AMA/AMBEV mineral water project: Living with the semiarid as a social business

Abstract

The objective of this article is to discuss how the concept living with the drought is incorporated into the AMA mineral water brand project. Managed by the AMBEV brewery and with the slogan “more than a water, a cause” it proposes the use of its profit to finance the construction of cisterns, solar panels and water supply structures for poor communities throughout the Brazilian semiarid regions. Based on a mapping of partnerships, foundations and NGOs, the legitimization of AMA as a “Social business” is perceivable, the result of a double movement: first, it presents itself as a business trying to conciliate profit with social and environmental purpose, results from an absorption of the critics against the capitalism system in the central countries. Second, AMA’s proposal is aligned with criticisms on the State’s plan to combat droughts prevalent in the last century in Brazil. AMA thus inserts a “new spirit” of coexistence with the semiarid regions, of efficient and ideological legitimation: a proposal to live with droughts which has an elective affinity with values linked to foundations that are linked to the financial market and risk management startups. In the conclusions this article discusses a moral / market relationship and the kind of “hydric citizenship” that private initiatives such as AMA’s aim to take place the vacuum of a dismantling in the public policies made for the poor communities in the rural areas of the Brazilian semiarid.