Project+Abstract+A

There is growing recognition of the important role of social movements in driving the “greening” of industry. However, the relationship between social movements and industry change is complicated by conflicts and contradictions within and between activist groups, not to mention the industries, research institutions, and regulatory bodies that each target. This paper examines the effect of such conflicts on the developing “bioplastics” industry in the United States. There are several questions that will be raised, including: Social construction of science and technology has been useful for providing windows into the practices, boundary making, and power of technoscience communities. However, as has been made apparent argued more recently by David Hess, Arturo Escobar, and Kelly more among others, is that these anthropological and sociological methods of working with science and technology would do well to consider the tensions and struggles occurring between and amongst different communities. The end game is to add interpretations for viable future action for altering technoscientific practice and innovations. The anthropological study of social movements that has been applied to these areas has done much to expand on the importance of cultural repertoires, frame making, and social movement intervention in biosciences, energy research, toxicity studies, and a host of sociopolitical struggles. What seems to be missing from the discussion is how social movements, both marginalized and institutionalized, can work against one another in developing new innovations. To work with this question I look at work by Lounsbury (note: do I really need this guy?) on social movements and organizing agents in recycling as well David Hess’s work on social movements intervention in ‘alternative pathways’ in industry as a starting point. The complications occurring in the newly forming bioplastics industry is used as an empirical example of how social movements and environmental movements should be considered more heterogenous as well as temporally tenuous. Kim Fortun’s (2001) conception of enunciatory communities developed out of her work on the environmental disaster in Bhopal will act as a conceptual framework for working through the complexity of movement actions and integration surrounding the bioplastic industry.
 * Will bioplastics propagate large industrial control over the viable 'alternative pathways'?
 * How do social movements develop the frames to challenge dominant actors as well as develop subordinate companies more aligned with their own world views?
 * When the industry of recycling that developed from environmental movements runs into a new industry that complicates recycling efforts, how do the different movement frames be managed, combined or suppressed.