1. ‘Plastic addicts’: troubling consumer tropes in Thailand’s neoliberal waste environment.
- Author
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Meyer, Olivia
- Abstract
Amidst mounting alarm over plastic waste’s impact on ecosystems and health, Thailand has gained global attention as one of the top six contributors to marine plastic debris. Narratives that Thai people are ‘addicted to plastic’ circulate widely in local and international media. This article unpacks this and related tropes by investigating their historical development and everyday usage. Based on ethnographic research among regulators, activists, plastic industry members, and recyclers in Bangkok, and a media analysis, I demonstrate how co-constructed civic epistemologies frame plastic waste solutions in Thailand. As public knowledge-ways that inform decision-making, these epistemologies drive plastic pollution by perpetuating neoliberal ideologies of personal responsibility and deregulation. In doing so, they reframe Thailand’s plastic waste challenges as a question of individual morality that requires consumer-based solutions rather than a question of structural production that requires a regulatory response. While scholars have addressed plastic pollution from technical, governance, and new materialist perspectives, this article offers a socio-cultural geography approach that accounts for the cultural narratives that mediate plastic pollution debates and drive plastic production and policy in Thailand and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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