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: corporations, crime/law/deviance, economic sociology, government/the state, historical sociology, inequality, political economy, copyright law, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 6:30
Access: YouTube

Summary: States, it is often said, must regulate corporations in order to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of its citizens. Even the most ardent fiscal conservative would concede that antitrust laws are necessary in order to sustain a competitive market and protect consumers from price fixing. To take another example, when states enforce copyright laws, they "promote the progress of science and useful arts." While corporations may want to own a copyright forever, states are obliged to limit the duration of copyright protection in the interest of allowing other authors the ability to remake or build from classic stories. This is what benevolent, well-meaning states should do, but in practice, corporations often wield power over state regulators, and as C. G. P. Grey remarks in the above clip, on four separate occasions Congress has aligned with the narrow interest of corporate copyright holders that the length of copyright is too short to turn a profit and so extended it. But as Grey also points out, it's hard to imagine that J. K. Rowling "wouldn't have written Harry Potter if the copyright protection was just for her whole life and not an additional seven decades thereafter." The clip works well as a rather vivid antidote to the myth that markets are best left unregulated, and the clip is also a useful entrée into a discussion about how power—in this case, corporate power—shapes the formation of law, and perhaps even the ideological premises, which become the foundation of discussions about whether those laws should be changed in the first place.

Submitted By: Sparhawk

Tags: abortion/reproduction, historical sociology, government/the state, politics/election/voting, theory, violence, weber, civil liberties, democracy, melissa harris-perry, social contract theory, states rights, thomas hobbes, 11 to 20 mins
Year: 2012
Length: 20:55
Access: msnbc

Summary: The social contract refers to the individual's acceptance of some social rules and limitations in exchange for the protections and benefits from the state. The concept was initially developed in the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau; however, sociologist Max Weber further specified the social contract as it relates to violence by highlighting how all forms of political organization including democracy, entrust "the state" (e.g. government at all levels) as the only social institution that can legitimately use physical force. In this video, political scientist and pundit Melissa Harris-Perry applies this Weberian approach by arguing that the State of Virginia failed to force women to undergo an invasive procedure, known as a transvaginal sonogram, prior to having an abortion because social consensus concluded it was not a legitimate use of force (or even violence) by the government. In other words, the state was in breach of the social contract. For a similar discussion on the same political issue, Rachel Maddow explores the fringe pro-life movement’s use of illegitimate violence against abortion doctors in her full-length documentary, The Assassination of Dr. Tiller.

Submitted By: Jason Eastman

Tags: capitalism, historical sociology, inequality, marriage/family, race/ethnicity, racism, slavery, white privilege, 61+ mins 
Year: 2008
Length: 86:00
Access: Netflix (trailer here)

Summary: This full-length documentary follows a family's journey—headed by family member/filmmaker Katrina Browne—through the Triangle Trade between Rhode Island, West Africa, and Cuba. In doing so, family members begin to recognize how their White privilege is directly tied to enslavement of Africans by their ancestors. The film is useful for the classroom in four ways: 1) it provides a history lesson of the Triangle Trade, demonstrating how the American North was/is as culpable in the enslavement of Africans as the South, 2) it demonstrates the direct tie between New World/American capitalism and its survival to the slave trade, 3) it slowly reveals the consciousness-raising of privileged White folks as they understand how their privilege is directly tied to slavery and racism, and 4) it demonstrates the awkward yet necessary dialogues and discussions White people need to have about U.S. history and racism. I like to use this film as a companion to Tim Wise's talk "The Pathology of White Privilege." After my students watch Traces of the Trade and Wise's talk, we discuss how contemporary White privilege is directly tied to the conception of our nation, the contradictions and paradoxes of capitalism and democracy, and their own embodied and/or witnessed experiences of White privilege. The film's website includes purchasing information and teaching materials. Another great companion piece to Browne's documentary is the book Inheriting the Trade. Written by Browne's relative Thomas DeWolf, the book more deeply documents the family's physical and social psychological journey.

Submitted By: Beverly M. Pratt

Tags:  education, government/the state, historical sociology, knowledge, nationalism, political economy, war/military, activism, empire, howard zinn, imperialism, sociological imagination, subtitles/CC, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2008
Length: 8:35
Access: YouTube

Summary: This video portrays Howard Zinn's essay "Empire or Humanity?: What the classroom didn’t teach me about the American empire" as narrated by the actor Viggo Mortensen (original essay and teaching materials posted here). It traces Zinn's own development of his sociological imagination, his miseducation in public schools, and his critique of US foreign policy. This video is good for introducing the concept of the sociological imagination, the connecting of private troubles to public issues (CW Mills), and thinking critically about issues of power, empire, and imperialism. It may be useful during an introductory lecture in lower level sociology classes (particularly Intro to Sociology, Social Problems, or Contemporary Theory). It can be used as an ice-breaker for beginning to talk about the sociological imagination as a way of seeing by looking for patterns, thinking critically, and connecting one's "private troubles" to "public issues."

Submitted By: Dave Paul Strohecker (@dpsFTW)

Tags: government/the state, historical sociology, inequality, knowledge, nationalism, political economy, race/ethnicity, religion, social construction, social mvmts/social change/resistance, theory, war/military, benedict anderson, edward said, 21 to 60 mins
Year: 2011
Length: 51:25
Access: PBS Video

Summary: Part of the PBS series "Black in Latin America," this short film featuring Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores issues of race and identity in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two countries that share the same island of Hispaniola, yet share little else in terms of language, economic opportunities, relations with colonial nations, and identification with African ancestry and heritage. This clip is excellent for illustrating how racial classifications are a social construction, as meanings of blackness shift across the two countries. The island's history of race relations also demonstrate how, as Edward Said shows, race is constructed in reference to a racial (and national) "other," as Dominicans have historically understood themselves as "not Haitian" and therefore "not black." Students can see how knowledge about national racial identity has been deliberately cultivated by national elites in the Dominican Republic through selectively told histories, national memorials, holidays, and monuments. This racially motivated nation-building effort articulates well with Benedict Anderson's work on imagined communities. Finally, the video chronicles how Haiti became the first-ever black republic, and the pivotal role that religion played in the slaves' fight for liberation. However, ever since winning independence, outside nations, including the United States, have imposed policies that have made it near impossible for Haitians to develop a robust economy and political infrastructure, evidenced today by the poverty and political corruption that plague the country, but which is always challenged by Haitians' rich and complex belief system and artistic culture. The video is divided into six chapters, allowing instructors to easily screen shorter segments of the film if they wish.

I would like to thank Jean François Edouard for suggesting this clip.

Submitted By: Valerie Chepp

Tags: disability, gender, historical sociology, lgbtq, media, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, sex/sexuality, war/military, ableism, collective memory, homophobia, media literacy, propaganda, public memory, racism, remix, representation, revisionism, transgender, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2008
Length: 5:32
Access: YouTube

Summary: (Trigger warning: this clip depicts violence and includes explicit language) One of the criticisms sociology instructors occasionally field from students is the accusation that we are over thinking a particular issue or reading too deeply into some phenomenon. Similarly, when we draw attention to, say, the racist subtext of a fictional film, one common response is that the film is mere fantasy, the audience knows this, and therefore, there is no harm done. In this remix of the film 300, Craig Saddlemire and Ryan Conrad powerfully illustrate the way morally corrupt characters and those with deep flaws unfailingly match a type. These "bad guys" are often characters with disabilities. They are typically played by Black and Brown actors, and in many instances, the characters are gay, transgender, and/or effeminate men. As is true of 300, the hero's story is one typically told from the perspective of a powerful white man. By exposing these stereotypes and the way they are drawn upon to create the familiar characters that populate Hollywood films, the remix reminds us that movies can reinforce a worldview which values people differently based on race, sexuality, disability, and gender. At the two-minute mark, the remixers introduce the additional argument that "300 follows in a long tradition of US military propaganda," and to visually make this point, the remixers splice together scenes from Frank Capra's famous WWII propaganda films, which sought to answer the question of "Why we fight." Capra's answer was to save democracy, but instructors could provocatively ask students to consider the influence of propaganda and its depiction (demonization?) of the enemy.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

Tags: historical sociology, nationalism, race/ethnicity, war/military, 11 to 20 mins
Year: 1989
Length: 14:36
Access: YouTube

Summary: I find that when teaching nationalism, it is sometimes necessary to begin by making a case for why nationalism is an important phenomenon for sociologists to study. There is a tendency among my students to regard the nation and its nationalism as timeless and therefore unremarkable, but the power of nationalism is due in large measure to its ability to evade scrutiny. To make my case, I begin by showing a short clip from the 1989 movie "Glory," which stars Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington. The movie tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War, one of the first units to be made up entirely of African Americans. The clip I show is of the film's climactic scene, which depicts the 54th's perilous assault on Fort Wagner. An inspirational score plays in the background and is only broken by the percussion of cannon fire as the soldiers bravely march on the fort. The odds, however, were stacked against the 54th and we learn in the epilogue of the film that they never succeeded in taking the fort. Following the clip, I encourage students to contemplate their own nationalism and the fact that the filmmakers counted on it when depicting the assault on Fort Wagner as the emotional climax of the film. Using the clip, one can further draw students into a discussion about the way nationalism intersects with race, as when a nation is imagined along racial lines or even when soldiers set aside racial differences for the greater purpose of a nationalist struggle. While the sociological concepts in the clip may need to be spelled out for students by a well prepared instructor, the emotional tone of the clip is excellent for making otherwise disengaged students sit up and join the discussion.

Submitted By:  Lester Andrist

Tags: art/music, historical sociology, media, race/ethnicity, collective memory, discourse, lynching, museum, public memory, racism, representation, signification, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2008
Length: 9:11
Access: YouTube

Summary: This clip is described on YouTube as “A ten minute video about how two female artists of African descent dismantle the myths of the historical photo.” There is a narrated discussion, which asks viewers to consider questions such as “who took the photo?” and “How was this photo possible?” This clip would be useful for introducing students to the topic of representation through visual media, as it encourages them to question the idea of the photo as an objective representation of reality. The clip reminds viewers that photographs are necessarily captured and presented in particular contexts which have important implications for meaning making.

Submitted By: Lester Andrist