Plastic Waste in India: A Political Economy and Critical Discourse Analysis

Jensen, Alex (2010) Plastic Waste in India: A Political Economy and Critical Discourse Analysis. Masters thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Plastic waste is proliferating across India today, posing significant challenges to environmental health and ecologically rational development in the country. This problem is driven materially by political-economic processes related to neoliberal globalisation, and ideologically by discursive practices within a hegemonic plastics/waste coalition. The hegemonic coalition reproduces a pervasive plastics/waste orthodoxy that depoliticises the problem by disregarding its political-economic drivers and individualising responsibility for its genesis and remediation. These dynamics interact to naturalise plastics (discursively and materially) and normalise waste through end-of-pipe treatment or management approaches characteristic of neoliberal environmental governance. This dissertation moves beyond the orthodox explanations for the proliferation of plastic waste across India. It first establishes the problem of plastic waste in India, situates itself within the literature on waste and plastics, and outlines and adapts relevant social theories for analysing social/environmental problems. Next, it critically analyses the political economy of plastics, packaging and waste in India, and the discourse of the hegemonic coalition to identify the plastics/waste orthodoxy. The dialectical relationships of the material and the ideological are elaborated, and the dissertation concludes with a consideration of the implications of its findings for India’s socio-environmental future.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	14 Jan 2025 11:56
Last Modified:	14 Jan 2025 11:56
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98202
DOI:

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