Sociology Lens

Photo of Natural Resources Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

James Cameron’s Avatar has been making millions of dollars from movie ticket sales worldwide. The movie features humans invading the planet Pandora in the future. Corporate entities in cooperation with military units hope to extract natural resources from territory inhabited by indigenous people called the Na’vi. Although a human named Jake Sully initially agrees to gather intelligence for the military by using an avatar identity, he eventually decides to help the Na’vi mount an attack against the military. Regardless of James Cameron’s intention, the movie’s themes parallel several real-life occurrences such as the extraction of natural resources from the periphery, the forcible removal of indigenous peoples from their land, and the rise of transnational corporations.

Some people praise the movie for its recognition of environmental degradation, its promotion of sustainable practices, and its acknowledgement of the importance of landholding among indigenous peoples. Meanwhile, other people characterize the movie as anti-American and anti-military. Additionally, some critics consider the movie to be racist. Similar to other movies such as Dances with Wolves, the movie involves white males rescuing indigenous peoples.

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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and United States President Barack Obama at the United Nations Climate Change Conference

Last month, world leaders participated in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. At this conference, President Barack Obama of the United States and leaders of the BASIC Group (President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, and Premier Wen Jiabao of China) created the Copenhagen Accord.

The Copenhagen Accord acknowledged the continuation of previous agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol. Moreover, it established a maximum increase in global temperature of two degrees Celsius and welcomed future reviews to consider whether the global temperature increase should be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, it committed developed countries to providing additional funding for developing countries.

International organizations criticized the Copenhagen Accord for not being a legally binding agreement and for not specifying targets for reducing carbon emissions. According to representatives from Oxfam International, the Copenhagen Accord is “a triumph of spin over substance. It recognizes the need to keep warming below two degrees but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the decisions on emissions cuts and fudges the issue of climate cash.”

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Map of China Courtesy of Central Intelligence Agency

China aims to experience 8% economic growth in 2010, even after accounting for the global downturn. Since Beijing has targeted 8% economic growth in the past several years and has reached its goal each year, analysts consider China’s target as reasonable.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects China to exceed its goal, experiencing at least 9% economic growth in 2010. Meanwhile, the IMF only expects India to grow by 6.4%, Canada by 2.1%, Japan by 1.7%, the United States by 1.5%, and the United Kingdom and France by 0.9%.

China expects to experience economic growth because of implemented government stimulus measures and increased industrial production. Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong states: “Based on the central government’s target for around 8% economic growth, we’re aiming for around 11% growth in industrial output.” Since industrial output increased 19.2% in the previous year, it is possible for industrial input to increase 11% this year.

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Pornography and censorship in China

by christinablunt

Last Friday the Chinese government tightened its censorship of the internet search engine, Google. The website has been facing criticism from the state-supported internet watchdog, “China’s Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre” (CIIIRC), for ‘disseminating pornographic and vulgar information.’ This is only the latest in a series of actions taken by the Chinese to restrict access to information via the internet. As of July 1 every  P.C.s sold in the country will be fitted with filtering software. Some claim that the software, called “Green-Dam Youth Escort,” would censor all content deemed politically unacceptable, not just pornography. These actions are part of China’s campaign to control the “large volume of foreign internet pornographic information [that] has entered [their] borders.”

China is, of course, not the first country to censor the content its citizens consume, and it certainly wont be the last. One must consider both the nature of the perceived threat and what the state stands to gain by stifling it. The perception of the government is that unmitigated popular culture is dangerous or subversive. Thus, popular culture enters the realm of the political.

The politics of popular culture is most commonly viewed through the lens of content that is meant to inspire political action. This, however, is only one dimension of the influence of the political on culture and of culture on the political. In “The Politics of Popular Culture,” John Street explains that popular culture is political simply by the state intervening in its production and distribution, most commonly through censorship, whether overt or otherwise. Street goes on to explain that the dichotomy established between ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘censorship’ is a false one.

Censorship has the potential to be political because of its attempts to weigh the freedoms that some content can restrict. The censorship of sex specifically, as in the example of China, may involve the denial of sexual identity. Some feminist theorists, such as Dworkin and MacKinnon, assert that the “censorship of pornography is justified because pornographic representations harm women, denying them their identity and their freedom.”

The censorship of popular culture is political in these three ways: the content being limited, the censorer, and the implications of these restrictions for freedom and identity. To what extent these controls on culture and consumption matter, however, depend not upon the politics of the state but the politics of identity; how culture animates thoughts. Identity is the subject of culture’s politics. Control over its formation is control over the populace.

Read the article on the BBC

Read “The Politics of Popular Culture” at Blackwell Reference Online