The Anti-Coca-Cola Movement in Plachimada, Kerala

Abstract

This study focuses on the post-1990s Anti-Coca-Cola movement that emerged in the village of Plachimada, which is located in the Perumatty panchayat in the state of Kerala, India. Taking the larger neoliberal context into account, this article examines how the advent of global capital destructed the “local,” and the ways in which it has been reconfigured, giving rise to the Anti-Coca-Cola movement. Various conceptions of the “local” have been constructed within the movement and they have been examined using discourse analysis. This article argues that the “local” is not a pre-given concept; rather, it can be used in an antagonistic as well as collaborative manner with the “global.”