__Tags: government/the state, immigration/citizenship, theory, war/military, violence, bare life, biopolitics, guantanamo bay, gitmo, giorgio agamben, terrorism, torture, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2011 Length: 4:16 Access: NBC News Summary: Consider for a moment a patient whose brain activity has ceased but whose other organs continue to function uninterrupted. From the standpoint of modern science, the patient is merely a collection of interdependent biological mechanisms—one which pumps blood, one which oxygenates it, and another which filters it. Though once a person, the patient could now be deemed merely bare life, and as such, a physician could conceivably invoke a cardiac arrest without being accused of homicide. Prior to brain death, the patient lived a life which law sought to protect; a life that could not be killed without legal consequences. After brain death, the patient could be killed but no longer murdered. Giorgio Agamben, in his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, examines the social movement of this biopolitical threshold, from a politically qualified life that is protected in law to one which is beyond law and can no longer be murdered. The protagonist of his book is homo sacer (the "sacred man," who may be killed and yet not sacrificed). In the book, Agamben is actually less concerned with patients facing brain death and what happens within the walls of hospitals, and instead, he focuses on the concentration camp, which he deems to be the absolute paradigm of modern political space. It is in the space of the camp where inhabitants' bodies are stripped of their status as citizens and reduced to bare life; their bodies become what is at stake in political strategy. They have no rights to legal counsel, for example, and are beyond the reach of habeas corpus. The above clip features an interview with Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, who was detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (GITMO). Madni recounts his experience of being mistakenly captured and shipped to GITMO. He was kept in a refrigerated unit, and deprived of sleep. After 192 days of experiencing chronic pain, he finally unsuccessfully attempted suicide. As Agamben argues, he and the other detainees at GITMO have been reduced to bare life, each a homo sacer in that they occupy a biopolitical space where they are confronted by power without any protection or mediation. Their bodies are but biological mechanisms to be manipulated by power; to be tortured or even prevented from dying. Madni's testimony can be used to provoke discussion about concentration camps as spaces outside of law, and in particular, Giorgio Agamben's idea about the camp as a biopolitical space. Submitted By: Lester Andrist
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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: 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: 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
Darcus Howe
Tags: class, crime/law/deviance, discourse/language, goffman, government/the state, inequality, knowledge, media, race/ethnicity, social mvmts/social change/resistance, theory, violence, collective action frames, politics of signification, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2011 Length: 4:24 Access: YouTube Summary: What shall we name what is happening in London? While investigating gun crimes, police shot and killed Mark Duggan, a 29 year-old Black man who was carrying a loaded gun (though it should be said, he never fired the weapon on police). Catalyzed by Duggan's death, protests, looting, and destruction of public and private property have rapidly spread across London. Is it a riot, an uprising, a rebellion, a social movement, or is it an insurrection? Whatever frame we choose has important consequences for the shape of things to come. For instance, the word riot suggests disorganized destruction, whereas an insurrection suggests an organized effort against oppression. One frame will likely garner more support for this social upheaval than the other. In this clip, the BBC interviews Darcus Howe, a television journalist and long time grass-roots activist. At the 3:08 mark, Howe keys the current turmoil, which is spread throughout London, to that which took place in 1981 in Brixton. He then insists that what is happening in London is an "insurrection of the people." At 3:40, the BBC reporter appears to challenge Howe's credibility by naming him a rioter. "Mr. Howe," she interrupts, "if I could just ask you, you are not a stranger to riots yourself, I understand, are you?" Howe refuses this frame in his reply: "I have never taken part in a single riot. I've been on demonstrations that ended up in a conflict." The clip would work well with a class grappling with social movements and the importance of collective action frames. To quote Benford and Snow (2000, p. 613), the confrontation between Howe and the reporter is a rather vivid example of two signifying agents "actively engaged in the production and maintenance of meaning for constituents, antagonists, and bystanders or observers. [Signifying agents] are deeply embroiled, along with..local governments, and the state, in what has been referred to as a 'politics of signification' (Hall 1982)." Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: children/youth, foucault, war/military, government/the state, race/ethnicity, theory, biopolitics, biopower, governmentality, microphysics, subtitles/CC, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2011 Length: 14:34 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip is from the History Channel documentary, Third Reich: Rise & Fall, and features rare footage of the Hitler Youth Brigade. Examining the girl's division, the film's narrator explains that these Hitler Maidens from Nazi Germany were taught from a young age that it was their duty to breed and nurture new generations of Aryan youth. The clip might be a useful way for stimulating discussion about what Michel Foucault meant by governmentality. As sociologist Thomas Lemke summarizes, the concept suggests "a view on power beyond a perspective that centers either on consensus or on violence; it links technologies of the self with technologies of domination, the constitution of the subject to the formation of the state." From this Foucauldian perspective, one can see in the clip how the young girls were constituted as good Nazis. Strictly speaking, their political compliance and enthusiasm to "breed" for the Führer cannot be explained as due to simple coercion or consent. For Foucault, the state, and the individuals the state is said to govern, codetermine each other. At about 10:00, a "Hitler Maiden" writes about how most of the girls in the youth camp became pregnant during the summer. Upon learning of her daughter's pregnancy, a mother rushed to the camp and attempted to discipline her daughter, but the daughter responded by telling her mother to leave the camp, or else she would report her mother to the authorities for "sabotaging German motherhood." This section of the clip could be drawn on to underscore Foucault's theory of the “microphysics of power” and “the gaze,” which Foucault described as swarming through society and entering into the minds and consciousness of the people. Submitted By: Raul Barboza 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: government/the state, media, politics/election/voting, chomsky, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 5:58 Access: YouTube Summary: In this clip, professor Justin Lewis discusses the role of the US media in "manufacturing consent." The media, Lewis explains, is not used as a device which necessarily tells people what to think, but rather, it tells them what to think about and is therefore an agenda setting device. Lewis further discusses the role the media plays in elections by giving the American public the illusion of a distinct choice between political candidates, when in fact differences between Democrats and Republicans across substantive economic issues are often very minor. I have successfully used this clip in an introductory sociology class as a means of sparking discussion about the power of the media. The clip works particularly well as a means of supplementing Noam Chomsky's book, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: capitalism, class, corporations, globalization, government/the state, marx/marxism, political economy, capitalist, internal contradiction, labor, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2010 Length: 11:10 Access: GOOD Blog Summary: The GOOD Blog describes the video as "another of those fantastic RSAnimate videos from London's Royal Society for the Arts, the Marxist sociologist David Harvey explains how the 'internal contradictions of capital accumulation,' not human nature or faulty institutions, are the actual root cause of the recent financial collapse (along with a host of other economic crises)." The clip would work well in a class grappling with Marxism and the continuing relevance and application of Marxist theory. In my view, the clip is particularly useful when attempting to broaden the discussion to the way capitalism works on a global scale. The clip can be used in conjunction with Harvey's new book, The Enigma of Capital: and the Crisis of Capitalism, and a fifteen minute audio interview he recently gave to Wisconsin Public Radio about the causes of the financial crises. Harvey's argument dovetails nicely with Mark Blyth's argument about class politics and the true meaning of "austerity," which is also posted on The Sociological Cinema. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: abortion/reproduction, class, demography/population, government/the state, inequality, political economy, philippines, poverty, fertility, contraception, 11 to 20 mins Year: 2008 Length: 12:26 Access: YouTube Summary: This news report from Al Jazeera English focuses on the growing population in the Philippines. "It's a population explosion," the reporter begins, "Every year two million babies are born in the Philippines." The report suggests that one important reason for the growth is the government's pronatal policies, and specifically, its failure to promote contraception. The clip highlights the role governments play in demographic realities and fertility in particular. The clip suggests connections between population growth and economic development and would work well in a class on demography or development. Submitted By: Lester Andrist |
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