Tags: crime/law/deviance, theory, interpersonal relationships, james coleman, social capital, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1994 Length: 1:51 Access: YouTube Summary: In this clip from the Seinfeld episode entitled "The Wife" (17th episode, 5th season), George confesses to Jerry and Elaine that he was caught urinating in the shower at the gym earlier that day by another member of the health club. Though not depicted in the clip, we later find out that the man who witnessed George's deviant act is a love interest of Elaine's. This clip can be used to illustrate the concept of social capital. According to the social theorist James Coleman, social capital is located in human relationships and can be leveraged to facilitate individual goals aimed at accumulating valued outcomes. In contrast to another clip on The Sociological Cinema that demonstrates how social capital is deployed to achieve a valued outcome, this clip from Seinfeld demonstrates how a lack of social capital can impede this process as well. Specifically, this scene illustrates how relationships in one context (George's behavior in a shower) affect the goals of another person in another unrelated context (Elaine's pursuit of a love interest). Put simply, George's behavior in a health club bathroom mediates Elaine's pursuit of a valued goal (a love interest).This clip can be paired with Coleman's 1988 article in the American Journal of Sociology, "Social Capital in the creation of Human Capital." Submitted By: Anonymous
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Diablo Steve panhandles at a busy intersection
Tags: class, crime/law/deviance, marriage/family, methodology/statistics, drugs, ethnography, homelessness, visual ethnography, substance abuse, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2013 Length: 8:23 Access: YouTube; Vimeo Summary: This observational film from filmmaker Greg Scott and a crew of sociologists chronicles the daily lives of Diablo Steve and Sapphire Pam, a homeless and heroin-addicted married couple. Beginning with a brief wedding anniversary celebration, the camera follows Steve and Pam as they go about their daily routine, which includes a visit to a "shooting gallery," where they inject their "medicine," and a visit to a busy intersection, where they carry out their panhandling "hustle." The film sticks with Steve and Pam as they navigate various modes of transportation throughout the day, until finally setting up camp at a homeless shelter, where they attempt to get some relief in a momentary and fleeting setting of “home.” Although the film neither expresses judgement nor engages in the kind of overt analyses one typically finds in films that include interviews and narration, assistant videographer Thom Fredericks notes that "Ultimately the film represents an effort to analyze marriage and the ways in which the meaning of marriage has changed in society." In the context of a sociology class, instructors can easily draw on the film as a basis for contemplating a range of other topics, including homelessness, substance abuse, and deviance. The film is also an excellent example of visual ethnography, which is a form of ethnographic research that incorporates photography, video, or hypermedia. Submitted By: Thom Fredericks Tags: crime/law/deviance, knowledge, media, psychology/social psychology, violence, cultivation theory, terrorism, tsa, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 4:45 Access: The Colbert Report Summary: Neuroscientist Steven Pinker shares his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. This video explains (without mentioning it) cultivation theory, which is the idea that the more you watch the news, the more you have a tendency to overestimate the crime rate. Specifically, the video discusses terrorism, and Americans' fixation on it as a source of danger, when more mundane sources like flammable pajamas and peanut allergies cause far more deaths. This video works well as a means of introducing cultivation theory, but it is also a good starting point for a more general conversation about how the media misleads the public about how dangerous the world is and from where dangers come. Note that The Sociological Cinema has previously explored the way media is used as a tool for dispersing propaganda in a democratic political system (here), and also as a supplicant to the demands of corporate power (here). Submitted By: Nickie Michaud Wild
"Alive in Joburg" depicts an alien encounter to explore prejudice
Tags: crime/law/deviance, discourse/language, immigration/citizenship, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, science fiction, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2006 Length: 6:23 Access: YouTube Summary: One of the most important and poignant components in a discussion of immigration issues is necessarily the processes of othering that occur when the legal and social legitimacy of a particular immigrant group is called into question. Xenophobia, anxieties about assimilation or the lack thereof, beliefs that a group of immigrants are hopelessly different, assumptions about immigrants causing rising crime rates and an overall lower quality of life for their neighbors, and discursive aspects such as the use of the words "illegal" and "alien" all come into play. In this short science fiction film, Neill Blomkamp (director of the movie District 9, which was based on this same film) juxtaposes a story about extraterrestrial refugees in Johannesburg under the apartheid government with real interviews with Johannesburg residents about refugees from Zimbabwe. This film can be used to open a discussion about the deeper meanings and connotations of words like "alien" when applied to human beings. What are the fears that such words represent and reproduce? What images and ideas do these forms of discourse call up in people's minds? What are the practical consequences of immigration threat discourses? And what real-life equivalents can students think of in terms of immigrant groups defined by others by their race, ethnicity, religion, etc.? Submitted By: Sarah Wanenchak
The 1991 Tailhook scandal exposed the U.S. military's rape culture.
Tags: crime/law/deviance, culture, gender, organizations/occupations/work, prejudice/discrimination, violence, war/military, masculinity, rape, rape culture, sexual assault, sexual harassment, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2013 Length: 12:45 Access: Retro Report Summary: Long before two boys from Steubenville High School in Ohio raped a young woman and bragged about it on social media, the U.S. had a rape problem. A recent Centers for Disease Control survey now estimates that in the United States about 1 in 5 women are the victims of rape or attempted rape at some point in their lives, but such national statistics mask what happens within particular institutions. In the U.S. military, 1 in 3 servicewomen are sexually assaulted, and in 2011, 22,800 violent sex crimes were reported. What this means is that military women in combat are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire, and adding insult to injury, the soldiers who commit rape have an estimated 86.5% chance of keeping their crime a secret. They have an even better chance— 92%—of avoiding a court-martial. From the Tailhook scandal in 1991 to the recent arrest of Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski—the chief of the Air Force's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office—the above video from The New York Times tracks the history of sexual assault in the U.S. military. In order to make sense of the prevalence and persistence of such assaults, sociologists argue that we need to face the fact that the problem is entrenched and systemic; the assaults need to be examined as manifestations of rape culture, which refers to "a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women" (Buchwald, et. al). Thus, as reported in the video, when a senior officer dismisses reports of sexual assault at the Tailhook Convention by expressing the belief that, "That's what you get when you go down the hall with a bunch of drunk aviators" (at the 3:20 mark), the officer can be understood as drawing from a repertoire of myths that collectively characterize a rape culture—namely that such assaults are inevitable and perhaps natural. Similarly, when the officer leading the Tailhook investigation remarks that "some of these women were kind of bringing it on themselves" (at 4:30 mark), he is effectively blaming the victims for their assaults. The fact that these remarks were spoken by men with formal and legitimate power is added evidence that the sentiments run deep within the military, but it is also significant that these remarks are somewhat compatible, and taken together, formulate a relatively coherent logic. The video can be used to illustrate a pernicious thread of thinking from the military's rape-cultural repetoire: First, servicewomen who do not learn their places in male-dominated spaces will inevitably be raped, and second, their rape will be no one's fault but their own. On this score, Germaine Greer's famous observation has a certain resonance: "Women have very little idea how much men hate them." (Note that The Sociological Cinema also takes up the concept of a rape culture here, here, here, here, and here) Submitted By: Lester Andrist
Two "thieves"—one white, one black—try to steal a bike in public.
Tags: crime/law/deviance, methodology/statistics, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, racial profiling, racism, social experiment, white privilege, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 4:41 Access: YouTube Summary: In this episode of the American television show What Would You Do?, two different actors stage a bike theft in a public park. Both actors are teenage boys, about the same age, wearing similar clothes, using the same set of burglary tools in the same park, around the same time of day, trying to cut off the lock of the same bike; however, one of the actors is black and the other is white. A hidden camera documents the different reactions of the people walking by. The variation in people's reactions can help to illustrate the concept of racial profiling. Racial profiling involves using an individual's race or ethnicity as a basis for determining whether a person is engaged in illegal activity. Often racial profiling refers to an activity practiced by law enforcement; however, in this video we see ordinary people engaged in this form of discrimination. Viewers can be encouraged to compare and list the differeces in people's reactions, and talk about whether (and how) these differences constitute racial profiling. Further, viewers can think about the implications of racial profiling, that is, why does it matter if racial profiling occurs? At the end of the clip, a young and stereotypically attractive white woman pretends to be stealing the bike. Why might people's reactions to this thief be so different from those who reacted to the boys cutting the bicycle lock? This video can also be used to illustrate an example of a social experiment; for other examples, click here. Submitted By: Joanna
The NiqaBitch video protests France's burqa ban
Tags: art/music, bodies, crime/law/deviance, gender, immigration/citizenship, inequality, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, religion, sex/sexuality, burqa, burqa ban, chandra talpade mohanty, femininity, feminism, male gaze, niqa, postcolonialism, racism, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 2:17 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip features a protest against France's recent Burqa ban, which went into force in 2011. The new law stipulates that anyone caught wearing the niqab or burqa in public could face a fine of €150, or be forced to take lessons in French citizenship. The performance of the two women in the video challenges the resistance/subordination binary, which typically frames discussions about what it means when non-Western women don the veil. By sexualizing their veiled bodies, the women challenge ideas about whether wearing a veil is necessarily an expression of women's oppression, just as it challenges whether wearing hot pants and high heels is necessarily an expression of women's ability to resist oppression (Note that the ban went into force after the video was made). Moreover, by performing a sexualized femininity they are apparently able to navigate the streets of Paris without being disciplined, and their short walk raises a number of provocative questions. First, to what extent are the two women able to “break” the law because they have garnered the approval of the heterosexual male gaze? How might people react to these women if they did not fit the archetype of attractive females? This clip provides an excellent window into Chandra Mohanty's acclaimed paper “Under Western Eyes.” Mohanty takes issue with the way that Western feminists assume that wearing the veil is a symbol of oppression and fail to give a voice to the women who wear these clothes. It is unfair for Westerners to assume that the way they themselves dress is a symbol of empowerment without unpacking the systems of patriarchy that inform Western modes of dress. Viewers can also consider whether Westerners have the authority to make judgments about the way non-Westerners dress. Does the government have the right to create laws that ban certain styles of dress? If so, why aren't the religious symbol laws enforced for nuns who wear veils? Submitted By: Pat Louie Tags: children/youth, crime/law/deviance, gender, media, sex/sexuality, masculinity, patriarchy, sexism, socialization, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2013 Length: 0:30 Access: YouTube Summary: Following Judith Lorber, patriarchy can be defined as simultaneously the process, structure, and ideology of women's subordination. Sexism, then, denotes anything that promotes or reinforces the system through which this persistent subordination operates. People often have trouble working with formal definitions, so illustrations from the real world, such as this thirty-second commercial from Allstate, can be helpful. The ad features an insurance agent chatting with a homeowner, who is quite pleased with the tree house he recently built in his backyard. "The boys love it," he boasts, "They are up there day and night!" Then with deft comedic timing, the agent informs his prideful client that the boys love their new tree house primarily because it looks into their neighbor, Mrs. Koslowski's, window. It is important to move beyond simply calling commercials distasteful. To articulate why this Allstate ad is sexist is to articulate how it contributes to the systemic subordination of women. It is an exercise in describing how patriarchy works. As I see it, the sexist problems with this commercial are of two sorts. First, the narrative relies on a very problematic myth about the irrepressible sexual desires of boys and men. Plainly stated, Allstate has conjured a scenario of three prepubescent boys in their new tree house with binoculars, but they are not there to play as children. Rather, viewers are to conclude that their incipient male sexual drive is leading them to seize upon a rare voyeuristic opportunity, and a non-consensual one at that. This particular representation of men is sexist because it attempts to justify an abusive and exploitative pattern of behavior among men as it pertains to women. While there is really no evidence that men's libidos ever render them incapable of moral behavior, it is fairly clear that cultures which assure men they have irrepressible sexual urges give men permission to act as if their libido occasionally renders them incapable of moral behavior. But if the first problem has to do with justifying predatory behavior among men, the second problem is the commercial's claim about what constitutes an appropriate response to men who behave as sexual predators. There is a sense in the ad that viewers are witnessing a family memory in progress, perhaps a funny story that might some day be told at a party. But it's important not to lose sight of the fact that the boys are engaging in behavior that is both morally and legally reprehensible (real world examples can be found here). The boys are committing a serious crime; yet the tone of the commercial assures the viewer that it is just another banal instance of boys being boys. Note that the agent is laughing, and while the father is clearly uncomfortable, his response is to spray the boys with a hose. On this last point, the commercial is sexist because it downplays the seriousness of this subordinating behavior among men. To paraphrase sociologist Michael Kimmel, the often made conclusion that "boys will be boys" really means that boys and men will always be violent, rapacious animals. Such a conclusion is a sexist posture of resignation. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: crime/law/deviance, government/the state, drugs, medical marijuana, mandatory minimum sentencing, states rights, 06 to 10 mins Year: 2012 Length: 6:54 Access: New York Times Summary: This NYT video illuminates the tension between state and federal law in medical marijuana. It focuses on the story of Chris Williams, a medical marijuana producer. Before starting his business, Williams consulted a lawyer and county attorneys. He and his partner gave tours to state lawmakers, who had legalized medical marijuana back in 2004. And while medical marijuana is illegal under national law (the federal government has classified marijuana among the most dangerous drugs), a 2009 memo from the federal Bureau of Justice noted that the government "should not focus federal resources on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws." Williams felt he and his family were safe in operating his business under the law. However, in 2011, the federal government began cracking down on medical marijuana growers in states across the country. Along with many others, Chris Williams was arrested and now faces life in prison. The video documents some of the challenges that he and his son have faced since the arrest. In September 2012, Chris went before a jury and "was convicted on marijuana charges and for possessing firearms during a drug trafficking offense. He is currently behind bars and faces a minimum mandatory sentence of more than 80 years in prison." The video concludes by noting that 75% of Americans support medical marijuana and argues that federal law should be reformed to be consistent with state law and public will. Viewers may reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of medical marijuana and if states should be permitted to develop laws that contradict federal legislation. Do federal minimum sentencing laws make sense in Williams' case? Submitted By: Paul Dean Tags: crime/law/deviance, race/ethnicity, rural/urban, drug war, incarceration, poverty, prisons, school-to-prison pipeline, the wire, 21 to 60 mins Year: 2012 Length: 24:11 Access: Al Jazeera Summary: This short news documentary examines the relationships between race, poverty, incarceration, crime, and the war on drugs. It focuses on Baltimore, and its very high crime rates, showing how poor residents get attracted to crime and the drug business as a means of economic survival. With the war on drugs and its harsh prison sentences, many poor people are getting put behind bars. But despite harsh prison sentences and incarceration, these individuals continue to be drawn into selling drugs. Ed Burns, one of the writers behind The Wire, says "I don't know how much progress is being made because we're not dealing with the root causes." For example, jobs have been leaving Baltimore (and other US cities) since the late 1960s as a result of suburbanization and deindustrialization. Donnie Andrews (the real-life inspiration for Omar, a popular character from The Wire) notes that when people come out of prison, they are not able to find affordable housing, jobs, or health care, so people are likely to end up back in crime to survive. But rather than addressing the causes, since Nixon started the war on drugs in the early 1970s, our means of addressing the problem is through punishment and incarceration. This has caused an explosion in the US prison population, and the US now incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. This issue of drugs and incarceration also has a significant racial dimension. Despite the fact that black people are only slightly more likely to be involved in drugs than white people, they are seven times more likely to be incarcerated for drugs. The narrator notes that "if current incarceration rates remain unchanged, 1 in 3 black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime." In the video, Ed Burns adds that it is not really a war on drugs, but a war on black people (which has also now spread to a war on poor whites) that was started to take away energy from the Civil Rights movement. Viewers may be encouraged to reflect on what is the objective in the war on drugs? To what degree is it successful? What kind of policies would help rehabilitate perpetrators and help them to avoid returning to prison? For a shorter 2008 news clip (6:40) that more narrowly focuses on drug use in Baltimore, see here. Submitted By: Paul Dean |
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