Jacob Dearing
October 11th, 2015
Critical Abstract #5
Article author: Richard Wilk
Article title: Bottled Water: The Pure Commodity in the Age of Branding
In the examination of culture relations to natural resources, historically water is viewed in greater cultural depth than as just a resource. Richard Wilk examines bottled water and how the cultural view of water has allowed for its transition as a natural right in to a global commodity. The issue described behind the marketing of bottled water is ultimately that it is ethically unsound. Those that only have access to poor quality water sources have little to no options while consumers of bottled water have basically, if not exactly, the same water flowing from their tap. This is a major problem as it makes control of water supplies for those who truly need it more strenuous as consumers of bottled water increase the demand for it unnecessarily.
Moreover, the reason that bottled water sells are so productive, according to Wilk, stems from a large range of cultural and social influences created throughout human history. Water symbolizes many important qualities in cultures most of which are developed around the ideas of purity and safety. Wilks further develops his argument by showing the ways that the bottling of water effectively sells because of the human fear of consuming things that are not pure or things that we don’t inherently trust. He links the ideas of health and the ideas of purity as bottling companies sell symbols of identity, wealth and class, quality, age and gender, exoticism, and all the way down to the color of the label. From Wilk’s article we should conclude that as consumers it is ultimately our moral responsibility to judge the true value of the products we consume.