Tags: goffman, theory, ambiguity, breakdown, breaking frame, disruption, dramaturgy, frame alignment, frames, impression management, key, norms, reparation, symbolic interactionism, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 5:52 Access: YouTube Summary: Many students will be familiar with Minerva, Ohio Councilman Phil Davison's speech, in which he sought the nomination for Stark County Treasurer. In this viral clip, the unbridled enthusiasm and apparent anger expressed by Councilman Davison catch us off guard and strike many as inappropriate. But the fact that we, as the audience, have expectations that were violated suggests there is an underlying structure or script that regulates the speaker's demeanor in situations such as these. I would argue that Erving Goffman's work offers a useful conceptual framework for describing the situational structure environing Councilman Davison's speech, and the speech can be used in a class as a means of illustrating many of Goffman's theoretical concepts. For starters, an instructor might note that by applying a dramaturgical analysis, one can examine Davison's speech as more than a mere announcement. It is instead a performance, analogous to the kind one might pay to see at the theater. For example, there is a stage. Davison's suit and podium are his props. His handwritten speech is like a script, but it should be noted that there already exists a general kind of script for such speeches. Furthermore, one can use Davison's speech to engage Goffman's concept of impression management. How is Davison attempting to control people's impressions of him? What impressions is he "giving off," irrespective of his intentions? Goffman (1986, p. 10) discussed the notion of a frame, referring to the definitions of a situation. Frames orient people to a collective understanding of "what's going on" in a given situation, and there exists frame alignment when there is a consensus among all participants about appropriate behaviors in a given situation. A key, by contrast, is a set of conventions seemingly imported from one activity and applied to another with the aim of transforming the latter (p. 44). At one point, Davison attempts--perhaps unsuccessfully--to layer his speech with meaning by keying his approach to the job of County Treasurer to an act of war. At another point, he keys it to an aggressive game of football. Finally, an instructor can use this clip to emphasize Goffman's attention to breakdowns (breaking frame) and reparations. One could argue that Davison broke frame once his speech too closely resembled the kind of pep talk a player gets before a big game. The audience's embarrassment at being unable to save Davison's performance for him can be understood as a ritual reparation, paid as a consequence of the broken social order. Submitted By: Lester Andrist
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Tags: knowledge, race/ethnicity, war/military, collective memory, culture, museums, sites of memory, symbolic power, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 4:20 Access: The Daily Show Summary: In this clip Jon Stewart notes that next year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War and takes the opportunity to respond to an educational video produced by the Sons of Confederate Vets, which appears to celebrate the South's secessionist history. Stewart is joined by "senior Black correspondant" Larry Wilmore and the duo level a satirical critique against those who celebrate this history, arguing that celebrating secession is akin to celebrating slavery. It's not the case that slavery is only discussed in politically correct accounts of the American Civil War, Wilmore explains, slavery is in fact explicitly mentioned in actual succession documents. In my view, the clip would work well in a class grappling with the sociology of collective memory and can be used to help demonstrate why sociologists analyze museums and other projects of commemoration. The video lays bare the fact that interpretations of historical events are always political projects. They are, in a sense, more about symbolic power in the present than the accuracy of events in the past. Thanks to Sociological Images for suggesting the clip. 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: demography/population, globalization, health/medicine, inequality, methodology/statistics, political economy, data visualization, global development, income, life expectancy, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 4:48 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip plots the health and wealth of 200 countries over 200 years. Animating data in real space, Hans Rosling explains how global health and wealth trends have changed since 1810. Despite persistent and extreme inequalities (both across countries and within countries), Rosling's data point to a closing gap between Western and non-Western countries, fostering a "converging world" perspective. He projects that, in the future, everyone can "make it" to the healthy and wealthy plots on the graph. This clip might be useful in a statistics, demography, globalization, or health/medical sociology class, as it helps students (particularly the novice statistician) to visualize data trends and illustrates for students the very cool things that can be done with statistical data. Instructors of medical sociology, health, and inequality might also facilitate a discussion about social factors that might inhibit or foster Rosling's optimistic portrait of the future. This clip might work well with another Hans Rosling's clip, in which he uses data visualization to illustrate global changes since the 1960s related to fertility, life expectancy, child survival and poverty by nation (and region). Submitted By: Valerie Chepp Tags: prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, color-blindness, color-blind racism, comedy, white privilege, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 2:30 Access: YouTube Summary: In this clip from his show "Chewed Up," comedian Louis C.K. examines white privilege (including his own white privilege). One of the benefits of whiteness he explores is his ability to travel to any time period in history and know that, regardless of the historical era, he would be advantaged. He also examines the potential disadvantages of future retribution. I like to use this clip to introduce the concept of white privilege to students through the use of comedy, a particularly useful approach given many students' initial resistance to the concept. Given the fact that whiteness has been so consistently privileged over such a long period of time, the clip can highlight for students the multi-generational privileges that accumulate over time from being white. While the clip may not explain present-day advantages of being white, students and instructors can critically approach Louis C.K.'s suggestion that "anything before 1980" would be a difficult time for non-white people. Does white privilege go away after 1980? Or might we see more covert, but no less destructive, racial oppression and privilege? These questions can segue into a conversation of color blindness, an ideology that, perhaps ironically, Louis C.K.'s claim about 1980 and racial oppression might inadvertently feed into. This clip contributes to The Sociological Cinema's growing collection of comedy clips that are useful for illustrating sociological concepts. Submitted By: Kendra Barber Tags: discourse/language, immigration/citizenship, prejudice/discrimination, race/ethnicity, racism, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2010 Length: 2:58 Access: YouTube Summary: This video clip concisely explains how the media's use of the word "illegal" to describe a group of people (often undocumented immigrants) becomes racially coded language and, as such, grounds for hate crimes. This film clip is part of the Drop the "I" Word Campaign; the website offers other resources related to the video clip. I find that the clip offers students a way to explore why the terms "illegal alien" and "illegal" might be problematic and how these terms are applied to certain groups of people in ways that become racial slurs. Submitted By: Kendra Barber Tags: gender, social mvmts/social change/resistance, feminism, stereotypes, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2005 Length: 2:05 Access: YouTube Summary: I like to use this short clip in my classes when I talk about feminism, feminists, and popular perceptions about feminists. Excerpted from the documentary film I Was A Teenage Feminist, the clip shows a survey of men on the streets of New York City stating their opinions of feminists. In my experience, the clip is an effective conversation starter because students find it humorous (whether they agree with the perceptions or not) and it opens the door to exploring why there are so many misconceptions about the label "feminist," as well as a discussion around who is advantaged or disadvantaged by these labels. Click here for additional clips from the film and click here and here for discussions on the utility of using humor to teach sociological concepts. Submitted By: Kendra Barber Tags: discourse/language, religion, theory, bourdieu, culture, habitus, subculture, subtitles/CC, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 2:49 Access: YouTube Summary: Pierre Bourdieu popularized the sociological concept of habitus, but unfortunately Bourdieu is not the most accessible social theorist. One can use this humorous video and the examples it depicts to explain the concept to students. The clip satirizes an evangelical habitus and begins with the narrator asking rhetorically, "Ever been a part of a conversation with other Christians and you have no clue what they are saying?" To learn how to converse with Christians, all one needs to do, we are told, is buy the instructional tape series, "How to Speak Christianese." As habitus is a set or system of dispositions, including those pertaining to speech and language, the clip's depiction of Christians as sharing common idioms that must be learned works well as a means of illustrating how people occupy fairly distinct habitus. The clip can further serve as a means of illustrating how, depending on one's habitus, one might be predisposed to articulate the world in a particular way. Students can be encouraged to come up with their own examples of habitus. They can be asked to reflect on the advantages someone might have who is able to operate with ease within a particular habitus. Finally, students can even be asked to consider how likely it is for a person to truly inhabit a habitus after merely listening to a book on tape. Submitted By: Kendra Barber
Jay Smooth discusses "no homo"
Tags: discourse/language, gender, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, fag discourse, homophobia, hip hop, Identity politics, masculinity, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2008 Length: 2:58 Access: YouTube Summary: In this clip Jay Smooth of the Ill Doctrine remarks on the emergence and popularity of the phrase "no homo" in hip hop music. Smooth first notes how the term "no homo" was popularized by Cam'ron of New York's Dipset Crew, he critiques the term, then discusses whether it can even be used ironically as a critique of homophobia. The clip would work as a nice follow-up to C.J. Pascoe's Dude, You're a Fag, which argues that through a "fag discourse" boys effectively police the boundaries of masculinity. Students can be asked to consider how "no homo" might be a part of this discourse. Note that this clip works well in tandem with a second short clip from Brian Safi of "That's Gay," which similarly draws attention to the emergence and use of the phrase "no homo." Submitted By: Jessica Holden Sherwood Tags: discourse/language, gender, lgbtq, sex/sexuality, fag discourse, homophobia, hip hop, Identity politics, masculinity, 00 to 05 mins Year: 2009 Length: 3:37 Access: YouTube Summary: This clip presents witty commentary from Bryan Safi about the emergence and popularity of the phrase "no homo" in hip hop music. Safi takes aim at artists like Cam'ron and Lil Wayne and suggests that their need to use this phrase in order to establish themselves as heterosexual men is ridiculous. The clip is a nice follow-up to reading Dude, You're a Fag, where C.J, Pascoe argues that through a "fag discourse" boys effectively police the boundaries of masculinity. Students can be encouraged to consider how the phrase is deployed as a part of an interactive process between men which renders homosexuality an abject identity. Note that this clip works well in tandem with a second short clip by Jay Smooth, which similarly draws attention to the emergence and use of the phrase "no homo." Submitted By: Jessica Holden Sherwood |
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