OUGD501 - Lecture Notes: Globalisation, Sustainability and the Media

We're in a process of globalisation which is expanding, it is occuring and is a world with a series of radical different cultures which is now turning into a unified, mono culture.

It can be seen as positive and negative from different perspectives.

Socialist

Process of transformation of local and regional phenomena into global ones. It sees globalisation as a positive thing for the greater good.

Capitalist

The elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result.

It keeps needing to make profit, and if you keep a capitalist system to one country it will eventually run out of a market, so it needs to expand to other countries and cultures. Globalisation is something capitalist countries encourage as it spreads the markets globally.

McDonaldisation

A sociologist called George Ritzer talks about McDonaldization.

Refers to the idea that American big companies are now present globally and taking over markets globally. Also refers to process of an idea of an American organising of the world that's been transposed into different cultures. For eg, eating quickly 'fast food', without family meal time and no regard for health.

Marshall McLuhan

With TV and radio being invented in 20th century, people got excited about globalisation as they wanted this unified, global community.

Marshall McLuhan thought that telecommunications will affect how we interact with each other and it will have a huge impact on our lives. Says it heightens our senses, like when listening to radio, we are listening to something very far away.

Global Village Thesis

Says the world has had an implosion, where the world has gotten smaller now as we can reach far out cultures and know more about their news, culture etc. It is a global village, and we are all aware of each others problems.

He wanted a global embrace, but this is not what has happened. Seeing images of war etc has desensitised our feelings towards other cultures.

Cultures are realising that their values are being overlooked and ignored

Problems of Globalisation

Sovereignty - challenges to the idea of the nation-state

Accountability - transnational forces and organisations - who controls them?

Identity - who are we? Nation, group, community

When there is a business in a country, laws can be passed to control them. However, when a business is in several countries, there can't be laws because we can't control them in different countries. This means that big businesses are actually more powerful than the government. 

Cultural Imperialism

IF the global village is run with  certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one.

Rigging the Free Market

It's a myth that everyone has the same access to the same information

The media, like other multinational capitalist companies, operates as giant clusters of businesses controlled by one central business. 

American companies across the World, like Time Warner and HBO own a lot of companies that operate through the primary one. These companies control a vast amount of the World's media, and you can say that no matter where in the World you are, you are getting an Americanised stance on the World. 

Most important:

1. North America

2. Western Europe, Japan and Australia

3. Developing economics and regional producers (China, India, Brazil, Eastern Europe)

4. The rest of the world (Africa)

These companies are interested in the most important countries, and therefore put North American concerns firstly, for example if there was a magazine it would have American articles and ads, even if it was distributed in Africa.

It's a new form of imperialism  it's not about War, its about indoctrinating people to thinking its the most important way of life.

The biggest selling products in India now is skin whitening cream! As they have been so indoctrinated that the American life is so sought after, and this is what they aim to be now, devaluing their own culture.

The News media is a key part to propaganda. 

Chomsky & Herman (1998) Propaganda model

Ownership

A large proportion of newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdoch and he is a political take on the world. His agenda is to make as much money for himself as possible. He once boasted that it was the Sun that determined the outcome of the UK elections. There used to be a consertative supporting newspaper, but Labour made a deal with Murdoch that if he supported them, and relaxed laws about media. 

• News of the World
• The Sun
• The Sunday Times
• The Times
• NY Post
• BSkyB
• Fox TV

Sourcing

If I was a journalist and went to the Obama press conference, and started saying 'I think you're responsible for the mass murderer of lots of families in Afghanistan', I would be arrested by the CIA and never allowed to interview him ever again. So the stuff that is reported, is the only things that are allowed to be reported, as the editor also has political allegiances and wouldn't let it go to print.

Flak

This manipulates the news even further, where money is put into lobby groups where they make laws in their interests. They use the media, put stuff into the media that spreads their take on the world. Ford, Texaco and Exxon set up a group called the Global Climate Coalition that perpetuates stories that paint the oil companies in a great light.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

• Release less C02
• Plant more vegetation
• Try to be C02 neutral
• Recycle
• Buy a hybrid vehicle
• Encourage everyone you know to watch this film

Solution to be more eco-friendly is to feed capitalist businesses - if you have a car, buy a hybrid car, if you have a lightbulb, buy a energy saving lightbulb. Make more money for capitalists

Jim Inhofe 'Global warming is one of the biggest hoaxes every perpetuated ever in American history'

Sustainability

A concept introduced in the 80s, with a view towards effectively stopping headlong race to the depletion of the worlds resources and destruction of our fossil fuels. 

Erin Balser, 'Capital Accumulation, Sustainability and Hamilton, Ontario: How Technology and Capitalism can Misappropriate the idea of Sustainability'

A plant that makes renewable energy. 

Only people that can buy it is richer, middle-class people, and not as much profit because it's expensive to make.

Pollutants from the plant polluted nearby rivers and noise pollution.

Greenwashing

Greenwash packaging - makes packaging look more eco friendly by adding recycling symbols, green colour scheme and unbleached paper. 

'Most things are not designed for the needs of the people but for the needs of the manufactors to sell to people' Papanek, V.

OOUGD501 - Consumerism - Persuasion, Brand, Society, Culture

Looking at Western Capitalism through a Freudian view.

Aims

• Analyse rise of US consumerism
• Discuss links between consumerism and our unconscious desires
• Sigmund Freud
• Edward Bernays
• Consumerism as social control

Film

• Century of Self (2002)

Book

• No Logo (1999)

Freud

• New theory of human nature
• Psychoanalysis
• The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
• Hidden primitive sexual forces and animal instincts that need controlling
• The Unconscious (1915)
• The Ego and the Id (1923)
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)

He argued people aren't rational and are instinct based.

Conscious: Contact with outside world is tip of the iceberg

Preconscious: Material just beneath surface of awareness

Unconscious: Difficult to retrieve material well below the surface of awareness

1930 (book)

• Civilisation and Its Discontents
• Fundamental tension between civilisation and individual
• Human instincts incompatible with the wellbeing of community
• Says we have sexual and violent instincts and society keeps world in order with laws
• However, this means we are unsatisfied. If our pleasures are satiated we are docile and civilisation will make us happy

Freud said of WW1 we should expect is as we are instinctive human beings and are dangerous and have morbid desires. He thought it was inevitable, but wasn't happy with this and became depressed.

Edward Bernays

After the War the West developed considerably and became wealthy due to a number of treatys. During the war, Freud's nephew Edward Bernays was employed by Public Informations and he learnt a lot about propaganda. After the war he set up his own company and thus came the birth of PR. 

He said any business will succeed if the product is linked to our repressed, unconscious instincts.

Smoking

In 1920s smoking was a taboo for women, and this was bad for tobacco companies as they could only target half the audience. So a tobacco company employed Bernays to get rid of this prejudice. He did this by employing beautiful debutonts to go to a parade and start smoking when the photographers where about. He then sold a story to the press that these women were suffragettes and were fighting against male oppression. He called them 'torches of freedom' and it was seen as a sexy thing because of the beautiful women. This removed the prejudice.

He came up with:

• Celebrity endorsements
• Product placement
• Use of pseudoscienfitic reports

Things are bought not because they are things but because of the illusion of them satisfying our conscious.

Fordism

• Moving assembly line
• Productivity increased, so profits increased as there were more products to sell, so wages increased because companies could afford it

Aunt Jemima's Pancake Flour

At first this product was very unpopular, and after a series of focus groups it was revealed why. Women didn't want to buy this product as it made them feel less of a housewife for cheating and choosing the easy route. So they changed their recipe so that you had to add an egg to the mixture, and then it became very popular. Psychologically women's needs of wanting to provide and feed were satisfied and they felt they could buy the product without being less of a mother or wife.

Emergence of consumerism brings shift in why we buy products.

The Hidden Persuaders - book

• Selling emotional security
• Selling reassurance of worth
• Selling ego-gratification
• Selling love objects
• Selling creative outlets
• Selling sense of roots

When we buy these products our illusions are satisfied and we are happy, but our status isn't necessarily getting higher.

Great Depression

Government thought after the stock markets fell that gaining more profit is not a stable way to run a country as businesses had previously been giving advice to the government that society should be spending more. Roosevelt came in and introduced the New Deal.

Conclusion

• Consumerism is an idealogical project. 
• We believe that through consumption our desires can be met.
• The Consumer Self
• The conflicts between alternative models of social organisation.