Tags: capitalism, class, globalization, historical sociology, inequality, methodology/statistics, political/economy, absolute poverty, antônio conselheiro, charity, colonialism, comparative historical analysis, industrial revolution, poorhouse, relative poverty, social history, welfare state, workhouse, 21 to 60 mins
Year: 2013
Length: 58:05
Access: YouTube

Summary: This exquisitely animated documentary tells a sweeping social history of world poverty. You, the viewer, are the protagonist in this film floating through the meandering jet stream of world history. "If we want to make poverty history," the narrator explains, "then first, we need to understand the history of poverty." The documentary appropriately begins in prehistory (2:35), and in a more or less linear fashion, moves through humanity's early large scale civilizations, including ancient Egypt (4:40) and ancient Greece (5:40). Zipping forward to the Middle Ages, the story unfolds again in Cairo (8:20), and then lingers in Paris of the same period (10:50). The history of colonialism is woven into the story with a look at the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire (14:20), the Portuguese conquest of West Africa (16:20 and 34:40), and British colonial rule in India (36:00). Poverty in a neocolonial context is later examined in Ghana (38:50 and 43:55), and China makes appearances as the site of both model relief efforts and tragic famine (18:30 and 43:20). At the 20:30 mark the story returns to Western Europe in order to consider the impact of the Industrial Revolution on poverty, and then moves toward a conclusion which contemplates the changes wrought by globalization. While this 58-minute film understandably fails to deliver a truly exhaustive account of the the world-historical processes associated with poverty, the film would be an excellent tool for illustrating comparative historical analysis in sociology. Systematic comparison is of course central to comparative historical work, and this film succeeds in illustrating the importance of comparison by briefly drawing on eighteenth century China as a rare instance where prosperity for some didn't necessarily come at the cost of desperate poverty for others. What does the film's analysis of poverty gain by including this "negative" case in the story? One answer is that the case of China complicates the viewer's understanding of poverty by exposing its causes as far less determined and far more contingent.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: abortion/reproduction, consumption/consumerism, demography/population, environment, food/agriculture, globalization, inequality, rural/urban, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 5:12
Access: Los Angeles Times

Summary: This short video, "The Challenge Ahead: Rising Numbers, Shrinking Resources," accompanies a five-part series from the Los Angeles Times and highlights the causes and consequences of the global population explosion. Demographers anticipate continued population growth driven by the reality that there are now 3 billion people on the planet under the age of 25, and about 1.2 billion of them are adolescents who are entering their reproductive years. Projections suggest that by 2050 there will be well over 9 billion people on the earth, and the video highlights many of the resource demands of this many people. For instance, Jonathon Foley of the Institute on the Environment asks, "how are we going to feed 9 billion people without trashing the planet?" and Joel E. Cohen notes that humans are currently consuming resources on planet earth as if the earth were about 50% more productive. The connection between consumption (and production) and population is also explored in Foley's 2011 Ted Talk, where he reports that the total area humans are currently using for agriculture is about the size of South America (16 million square kilometers), while the total area used as pasture and range land is about the size of Africa (30 million square kilometers). Humans are also currently using about 50% of Earth's fresh water, and of this share, about 70% is used for agriculture. But after connecting population growth to agricultural demands, it is only a short distance to discussions exploring the connections between population and environmental degradation, or even climate change. After all, as Foley also points out in his Ted Talk, agricultural activity is by far the largest contributor of greenhouse gases. Thus "The Challenge Ahead" is an excellent teaser for any introduction to the field of demography, and it can be used to spur discussion about the importance of the field for tackling some of the most formidable challenges of the twenty-first century. Note that The Sociological Cinema has previously recommended clips that explore problems associated with population (here, here, and here).

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags:  capitalism, economic sociology, globalization, marx/marxism, organizations/occupations/work, science/technology, theory, assembly line, deskilling, jobs, labor, reskilling, robotics, 00 to 05 mins
Length: 3:58
Year: 2012
Access: New York Times

Summary: This NYT video examines innovations in robot technology used for factory production (see associated article). These robots are far more sophisticated than typical factory robots, and they have important implications for work, labor, and the geography of the global economy. As Marx predicted, global competition drives producers to mechanize their operations to drive down costs. For example, as the article notes, "In one example, a robotic manufacturing system initially cost $250,000 and replaced two machine operators, each earning $50,000 a year. Over the 15-year life of the system, the machines yielded $3.5 million in labor and productivity savings." The robots are replacing huge numbers of low and mid-skilled workers, making assembly lines more efficient and creating some higher skilled jobs. At 2:50, a representative from a robotics company states "We don't view robots as a way to eliminate the labor, it's just an opportunity to raise that skill set and help everybody realize a better life as a result of that, get them out of that repetition and into a place where they can earn a higher wage and be more successful." Viewers may reflect on this highly optimistic view. In some cases, these advanced technologies are bringing manufacturing jobs now held in countries like China back into the US. With the automation of much manual labor, the new jobs are often safer - but they also have new forms of stress and higher insecurity. However, many people who lose their jobs do not have access to the education and training needed to reskill themselves for the new jobs. Furthermore, such technologies might lead to the increasing polarization of jobs in terms of both skills and wages. Who wins and who loses when robots replace human labor?

Image by Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

Submitted By: Paul Dean

Tags: capitalism, children/youth, commodification, consumption/consumerism, crime/law/deviance, gender, globalization, sex/sexuality, human trafficking, prostitution, sex trafficking, slavery, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 1:40
Access: YouTube

Summary: This short clip is a PSA from Stop The Traffik (STT), an international charity focused on ending human trafficking. The clip was shot in the famous De Wallen red-light district in Amsterdam and features six women dancing in a typical brothel. Their performance captivates, and a crowd of men soon gathers in the street to watch. The performance abruptly ends and an electronic billboard overhead reads, "Every year, thousands of women are promised a dance career in Western Europe. Sadly, they end up here." Many people are aware of the connection between human trafficking and sexual exploitation, and indeed the Netherlands is listed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime as a primary country of destination for victims of human trafficking. The reality is people are trafficked for a number of reasons, not all having to do with sexual slavery. STT defines human trafficking as the act of deceiving or taking people against their will, to be bought, sold and transported into slavery for sexual exploitation, to be used in sweat shops, circuses, in sacrificial worship, forced begging, or to be used as child brides, farm laborers, unwilling human organ donors, and as domestic servants. Human trafficking appears to be growing, and according to STT, 2 to 4 million men, women and children are trafficked across borders and within their own country every year. More than one person is trafficked across borders every minute, which is equivalent to ten jumbo jets every day. The clip does well to capture viewers' attention and might be an effective foray into what must be a much deeper discussion about trafficking. One can approach the issue in terms of globalization by considering the global flows of trafficked humans from less developed countries to more developed countries. To what extent is human trafficking explained by the conditions of the global economy, where a steady supply of children are sold by people in the global south, who face extreme poverty, in order to meet the demands of those in the global north, who have more than enough? This video would work well in tandem with another clip on The Sociological Cinema, which explores the biography of a young woman who was forced into prostitution in the United States.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: demography/population, environment, food/agriculture, globalization, inequality, rural/urban, anthropocene, great acceleration, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 3:29
Access: YouTube

Summary: In sparkling electric blue, this narrated visualization illustrates the impact humans have had on the Earth's ecosystems from the time of the industrial revolution to the present. Referring to a new geological epoch, the narrator boldly announces, "Welcome to the anthropocene." The anthropocene is marked by the decisive role humans now play in shaping the state, dynamics and future of the Earth system. Among other indicators, scientists point out that anthropogenic processes now account for more sediment transport than natural processes, such as the erosion from rivers. Humans have also measurably altered the composition of the atmosphere, oceans, and soils, as well as the cycles associated with elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. The more than seven billion of us who currently reside on the planet now breath a chemically altered atmosphere of our own making, and we are witnessing the spread of oceanic dead zones. From a sociological standpoint, the adjective "anthropogenic," which simply denotes something that is produced by humans, is imprecise. It is not the mere presence of billions of homo sapiens which has altered the Earth's systems; rather, it is the way homo sapiens interact with the Earth's systems—our social processes. The clip works well as a way to enter into a discussion about environmental sociology. Specifically, one could easily draw on it to highlight the tension between understanding how changes in the environment get framed as problems by scientists, media, and other social actors, and how certain environmental changes have a real ontological status, irrespective of that framing.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: demography/population, globalization, inequality, rural/urban, thomas robert malthus, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2010
Length: 2:58
Access: YouTube

Summary: This clip, although made in 2010, examines the world as we hit a global population of 7 billion people (October 2011). Topics explored in the video include the impact of having 7 billion inhabitants living on the globe, the increasing length of the human life span, the unbalanced human consumption of scarce resources, and unequal living conditions. I include this video in my lecture on stratification, specifically in reference to Malthus's view of favoring inequality as a form of population control. It also can be used when covering demographics. The clip was created by National Geographic magazine as part of their 2011 year-long series on world population; additional resources are available on their website. Click here for another clip on The Sociological Cinema that contextualizes issues of global population and inequality.

Submitted By: Rachel Sparkman

Tags:  capitalism, commodification, corporations, economic sociology, globalization, inequality, marx/marxism, organizations/occupations/work, capital flight, feminization of poverty, maquiladoras, world-systems theory, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2006; 2012
Length: 4:04; 2:58
Access: clip 1 on YouTube; clip 2 at the New York Times

Summary: These two clips examine the role of low wage work in the global economy. The first clip looks at maquiladoras (multinationally-owned factories operating in tax-free zones in low wage countries) from the documentary Maquilapolis (city of factories). It presents the stories of two female maquiladora workers. Carmen works the graveyard shift at a factory that produces television parts. She was attracted to the maquiladoras because it paid better wages than the rest of Mexico. However, she ultimately suffers from kidney damage and lead poisoning from her years of exposure to toxic chemicals and her employers that do not allow workers to drink water or go to the bathroom during their shift. In a global economy, corporations are attracted to places like Mexico because of their tax-free zones that offer tax breaks and cheap labor that is easily exploitable. Employers expect labor, which is mostly female, to have "agile hands and would be cheap and docile". Ultimately, Carmen's employer moved from Mexico to Indonesia to find cheaper labor and earn higher profits. The clip discusses female labor as a "cheap commodity" that is easily discarded if they become less productive or defend their labor rights. The second clip documents workers at a Chinese Foxconn factory that employs 120,000 workers with low pay and dangerous working conditions. The clips offer a good illustration of world-systems theory, and viewers can be encouraged to think about the role of maquiladoras in the global economy. How does value flow through the global economy? How is work, gender, and inequality linked to maquiladoras and the mobility of transnational corporations around the world? Do maquiladoras reproduce poverty or can they help nations rise in global value chains?

Submitted By: Paul Dean

_Tags: economic sociology, globalization, inequality, marx/marxism, organizations/occupations/work, global value chains, jobs, mobility, outsourcing, supply chains, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 4:36
Access: New York Times

Summary: This animated NYT video examines the shifting nature of global production and its effect on the distribution of jobs in the US economy. It begins by showing how the components of the iPhone are produced around the world (social scientists refer to this as a global value chain). As most viewers know, this means that low-skilled jobs are then outsourced and sent overseas. But as time passes, it creates a "vacuum" that pulls other higher skilled/higher pay jobs overseas. The video introduces the idea of a "job multiplier" where one job actually creates a higher number of total jobs because of related services that accompany it and tend to be physically located nearby. However, some jobs (e.g. auto manufacturing) have higher multipliers than others (e.g. hospital services). Over time, the US economy has lost jobs that demand higher skills and have higher job multipliers, and these have been replaced by jobs with lower job multipliers and lower skills (and therefore, lower incomes). Jobs at the top and bottom of the hierarchy (e.g. software engineers and service jobs) have grown, but jobs in the middle of the hierarchy (e.g. office assistants, manufacturers) have declined. The video concludes by noting that this is why our economic problems are so hard to solve, arguing that "we've become a nation with fewer chances for people to climb into the middle class." Possible discussion questions for this video are: How has the structure of the American economy changed over time? How does economic globalization alter job structures and mobility opportunities in the US? What impact does this have on economic inequality?

Thank you to Michael Miller for suggesting this clip!

Submitted By: Paul Dean

_Tags: capitalism, economic sociology, globalization, marx/marxism, political economy, theory, financial collapse, global recession, power elite, wall street, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2010
Length: 0:55 (entire film is 120 mins; trailer here)
Access: YouTube

Summary: This is a brief excerpt from Inside Job, an excellent documentary that explores the 2008 global financial collapse. The films draws upon in-depth research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians, and journalists. By breaking down complex financial transactions in understandable terms, it traces the rise of the "rogue" financial industry and "unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation, and academia." This brief clip focuses on Obama's lack of action on regulating Wall Street because of the relationship between Washington and Wall Street. It notes that Obama, who was elected President the year of the financial collapse, was quoted as saying that "a lack of oversight in Washington and on Wall Street is exactly what got us into this mess," arguing for the need to reform the industry. But after years in the presidency, Obama's administration had not enacted a single major financial reform. When Robert Gnaizda (former director of the Greenlining Institute) is asked why, the clip ends provocatively with his quote "It's a Wall Street Government." Viewers can be encouraged to reflect on what Gnaizda means by the quote? This might be useful for illustrating Mills' concept of the power elite or Marx's concept of a ruling class. If using the entire film, you can have students complete exercise #4 (in the film's Study Guide) to examine the revolving door between government regulators and corporate executives. It can also be a good discussion starter about the cause of the financial collapse, the social construction of markets, the role of improper incentives, and economic ideologies.

Submitted By: Paul Dean