Tags: capitalism, class, inequality, marx/marxism, political economy, theory, exploitation, human trafficking, nike, sweatshop, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 3:43 Access: YouTube Summary: Marx argued that exploitation is a situation where capitalists extract surplus-value from the laborer, and do not therefore, pay the worker for the full value of their labor. The capitalist is able to do this because of their position of power over the worker, who must work for a wage in order to survive. For example, they can exploit workers by making them work longer than they are paid for. We see a contemporary (2008) example of exploitation in this video, created by undercover journalists for Australia's Channel 7 news team. Potential employees recruited in poor countries with promises of high-paying jobs were then trafficked into Myanmar, where they had their passports confiscated and were coerced into signing 3-year contracts in a language they didn’t understand. Unable to escape, they are paid $6/day to produce shoes that can cost $125 or more in industrialized nations. Workers are housed in sets of 350 a single dirty tin shed with one "trough" for bathing, only a few bathrooms--located directly adjacent to where they eat. The news clip also highlights the 2 faces of Nike: their "public face" of super-star athletes (e.g. Tiger Woods was paid $22 million/yr by Nike) and the "hidden misery" of workers that produce its products. Viewers can consider how Nike, which claims to be a socially responsible company, continues to exploit their workers. Is this situation unique to individual companies, or as Marx argues, is this a central component of capitalism? Can the viewer think of other corporations or industries where these practices are common? Submitted: Janine Siatkowski and Jon Weiss
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Tags: bodies, children/youth, consumption/consumerism, discourse/language, gender, inequality, marketing/brands, media, political economy, sex/sexuality, social construction, violence, feminism, media literacy, representation, self-objectification, sexism, sexual objectification, stereotypes, symbolic annihilation, 06 to 10 mins, 61+ mins Year: 2011 Length: 90:00, 8:52 Access: no online access, Vimeo preview Summary: Jennifer Siebel Newsom directs this documentary, and following in the steps of the Killing Us Softly films, it draws attention to the very problematic ways women and girls are represented in contemporary media. To tell the story, Newsom weaves together a number of interviews from an array of experts and activists, including Erika Falk, Jennifer Pozner, Jean Kilbourne, Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Cory Booker, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem. The dominant themes of Miss Representation can be described as the consequences of living in a world where one is virtually swimming in representations which consistently emphasize an unattainable beauty standard for women, and in a separate vein, encourage routine violence against women. In this environment, women increasingly self-objectify, they suffer from increased levels of anxiety and depression, a lack of political efficacy, and men increasingly perpetrate violence against women. Despite similarities, Newsom takes her film further than Jean Kilbourne's documentary, Killing Us Softly 4, by exploring more of the political economy behind these harmful representations. Specifically, she explores the large scale entrance of American women into the paid labor force during World War II as a watershed event (see also The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter). In Newsom's retelling of this story, once men returned to from fighting abroad, the media played a central role in encouraging women to surrender their high-paying jobs back to men in order to become domestic consumers in the brave new post-war economy. Today the marketing of corporations are regulated even less by Congress, and their ads continue to target women; they objectify them as part of a strategy aimed at creating ever more insatiable consumers. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: capitalism, class, government/the state, inequality, media, political economy, austerity, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2011 Length: 6:34 Access: YouTube Summary: In this clip from The Daily Show, John Stewart offers commentary on the proposal by President Obama to increase taxes on the top two percent of income earners in order to raise $700 billion over 10 years, a measure intended to help pay down the federal government's deficit. Revenue can be generated through tax increases just as readily as it can be generated through spending cuts on public services; yet the discussion has remained largely transfixed on spending cuts. As discussed in an earlier post, while taxing is a mechanism capable of compelling the richest Americans to contribute to paying down the national debt, cuts to public spending disproportionately affect people at the lower end of the income distribution, thus making the debate centrally about class politics. As Stewart shows with his inimitable wit, when conservative commentators finally take up the discussion of taxation, they tend to emphasize the need to increase taxes on the poor because, as one commentator put it, "they are absolutely on a free ride." Here Stewart points to published data in a Business Insider article, which shows that the bottom 50 percent of Americans own only 2.5 percent of the nation's wealth. This small sliver of wealth amounts to $1.45 trillion. Half of this amount is of course $700 billion, leading him to the laughable conclusion that the bottom 50% of Americans could only pay off the $700 billion by giving away half of everything they own. The clip works nicely as a way to demonstrate the way class politics are a central feature of the current wrangling about how to pay down the government budget deficit. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: nationalism, political economy, violence, war/military, c. w. mills, empathy, ethnocentrism, military sociology, sociological imagination, sociology of war, terrorism, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2011 Length: 18:07 Access: TED Talks Summary: By leading Americans in his audience step by step through a thought experiment, sociologist Sam Richards sets an extraordinary challenge: can Americans understand—not necessarily condone, but understand—the motivations of an Iraqi insurgent? I would argue that Richards' thought experiment is an attempt to give his audience a taste of what C. W. Mills called the sociological imagination, which can be defined as a perspective that allows one to locate the structural transformations that lie behind one's personal troubles. By proposing an alternate history for the United States, one where a colonial China extracts coal from the US in order to power Chinese cities, Richards asks his audience to consider a political economy that would trap the vast majority of Americans in desperate poverty. Just as Americans can imagine the intense frustration they would feel if forced to suffer under such an unbalanced economic arrangement, perhaps they can similarly imagine the intense frustration many Iraqis currently feel. Richards' thought experiment asks Americans to locate those Iraqis who have been demonized by the West as simply evildoers or terrorists in a broader social context, and to use a sociological imagination in order to grasp the motivations and frustrations of those who take up arms against the US. John Dower has argued that the war in the Pacific was a war without mercy in part because the Japanese became so dehumanized and alien, so unworthy of empathy, that the usual rules of conduct in war were set aside. If this is true, then a sociological imagination, as a means of fostering empathy, has important implications for conduct in war. Submitted By: Anonymous 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: bodies, gender, health/medicine, political economy, sex/sexuality, social construction, medicalization, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 5:06 Access: YouTube Summary: In her article, "In Pursuit of the Perfect Penis," Leonore Tiefer endeavors to "show how the persistence and increased use of the stigmatizing and stress-inducing label of impotence reflects a significant moment in the social construction of male sexuality." Liz Canner seems to be attempting something similar in her documentary, Orgasm Inc (watch the trailer here), which tracks not only the development of a drug that promises sexual satisfaction for women but also the social construction of a new illness called female sexual dysfunction. In this clip Canner recounts what she learned while making the documentary, including the role Pfizer and other drug companies played in funding conferences where a small group of hand-picked doctors met and formally described the symptoms of female sexual dysfunction. Their work in defining the disease, Canner argues, was largely driven by the ambitions of drug companies to create a demand for a new drug. I find this clip works nicely in class discussions wrestling with the social construction of illness and the concept of medicalization, which can be defined as a process where phenomena related to the human body come to be defined as medical conditions. As such they fall under the responsibility and authority of medical doctors and other health professionals to study, diagnose, prevent, and treat. Thanks to Sociological Images for suggesting Leonore Tiefer's article. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: capitalism, class, government/the state, inequality, political economy, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 5:35 Access: YouTube Summary: In this animated clip, Mark Blyth casts suspicion on the meaning of the term "austerity," which is typically understood as a virtue and regarded as "'common sense' on how to pay for the massive increase in public debt caused by the financial crisis." Blyth explains that two years ago the world's financial system exploded, creating a two trillion dollar hole in financial space-time. Governments around the world responded by spending, lending, or guaranteeing between 5 and 50 percent of GDP in order to save banks which were deemed too big to fail. However, as Blyth notes, the debt leveraged by these governments must be paid, and payment can only be accomplished through raising taxes or reducing spending on public services. Because raising taxes is politically unpopular, the debt will likely be repaid by slashing public spending, and while these cut backs in public services are framed as virtuous measures of austerity, which are endured by the nation equally, people at the lower end of the income distribution are disproportionately affected because of their dependence on public services. Those who paid for the crises already through the bailouts will pay again, this time through "austerity." Thus, what is ostensibly billed as an economic crisis for entire nations is fundamentally about the class politics within nations. Blyth's argument dovetails nicely with David Harvey's Marxist take on the financial crises, which is also posted on The Sociological Cinema. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: bodies, health/medicine, political economy, health care, pre-existing conditions, political economy of health care, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2007 Length: 19:50 Access: YouTube (clip 1; clip 2) Summary: This clip from Michael Moore's Sicko tells the emotionally-charged stories of several Americans who have struggled to get adequate health care from private, for-profit health insurance. It weaves their stories with private interviews with former workers within the industry and official testimony from industry insiders who have spoken out against the industry. Before showing the clip in my Social Problems class, I facilitated a debate on whether health care is a privilege or right, then asked students to pretend they were a business executive for a for-profit health insurance company, asking them how they might maximize profits in their health insurance plans when health care is treated as a commodity. Finally, after showing the video, I asked the class: what techniques were used to increase profits? Does the problem stem from individuals working in the health care industry or from the health care system itself (linking it back to notions of health care as a right or privilege)? I put this in the context of the three health care models (national insurance, social insurance, private insurance) discussed in James Russell's (2006) "Social Policy in Health Care: Europe and the US" (excerpted in this Social Problems book). Submitted By: Paul Dean Tags: globalization, social mvmts/social change/resistance, political economy, global justice movement, mobilization, neoliberalism, power elite, global trade, wto, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2009 Length: 26:14 Access: pbs Summary: This is a PBS special on the 1999 Seattle Protests against the WTO. Drawing on interviews from local police,trade representatives, protestors, the mayor, and journalists present during the protests, this video analyzes the political and economic context of the WTO meetings and the actual conflicts in the street that ultimately shut down the meetings. It is a great example of the struggle over shaping globalization, including neoliberal globalization and the alter-globalization movement, and state repression of protestors. It offers a great way to discuss Kellner's concepts of globalization from above vs. globalization from below (discussed in "Theorizing Globalization"). Showing coalitions of labor groups, religious organizations, and social justice advocates, it is also a great illustration of social movement concepts, including moblization, framing, and opportunity structures. Submitted By: Paul Dean Tags: capitalism, commodification, consumption/consumerism, corporations, globalization, marketing/brands, political economy, social mvmts/social change/resistance, culture industry, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2003 Length: 40:00 Access: YouTube Summary: This video is an interview and commentary with scholar/activist Naomi Klein based on her book No Logo. Using hundreds of media examples, No logo shows how the commercial takeover of public space, destruction of consumer choice, and replacement of real jobs with temporary work (the dynamics of corporate globalization) impact everyone, everywhere. It also draws attention to the resistance arising globally to challenge the hegemony of brands. The video begins by focusing on consumerism, and moves to globalization later in the film. Submitted By: Paul Dean |
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