Ghosts in the vending machine: Expressing corporate power in Ireland’s food and drinks industry via the territorialization of selective openness

Abstract

Concerns regarding the prevalence of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) have led some critical public health scholars to propose analyses of the “double burden of neoliberalism.” In turn, analysts shine a light on corporate power and how it is mobilized to create a food system that works, in the first place, for capital. This paper builds on these contributions to argue that getting to grips with corporate power in the food and drinks industry requires looking beyond its instrumentality or short-range functionality and developing an understanding of its mode of operation and longer-range objectives. I specifically propose focusing on the way corporations push for and territorialize “selective openness.” The ongoing iterative task facing firms is constructing geographical arrangements that suit their respective but sometimes collective requirements to establish as much control as possible over the conduits connecting capitalists in any particular place to the wider, chaotic, throwntogether, and contingency-laden world. My empirical reference point is the practice of corporate power in Ireland as it was expressed in corporate lobbying activities and during parliamentary hearings on childhood “obesity and political debates about the country’s sugar tax.