Tags: capitalism, class, education, inequality, marx/marxism, political economy, theory, american dream, comedy, false consciousness, ideology, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2005 Length: 3:15 Access: YouTube Summary: Trigger warning: In typical George Carlin style, this clip is full of expletives and vulgar sexual metaphors (although the language in the first 1:20 is OK). Here, Carlin emphasizes the gap between "the owners of this country" and the rest of us. Carlin states that the owners control the politicians by lobbying to get what they want, but they also control people through education and media. They keep the educational system just good enough to educate people to be obedient workers but keep it poor enough so that it does not teach people enough to be able to think for themselves. They use the media to tell people what to believe, what to buy, and what to think. Because people can vote, they suffer the illusion that they have "freedom of choice." Suffering from false consciousness, they support ideas that are against their own self interests; for example they accept the reduced pay, fewer benefits, and less social programs that the owners claim are in their interests. All the while, they remain powerless to the owners. This illustrates Marx's concept of ideology; Marx stated “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas." These ruling ideas, or ideologies, obscure the structural violence and exploitation used to keep oppressed groups in their place. The clip ends with the statement "it's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it," emphasizing a fundamental ideology that legitimates social inequality and oppression. Submitted: Jack Pold and Delano Scott
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Tags: gender, goffman, marriage/family, theory, motherhood, role expectations, role conflict, social status, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 3:16 Access: YouTube Summary: Anita Renfroe uses music and comedy to present a day in the life of a mom. “Momsense” (also called “Momisms”), set to the William Tell Overture, is her rendition of the many conversations between mothers and their children. This short clip works well as an introduction to social status, social roles, and role expectations. It also illustrates the scripts of mothers (Goffman’s dramaturgy). Before the clip is shown, ask students to identify the role expectations of mothers. After the clip, discuss which phrases (or scripts) were familiar to them and illustrated various role expectations. Here, instructors can move to a discussion about such things as: 1) role strain, or the difficulty of competing demands of motherhood; 2) role conflict, or the difficulty that mothers face in balancing work and family; and 3) status, including privileges extended to mothers because of their position in society. Another interesting discussion could focus on gender role expectations of fathers (Renfroe created a similar rendition called “Dadsense”, with the only words being “go ask your mom”). Students can explore Kimmel’s idea of multiple masculinities and a broadening idea of gender roles. An instructor might even pose the question, do students think that their generation will become more accepting of the nurturing and caregiving role of fathers? Submitted By: Cindy Wasberg 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 Tags: gender, inequality, marriage/family, organizations/occupations/work, housework, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 0:40 Access: no online access (transcript and still shots here) Summary: This short scene from The Office (season 5, episode 9; 12:39-13:19) is an excellent illustration of Francine Deutsch's work on strategies men use to resist doing housework. Drawing upon observations and interviews with 150 dual-earner couples (for a total of 300 interviews), Deutsch outlines five strategies men deploy--either knowingly or not--to avoid equally participating in household chores; they are: (1) passive resistance, (2) incompetence, (3) praise, (4) different standards, and (5) denial. In this episode, Pam is grossed out by the filthy microwave in the office kitchen. She leaves an anonymous note, requesting people to clean up their mess. Some office colleagues interpret her note as obnoxious and elitist. Later in the day, her co-worker Ryan confides in her that he is "totally on [her] side with the whole microwave situation," yet he not-so-subtly hints that she should be the one to ultimately clean the mess. A transcript of their interaction illustrates how Ryan resists Pam's suggestion that he, the office temp, would be the most appropriate one to clean the microwave. Ryan demonstrates Deutsch's concept of incompetence, suggesting that he "would just make it worse" and he is "hopeless at that stuff." In addition to incompetence, students can be encouraged to come up with alternative responses Ryan might have said that would have illustrated other strategies Deutsch identifies men use to resist doing housework. Submitted By: Valerie Chepp Tags: biology, health/medicine, inequality, knowledge, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, science/technology, social construction, theory, fallacy of reification, racial formation, racial project, scientific racism, slave hypothesis, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2011 Length: 2:36 Access: YouTube Summary: When discussing racial inequality in my introductory sociology course I make it a point to cover Omi and Winant's notion of a racial formation as resulting from historically situated racial projects wherein "racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed" (p. 55-56). These projects take multiple forms but in at least one version, there is an attempt to collapse race—a socially constructed concept—into biology. Such projects are similar insofar as they suggest that the socially constructed distinctiveness between people of different racial categories roughly approximates a meaningful biological distinctiveness. Scientists have been centrally involved in this effort to "find" a biological basis for race. Thus in the middle of the 19th century Dr. Samuel Morton attempted to establish that on average cranial capacities of different races were measurably different. While the cranium is no longer scrutinized in this way, the search for a biological, and therefore "natural," basis for race continues. In 1988 Dr. Clarence Grim put forth what is now known as the "slave hypothesis," which is the idea that the enslaved people who survived the Middle Passage were more likely to be carriers of a gene that allowed them to retain salt. Grim argued that this ability to retain salt, while necessary for surviving the harsh conditions on slave ships, is now proving to be the leading cause for higher rates of hypertension among African Americans. This theory has been soundly refuted but apparently still remains in many hypertension textbooks, and in 2007, the medical celebrity, Dr. Oz, promoted the idea to an audience of about 8 million people on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The clip above is from January of this year and is yet another instance of him promoting the theory. Coupled with the recent introduction of BiDil as an FDA approved treatment of heart failure for African Americans, sociologists have taken note of this slipperiest of slides down the slope of "deploying racial categories as if they were immutable in nature and society" (see Troy Duster's article in Science). The clip offers an excellent opportunity for students to discuss the persistence of this racial project, the involvement of science in this project, and how these ideological articulations might serve to provide a justification for continued inequality. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Tags: commodification, consumption/consumerism, corporations, education, marketing/brands, advertising, college students, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2011 Length: 5:41 Access: NYTimes.com Summary: This NYT video starts by showing us UNC's inaugural party for incoming freshmen at Target (an American big-box store) where "campus ambassadors" promote corporate brands to their fellow students. At another 50 campuses, American Eagle student representatives help freshmen move into their dorms on their first ever day at college, an iconic and memorable moment to link to corporate branding. As one marketing exec says, "its all about marketing through students as opposed to marketing to students." But what does this mean for university education today? The university, meant to represent intellectual integrity through the pursuit of truth and dissemination of knowledge, is becoming increasingly compromised as budgetary cuts encourage greater reliance on the private sector. The students themselves benefit by gaining work experience, compensation in money and products, and networking (e.g. meeting marketing executives), but are they being manipulated by corporations in the process? Student "ambassadors" in the video report that "when you know companies are not there just to get your money, they're actually willing to help you as an individual in whatever way possible, it makes you respect them a lot more," and that it "feels like what you're doing actually matters." Are these corporations really "willing to help in any way possible" or will they do this only insofar as they have something to gain? A UNC representative notes that they have little control over the commercialization of their campus, and a student advocate for social justice notes that this is "commercialization and materialism at its finest." The video reflects a growing body of research (e.g. The Corporate Campus) documenting the rise of commercialization on college campuses, which offers many excellent readings that can be paired with it. Viewers may be encouraged to reflect on the role of corporations and corporate advertising in society today. How have corporations drawn upon social relationships of trust and legitimacy to further their agenda? How might a Marxian perspective help us understand these processes and what is at stake? Should corporate advertising be banned in certain spaces? Submitted By: Paul Dean Tags: children/youth, gender, marketing/brands, media, advertising, ironic sexism, media literacy, representation, retro sexism, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2011 Length: 0:32 Access: YouTube Summary: If you haven't stopped to familiarize yourself with retro sexism, take the opportunity to do it now because it is confusing your students. It will come as no surprise to readers of this site that sexism is alive and well in advertising, even if the specific form it took a few decades ago has changed significantly. Exhibit A: this new My Tide commercial features a comically anxious mother delivering her testimony directly to the consumer. The mother is visibly uncomfortable that her daughter wears hoodies, cargo shorts, has dispensed with "the whole pink thing," and keeps building car garages for her dinosaurs. This commercial is an excellent example of sexism, but not the sexism of your parent's generation. Think of it is a sexism seen through a glass darkly—retro sexism. Retro sexist media can be defined as media that mimics or glorifies sexist aspects of the past, often in an ironic way. Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency notes that there is characteristically "a wink and a nod" approach in this sort of advertising, where the advertiser attempts to bring the viewer in on the silliness of it all. Thus the viewer watches the My Tide mother stifle her discomfort and effectively mimic those mothers of yesteryear who had trouble coloring outside the prescribed gender lines. Some will undoubtedly fail to see the hint of self-mockery in this ad and seize on it as an example of run-of-the-mill sexism. Others will note the irony and proclaim that the commercial is actually quite progressive. My own view is that this ad is not straightforward sexism and neither does it amount to the kind of satire that offers a fundamental critique of sexism (unlike this commercial). Its primary ambition is to sell soap, and like a joke with no punchline, it is merely impersonating satire in order to build a rapport with the consumer. Somewhere along the way it succeeds in smuggling in an old-fashioned sexism. Make no mistake, policing the boundaries of femininity and masculinity is not nearly as old-fashioned as this ad pretends. For example, The Sociological Cinema has posted a clip about the controversy surrounding photos of a mother painting her sons nails with pink nail polish (here), and we have posted on the use of the phrase "no homo," as a means of policing masculinity (here and here). Here at last is an example of how femininity gets policed as well. Submitted By: Lester Andrist Carole Morrison explains modern chicken farming practices Tags: capitalism, food/agriculture, marx/marxism, organizations/occupations/work, theory, weber, alienation, assembly line, fordism, labor process, mass production, rationalization, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 4:47 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip is from Food Inc., a documentary illustrating how giant food corporations have taken control over the entire food production system "from seed to supermarket." The video shows how this rationalized system leads to the alienation and impoverishment of its workers, such as Carole Morrison (a Perdue chicken farmer). It illustrates all four dimensions of Marx's concept of alienation. First, Morrison is alienated from the production process because Perdue dictates how the chickens must be raised. Perdue requires that chicken farmers enter contracts with them, which require the farmers to upgrade their farms to dark, windowless facilities in order to raise the chickens faster and make them less resistant. Working for Perdue, Morrison is also alienated from her species-being because her creativity is being stifled, meaning she cannot raise the chicken in a natural environment. She may prefer allowing the chickens to see light or she may have a different method of ventilating the room than Perdue mandates. Perdue's practices also alienate Morrison from her product. When she's done raising the chickens, Perdue comes and takes them all away. Mrs. Morrison's labor only serves to benefit Perdue and she does not get to keep or benefit from the products she raises (i.e. produces). Finally, Morrison is alienated from her fellow workers. Even though there are many different farmers contracted by Perdue, they have no connection to each other and only care about following Perdue's commands. Morrison says that farmers are afraid to speak against Perdue because they might lose their contracts. If one farmer were to lose her contract with Perdue, it would be safe to say that the other farmers would either be indifferent or might not even know. This clip also illustrates Weber's notion of rationalization in that Perdue seeks to make the production of chickens increasingly efficient, calculable, predictable, and controllable (e.g. they make chicken coups dark because it makes the chickens more docile and easier to catch). However, there are many "irrationalities of rationality," including diseases, mistreatment of animals, and abuses against workers. Finally, the video notes that many workers that come to take the chickens are undocumented workers,and Perdue knows that they "aren't going to complain" about being subjected to diseases or unfair treatment. The worker's undocumented status makes them easier to control. Note that because of Morrison's participation in the documentary, her contract with Perdue was terminated. Submitted By: Reza Rahvarian and Alex Hong Tags: children/youth, class, education, methodology/statistics, autoethnography, film studies, popular culture, privilege, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1995 Length: 0:40 Access: MOVIECLIPS Summary: In this clip from the movie Clueless, Travis thanks the many people involved in helping him accrue the most tardies in the class. I've used this clip as a (very brief) example of autoethnography, a method of autobiographical storytelling that explores a person's social experiences through their empirical yet subjective personal narrative. I ask students to reflect on the social relationships and experiences that have shaped their identities and their understandings of themselves. This clip, though short, gives us plenty to talk about in the way of social relationships shaping Travis' life -- his parents never give him a ride to school; why might that be? He rides public transit; how might that shape how his Beverly Hills classmates see him? This can lead to a discussion about how social class has shaped this character's experiences, how he sees himself, how others see him, as well as how he perceives others to see him. Submitted By: Margaret Austin Smith Tags: goffman, theory, comedy, impression management, self-presentation, social interaction, 00 to 05 mins Year: 1990 Length: 5:56 Access: YouTube Summary: In this clip from the popular British comedy television series of the same name, Mr. Bean attempts to cheat off a fellow student during an exam. So as to appear inconspicuous, Mr. Bean engages in impression management, a process in which social actors---either consciously or not---seek to influence the perceptions of other people by controlling information exchanged and exhibited during the social interaction. Erving Goffman emphasized that the process of impression management (and the closely related concept of self-presentation) is specific to a situational context. In this case, Mr. Bean attempts to regulate the social interaction in such a way that his classmates and professor do not suspect him of cheating; he does so by drawing upon behavior that we, as a society, have collectively deemed "test-taking behavior," appropriate for the situational context of a classroom exam. Such behavior deployed by Mr. Bean includes pretending to have a sudden epiphany of a correct answer, and feigning intense concentration by wrinkling his brow and sticking out the tip of his tongue. However, as time passes and Mr. Bean gets more desperate, his attempts to cheat become more extreme; as such, his ability to manage his fellow student's and professor's impressions of the situation become more tenuous, bordering on failure. Goffman says that when a social actor's attempts to present a desired impression is inconsistent with an audience's perception---that is, when the impression management process breaks down---embarrassment occurs. Instructors can encourage students to think about the great lengths we all go, like Mr. Bean, to manage people's impressions of ourselves in our everyday lives. Can students think of embarrassing moments in their own lives and apply theories of impression management and self-presentation to make sense of these awkward social interactions? Submitted By: Stephanie K. Decker |
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