1. Items related directly to the project;
Allen, Frederick. Secret Formula: How Brilliant Marketing and Relentless Salesmanship
Made Coca-Cola the Best-Known Product in the World. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publisher, 1994. Allen gives a historical overview of Coca-Cola marketing campaigns from their inception in 1886 until the early 1990s. His book includes detailed accounts of Coca-Cola’s political maneuvering within the U.S. and abroad, providing insight into how Coca-Cola has managed potential crises.
Frederick Allen is an author and a journalist. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His books include Secret Formula (1994) and Atlanta Rising: the Invention of an International City, 1946-1996 (1996).
“Cementos Bio-Bio, CTI, Los Productores de Salmon y Coca-Cola Chile Obtuvieron
Premios Sofofa 1999.” Comunicado de Prensa. 11 Noviembre 1999.
The Coca-Cola Company. June 2008.
This is the Coca-Cola Company website intended for a U.S. audience. It contains financial statements, company reports, press releases, advertisements, statements from the CEO, and company descriptions of CSR campaigns. The annual stockholder’s meeting is also available from their website for about a month after the meeting. The material on the U.S. based website will be compared with the websites intended for Chilean and Colombian audiences to analyze differences in material on CSR campaigns.
Coca-Cola de Chile. August 2008.
The Coca-Cola Company. The Coca-Cola Management System. 28 March 2008. This
document outlines Coca-Cola’s management strategy and includes sections on “Incident Management and Crisis Resolution (IMCR)” and “Consumer Response and Customer Satisfaction.” It also describes Coca-Cola as “a responsible citizen of the world.” Herrera, in the article below, describes the Coca-Cola system as “the relationship of the Coca-Cola Company, bottlers, plants and distribution territories” (71). It will be treated as a primary source to gain insight into Coca-Cola’s operational strategy from a corporate perspective.
The Coca-Cola Company. The Coca-Cola Quality System. June 2008.
< http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/quality_brochures.html> Another version of the Coca-Cola Management System is available online via the Coca-Cola website. This document will be compared with the above document “The Coca-Cola Management System” to see if there are significant differences. The Coca-Cola website also includes corporate statements on quality, the environment, safety, and supplier expectations. One section entitled “Keeping Our Promise: Environment” outlines how Coca-Cola manages their environmental impact. Further research will need to be done to see how Coca-Cola is implementing their outlined proposal, especially in areas where there are environmental concerns (e.g. El Salvador, India).
The Coca-Cola Company. United States Securities and Exchange Commission Form
10-K. 28 February 2008. < http://ir.thecoca-colacompany.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=94566&p=IROL-sec&control_selectgroup=Annual%20Filings> Coca-Cola’s 10-K form outlines their basic operations within the U.S. and internationally. The statement includes legal descriptions of bottler’s and distribution agreements, ownership interests (e.g. Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. and Coca-Cola FEMSA), corporate risk factors, and legal proceedings.
Coca-Cola Embonor S.A. August 2008.
Coca-Cola Television Advertisements. “Fifty Years of Coca-Cola Television
Advertisements: Highlights from the Motion Picture Archives at the Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress. 29 November 2000.
Foster, Robert. Coca-Globalization: Following Soft Drinks from New York to New
Guinea. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., 2008. Foster explores the social life of Coca-Cola in a number of settings, focusing primarily on Papua New Guinea. Beverages are used as an entry point to discuss the various types of social and cultural exchanges occurring within an increasingly interconnected world. The book is divided into two parts; ‘Soft Drinks and the Economy of Qualities’ and ‘Globalization, Citizenship and the Politics of Consumption.’ Of particular importance is Foster’s attention to how individuals ascribe different social and cultural meanings to commodities like Coca-Cola. Foster is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Rochester.
Gill, Lesley. “Labor and Human Rights: ‘The Real Thing’ in Colombia.” Report to the
Human Rights Committee of the American Anthropological Association, November 2004.
Herrera, Jorge. “Coca-Cola Chile Foundation.” Harvard Business Publishing, Social
Enterprise Knowledge Network (December 2005): 1-18. Herrera gives a historical account of how the Coca-Cola Chile Foundation (CCCF) was established in 1992 and some general background on Coca-Cola’s operation in Chile. He provides a list of CCCF board members, a map of geographical territories, and financial donations. The article gives an overview of the mission and scope of the CCCF, the main example of Coca-Cola’s CSR campaign in Chile. Herrera is a professor at La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and worked for Coca-Cola as Gerente de Planificación y Desarrollo de Coca-Cola Embonor S.A.(Director of Planning and Development).
Hutt, Peter Barton. “The Image and Politics of Coca-Cola: From Early Years to Present.”
Leda at Harvard Law School.16 April 2001.
Kay, Julie. “11th Circuit Asked to Clarify Corporate Liability.” Daily Business Review.
30 October 2006.
“Laboratorio Coca-Cola TAVEC Fundación Coca-Cola Chile.” Amcham Chile. 17
Augusto 2008.
Pendergrast, Mark. For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company that Makes It. New York, NY: Basic
Books, 2000. Pendergrast provides an overview of Coca-Cola’s operations that is more thorough than Allen’s Secret Formula. Pendergrast, primarily an investigative journalist, goes beyond the manifest meaning of the Coca-Cola aesthetic to ask more complex questions about Coke’s business practices from a journalistic and historical perspective. Pendergrast includes accounts of how Coca-Cola has been able to navigate tumultuous political waters and describes some of Coca-Cola’s first markets in Latin America. His book provides a solid and thorough history of the Coca-Cola Company.
Protection and Money: U.S. Companies, Their Employees, and Violence in Colombia.
Hearing before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight and the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere and House Committee on Education and Labor Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions and the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, 110th Cong., 1st Sess. (June 28, 2007). The U.S. Congress organized a hearing on the presence of U.S. multinationals in Colombia after Chiquita admitted to paying paramilitaries about $1.7 million over the course of seven years (between 1997-2004). The hearing includes testimony from members of the Colombian military, including Edwin Guzman. Guzman protected Drummond property and testified that “the AUC and the Colombian military shared the opinion that unions in general, and the union at Drummond in particular, represented a subversive organization and consequently a legitimate military target.” The hearing includes first hand accounts of the situation in Colombia, highlighting how U.S. multinationals, the Colombian military and paramilitary forces (AUC) work hand in hand to suppress union power.
Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos (SINALTRAINAL).
Agosto 2008.
United States. House of Representatives. Committee on International Relations. The
Global Water Crisis: Evaluating U.S. Strategies to Enhance Access to Safe Water and Sanitation. 29 June 2005. 109th Cong., 1st sess.
2. Items related to the background areas around the project
Bauer, Carl J. Against the Current: Privatization, Water Markets, and the State in Chile.
Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Bauer focuses his study on how radical free-market economics and privatization has impacted water management. His analytical framework incorporates political, economic, legal, and environmental perspectives which he argues, “come together in property rights” (7). Bauer’s findings are centered around extensive interviews conducted over the course of two and a half years. Coca-Cola relies heavily on water for the production of its beverages. Building off of Bauer’s study, I would like to explore how water privatization has helped create a corporate friendly environment for the Coca-Cola Company.
Chomsky, Aviva. Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Makings of a
Global Working Class. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Chomsky provides an alternative interpretation of the current political and economic trends under globalization. By examining the connections between labor histories in New England and Colombia she argues that the power of the nation-state is not diminishing in the new era of globalization, but instead nations are being pulled between two forces; the demands of capital and pressure from popular movements. The book is divided into two sections on New England and Colombia. Connections between the two locations are drawn around themes of migration, labor-management collaboration, and the flexibility of capital. Chomsky highlights the role of U.S. multinational corporations in shaping Colombia’s labor history. She also briefly discusses the Stop Killer Coke campaign, as one example of contentious labor movements against U.S. corporations.
Gwynne, Robert N. and Cristóbal Kay, ed. Latin America Transformed: Globalization
and Modernity. New York; Oxford University Press, 2001. Gwynne and Kay present the current theoretical debates surrounding globalization from a political economy perspective. Theories on globalization are elaborated throughout the book by various authors. Divided into seven parts, each essay discusses a different aspect of the transformations occurring within Latin American society including changes in resource management, migration patterns, labor, and gender relations. Each author traces the trajectory of significant shifts in political, economic and social relations in Latin America.
May, Christopher. Global Corporate Power. Boulder, CO: Lynne Riener Publishers,
2006. This book is a collection of essays on multinational corporations within the contemporary context, where MNCs wield increasing economic, political and social might. The third section of the book is focused on the theme of corporate social responsibility and addresses the evolution of corporate citizenship, as well as the growth and significance of corporate social responsibility campaigns. Pegg challenges the effectiveness of CSR campaigns stating, “As long as the overall ordering principle remains self-interested profit maximization within a capitalist economic system, we should not expect firm-level variations in CSR strategies to produce significant overall differences in outcomes” (268). Pegg succinctly argues that the nature of capitalism places limitations on the scope of CSR campaigns.
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “How Politics Trumped Truth in the Neo-Liberal
Revision of Chile’s Development.” Discussion paper, September 2006.
Roberts, John. “Corporate Governance and the Ethics of Narcissus.” Business Ethics
Quarterly. 11.1 (January 2001): 109-127. Roberts deconstructs current notions of business ethics drawing the distinction between being ‘seen to be ethical’ and ‘being responsible for.’ He argues that the act of being seen as ethical and the obsession with projecting an ethical self image is markedly different than the sense of responsibility that comes with the recognition of others. Self-obsessed and narcissistic behavior is encouraged within typical business environments, including the “progressive instrumentalization of relationships” where others are viewed as vehicles to either leverage or limit the ultimate realization of the self. His insights into the nature of ethical trends within business circles will be incorporated into discussions of the limitations of CSR campaigns and the nature of corporate culture.
Silva, Eduardo. The State and Capital in Chile: Business Elites, Technocrats, and Market
Economics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Silva argues that economic elites in Chile played a larger role in constructing Chile’s economic policies and influencing the shift from import substitution industrialization to free market economics than previously thought. He states, “this study shows how state structure and international factors influenced intracapitalist and landowner conflict and, hence, coalition formation over different policy periods” (3). An overview of what historical forces and class alliances have laid the economic groundwork for the contemporary moment will aid understanding of Coca-Cola’s current success in Chile. I also anticipate that similar class alliances have catapulted the Coca-Cola Company into a highly respected position amongst Chilean consumers.
Winn, Peter, ed. Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the
Pinochet Era, 1973-2002. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. In this edited collection of essays, the authors trace the impacts of the dictatorship and neoliberal economic policies on women, labor, and the environment from 1973-2002. Stillerman examines the plight of organized labor by focusing on the workers at Madeco, a copper manufacturer. Under Pinochet, the owners and managers attempted to dismantle the union through harsh repression, various management schemes, and more subtle disciplinary tactics. Although unionism was shaken during those years, the neoliberal reforms gave way to new forms of class conscious identity focused partially on anti-consumerism. Stillerman explains, “union members have developed a complicated set of ideas and behaviors in response to work intensification and new forms of debt-financed consumption” (181). Stillerman explains how unions are reacting to the increase presence of international consumer goods (primarily from the U.S.), debt financing, and ‘cultural imperialism.’
3. Items about theory and method necessary for research on the project
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1991. Anderson counters claims that the nation state is dead by arguing that “nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time” (3). He also offers a complex conceptualization of the nation as an imagined community and asserts that “communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6). Appadurai (1996) relates the definition of imagined communities to the power of consumer culture and discussions of consumption. He states “thus in creating experiences of losses that never took place, these advertisements create what might be called ‘imagined nostalgia,’ nostalgia for things that never were” (77). Advertising campaigns have tapped into the powerful instruments of nationalism and consumer imagination, as a way to cultivate product loyalty.
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.
Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Appadurai dives into modernization as a cultural experience, starting with the wholly personal aspects of modernization and then progressing towards the theoretical, tying the intimate and the abstract eloquently together throughout the book. He uses the themes of media and migration to explore their “joint effect on the work of the imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity” (3). His discussion of consumption in Chapter 4 is particularly relevant for a discussion on Coca-Cola’s social and cultural impact. He argues that “the aesthetic of ephemerality becomes the civilizing counterpart to flexible accumulation” expanding previous interpretations by Weber and Campbell of pleasure and satisfaction as the “organizing principle of modern consumption” (85). Appardurai explains how ephemerality is able to capture the imagination of consumers.
Crehan, Kate. Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology. Berkley, CA: University of California
Press, 2002. Crehan walks the reader through Gramsci’s work, grounding it in an anthropological perspective and clarifying some of the more complex Gramscian concepts. In Chapter 6 Crehan focuses on the production of culture, she states “the production and reproduction of culture is at the heart of what intellectuals do… it is they who produce the broad cultural conceptions of the world that underpin particular power regimes” (156). I hope to explore the role of the multinational corporation in the creation of culture. Gramscian theory provides an ample foundation from which to approach the increasingly complex dialectical relationship between civil society and corporate marketing campaigns.
Cultural Anthropology. “The Coke Complex.” Journal of the Society for Cultural
Anthropology, 22.4 (November 2007). In response to Leslie Gill’s report on human rights violations in Colombia and the AAA’s call for the boycott of Coca-Cola products, the editors of Cultural Anthropology decided to issue a call for papers on the “Coke Complex.” They describe the “Coke Complex” as “the multiplicity of beliefs, practices, organizational forms, and politicoeconomic dynamics that enable and index The Coca-Cola Company” (616). One article of particular interest is entitled “The Work of the New Economy: Consumers, Brands, and Value Creation” in which Foster focuses on the "merger between science studies and economic sociology" to understand the process of brand creation. He argues that corporate externalities include the emergence of 'publics' that have expanded in spatial scale and include a growing diversity of economic actors. He hones in on the sites of current and potential contestation which, in the current economic moment, include social relations built around commodities. Since the very nature of brands places a lot of potential value in public space there is a high potential for effective and powerful contestation.
Ehrenberg, John. Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea. New York, NY: New
York University Press, 1999. Ehrenberg traces the theoretical history of civil society through three main traditions. He describes the first tradition as the conceptualization of civil society as “a politically organized commonwealth” (xi). The concept shifts to encompass “private property, individual interest, political democracy, the rule of law, and an economic order devoted to prosperity” (xiii). The third shift envisioned civil society as a regulatory force or as “a community whose solidarity reconciled the subjectivity of individual interests with the objectivity of the common good” (xiv). By outlining the evolution of theories on civil society, Ehrenberg is able to articulate their limitations and ultimately call for a reconceptualization of the term in light of current social realities. He emphasizes the need to consider micro and macro forces in any discussion of civil society stating “powerful states and invasive markets constitute and penetrate a civil society whose ability to mediate depends as much on the environment in which it sits as on its own intrinsic strength” (232).
Evans, Jessica and Stuart Hall. Visual Culture: The Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Publications Inc., 2005. Visual Culture is a collection of essays on culture and visuality divided into three parts. Evans and Hall turn the reader’s attention to five components of the image; “visuality, apparatus, institutions, bodies and figurality” (4). By understanding the complex relationship between these components, one can begin to understand the impact of an image. Parts I and III are particularly relevant for this MA project because they focus on ‘cultures of the visual’ and ‘looking and subjectivity.’ These essays provide a basis from which to engage the latent content in advertisements.
Gereffi, Gary and Miguel Korzeniewicz. Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. Gereffi and Korzeniewicz discuss the concept of global commodity chains (GCC) which they define as “sets of interorganizational networks clustered around one commodity or product, linking households, enterprises, and states to one another within the world economy” (2). They suggest that the concept of GCC will help to theoretically connect ‘macro-historical concerns’ with ‘micro-organizational and state-centered’ issues. The GCC model makes it easier to visualize the various components of a multinational corporate structure dispersed around the world. Gereffi and Korzeniewicz also explicate some of the forces driving corporate structuring and restructuring.
Hale, Charles R. Más Que Un Indio: Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal
Multiculturalism in Guatemala. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press, 2006. Hale argues that multiculturalism is not antithetical to the development or growth of neoliberal ideals. His study focuses on communities in Chimaltenango, Guatemala and more specifically, the Maya rights movement. According to Hale, “proponents of neoliberal governance reshape the terrain of political struggle to their advantage, not by denying indigenous rights, but by the selective recognition of them” (35). Hale’s notion of ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’ is useful for understanding the cultural transformations taking place under neoliberalism.
Jhally, Sut. The Spectacle of Accumulation: Essays in Media, Culture & Politics. New
York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers, 2006. This book contains a collection of essays and interviews on the general themes of media, culture, and advertising. Jhally’s main argument is that current forms of media, which are mostly owned and operated by private interests, promote a culture that is antithetical to democracy. Jhally approaches image analysis from a critical perspective uncovering themes that reflect the interest of a wealthy minority, instead of reflecting the sentiments of a broader majority. His insights on advertising and image of analysis will inform my examination of Coca-Cola ads.
Klein, Naomi. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York: Picador, 2000.
Klein outlines a major shift in contemporary marketing from a product focused approach to an image focused appraoch (branding). In this context, the brand is the main symbol of capitalism in the global era. Klein also details the brand’s encroachment into public and private spaces, exploring the social and cultural affects, as well as reactions to increased corporate presense in daily life. By exploring the specific techniques of certain brands (e.g. Nike, Pepsi, Disney), Klein draws attention to the co-optation of various cultural niches as a way to expand markets. She discusses the incorporation of feminist, punk, alternative and multicultural aesthetics as a way to appeal to a wider audience. Chapter 4 focuses on the branding of education and uses Coca-Cola as one of the case studies. This book provides a comprehensive history of branding and brings to light some of the social and cultural impacts of branding campaigns.
Paley, Julia. Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Paley explores notions of democracy by focusing on the health group Llareta within the context of post-dictatorship Chile. Paley examines “how power is exercised in political democracy, particularly through the use of public opinion polls, pressure for grassroots organizations to “participate” by providing social services, and technocratic decision making that excludes the poor” (3). These more subtle forms of state power work to control and contain dissent through processes of coercion and co-optation. Paley likens these methods to a “kind of governmentality” (3). The Coca-Cola Chile Foundation was established to award scholarships and grants to students and high schools within Chile. Yet, Paley’s book raises questions about how state (or non-state) institutions set up with the intention of addressing social problems can become instruments of social discipline.
Smith, Gavin. “Hegemony.” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics ed. by David Nugent and Joan Vincent. Blackwell Publishing, 2006: pp216-230. Smith situates the term hegemony within the context of a neoliberal world. Building off Gramsci, Smith calls for the study of how the state, civil society, and the economy constitute fields of power. He states, “a more fruitful exercise would be to try to understand how market discourses, various expressions of the “culture of capitalism”…and the structural features of contemporary capitalism are all interwoven within and between particular sites temporally understood in terms of historical conjectures” (225). With Smith’s suggestions in mind, this MA project aims to incorporate how the circulation and consumption of Coca-Cola relates to culture and cultural processes within the structural framework of the neoliberal economic moment.
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