Other FIJI Waters?" FIJI WATER. Web. 04 May 2012. <http://www.fijiwater.com/company/faq/about-fiji-water/>. Wilk, R. "Bottled Water: The Pure Commodity in the Age of Branding." Journal of Consumer Culture 6.3 (2006): 303-25. Print. Also included were two different FIJI Water bottles which I was unsure how to cite.

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Appendix 1: Supporting Images

Fig. 1. Fiji Water Magazine Ad (Source: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Magazine-AdFiji-Water/927052)

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Fig. 2 Image from Fiji Water Website. Accessed 5/2/12. Source: http://www.fijiwater.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/website-contest-image.jpg )

Fig. 3. FIJI Water featured on the Fijian Embassys website Accessed 5/5/23. Source: http://superculturereport.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/das-brand/

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Fig.4 Fijian FIJI Water stamps. Accessed 5/5/12. Source: http://superculturereport.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/das-brand/

Fig.5. A dtournment of a Fiji water bottle. Accessed 5/3/12 Source: http://irregulartimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/militaryjunta.jpg

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