It should not rocket science for the administration or Congress to figure it out. So, the only conclusion is that this is how they want thing to be. The closing act of the shock doctrine. The triumph of neoliberalism.

First, on Le Monde’s financial blog, Demystifier La Finance, George Ugeux reviews the compensation of American CEOs over the past ten years and notes the absence of correlation between compensation (astronomical) and performance (variable, from very profitable in the case of Steve Jobs, to abysmal in the case of Lehman Brothers or Countrywide, to stagnant in the case of Colgate or Starbucks).

As Ugeux notes, these 25 individual CEOs collectively received $14 billion (a little less than the GNP of Ivory Coast or Cameroon), but they have not created value, which means that, based on the data, the correlation between value creation and CEO compensation is not significant, random. Only 5 of the 25 companies that provided such extravagant compensation did better than the Dow Jones. Which means that corporate governance structures either have abdicated their responsibility or are marked by what the French would call “copinage” (a mix of interlocking directorates and “old boys network”, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours… yes, they’re all men).

Interestingly, one of the commenters to the post notes that French CEOs often argue that their also, but not quite as extravagant compensation is due to the fact that they need to remain competitive internationally. Except that, for them, “internationally” only means copying American practices. After all, if they chose a different standard of comparison for international competition, for instance, Japan, they would find that compensation is not the same at all.

On the same topic, ChartPorn reports on major CEO payouts (the infamous Golden Parachutes):

This is what should be mentioned every time someone gripes about merit pay for teachers and complains about how tenure protects bad teachers from being fired and how, in the private, non-unionized sector, where real performance is rewarded and poor performance not tolerated, things are so much more fair and just and profitable.

In these discussions, it is as if (1) 100% of education personnel was tenured (not really) and (2) as if tenure was unique to education and higher education (not really either).

But that is what goes on at the top of the social ladder. What about other categories of labor? Let’s talk about wage theft:

“Billions of dollars in wages are being illegally stolen from millions of workers each and every year. The employers range from small neighborhood businesses to some of the nation’s largest employers—Wal-Mart, Tyson, McDonald’s, Target, Pulte Homes, federal, state, and local governments and many more.

Wage theft occurs when workers are not paid all their wages, workers are denied overtime when they should be paid it, or workers aren’t paid at all for work they’ve performed. Wage theft is when an employer violates the law and deprives a worker of legally mandated wages.

Wage theft is widespread and pervasive across all types of companies. Various surveys have found that:

• 60 percent of nursing homes stole workers’ wages.
• 89 percent of nonmonitored garment factories in Los Angeles and 67 percent of nonmonitored garment factories in New York City stole workers’ wages.
• 25 percent of tomato producers, 35 percent of lettuce producers, 51 percent of cucumber producers, 58 percent of onion producers, and 62 percent of garlic producers hiring farm workers stole workers’ wages.
• 78 percent of restaurants in New Orleans stole workers’ wages.
• Almost half of day laborers, who tend to focus on construction work, have had their wages stolen.
• 100 percent of poultry plants steal workers’ wages.

Although wage theft is the most pernicious when employers steal money from workers earning low wages, wage theft affects many middle-income workers too, including construction workers, nurses, dieticians, writers, bookkeepers, and many more. Wage theft affects young workers, mid-career workers, and older workers. Although some of the worst wage theft occurs when immigrant workers aren’t paid minimum wage or aren’t paid at all, the largest dollar amounts are stolen from native-born white and black workers in unpaid overtime.

Millions of workers are having their wages stolen. Two, possibly as many as 3, million workers aren’t being paid the minimum wage. More than 3 million workers are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors when they are really employees, which means their employers aren’t paying their share of payroll taxes and many workers are being illegally denied overtime pay. Untold millions more aren’t being paid overtime because their employers claim they are exempt from the overtime laws, when they really aren’t. Several million more aren’t being paid for their breaks or have illegal deductions made from paychecks. The scope of these abuses is staggering.”

So, over-compensation, not related to performance at the top, and under-compensation at the bottom. That is a structural feature of the American labor system.

“Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?”

And no Wittgenstein mentioned either, or all the work done by a lot of people on this very topic (linguists, analytical philosophers, etc.). Hence this:

“These questions touch on all the major controversies in the study of mind, with important implications for politics, law and religion. Yet very little empirical work had been done on these questions until recently. The idea that language might shape thought was for a long time considered untestable at best and more often simply crazy and wrong. Now, a flurry of new cognitive science research is showing that in fact, language does profoundly influence how we see the world.”

Note to self: when the media suddenly “discovers” something that social sciences have researched for decades, it automatically annihilates ANY and all research done prior to said discovery.

For instance, patriarchal control is promoted through cultural products, such as movies, that tell stories and contribute to overall cultural narratives about gender. Doctor Phil (no, not THAT doctor Phil, the REAL doctor Phil, Ph.D, sociologist, non-Opraj promoted, non-phony) provides this analysis of Sin City (the movie), after reviewing all the instances of gendered violence that are the heart of the film (violence against men is peripheral to it):

“The portrayal of women in this film doesn’t send the most empowering of messages: if you’re a woman and you have sex, male violence is sure to follow.”

There is no question that patriarchal control does involve strong attempts at controlling women and girls sexuality, from FGM, to child marriage, to purity balls, a great deal of cultural and social energy is dedicated to ensure that such sexuality remains under patriarchal control and is not freely and independently enjoyed by women and girls. And if they dare try, consequences follow, in the form of violence, in many movies.

Patriarchal dominance also means that any man is entitled to exercise such control over any woman perceived to have strayed from patriarchal requirements of virginity or marital fidelity. That is the individual level of patriarchal control. Take this story, for instance:

“A Texas bus driver who refused to bring a woman to Planned Parenthood is suing after being fired.

Edwin A. Graning worked for the Capital Area Rural Transportation System (CARTS) near Austin, Texas, for less than a year before he was let go in January. At the time, he told his supervisor that, “in good conscience, he could not take someone to have an abortion,” according to the lawsuit. Graning is an ordained Christian minister.

…He is seeking reinstatement, back pay, and compensatory damages for pain, suffering and emotional distress.

Right…because I’m sure the woman he shamed and refused to drive (which was, you know, his job) wasn’t pained or distressed at all.  This reminds me of extremist pharmacists arguing they shouldn’t have to dispense emergency contraception or birth control pills if it goes against their “conscience.”  It’s bullshit; do your job.  Women’s legal right to access medical and health services trumps some anti-choicer being made to feel uncomfortable.  Even if you have compassion for folks who don’t want to act in a way that compromises their conscience – the fact is that their refusal to do their job could seriously impede someone’s access to care.  And there’s nothing more important than that.”

It is interesting that such moral invocations are only seen as legitimate when they involve controlling women’s sexuality. So, if a woman has sex, there are consequences: violence, but also pregnancy, both presented as punishment. Therefore, it is unconscionable that a woman be allowed to escape the consequences of her sexual activity either through contraception or abortion (the whole “pro-life” argument is a joke and a cover-up).

The next step into this is that once a woman gets pregnant, her body becomes public property, and subjected to multiple forms of control, more likely in institutional form, backed by the authority of state agencies. For example:

“The health watchdog NICE has issued new guidelines encouraging women in England to attain a healthy weight before they get pregnant.

It also advises them against eating for two once they conceive.

It says almost half of women of childbearing age are overweight or obese, which could harm their child.

Many women feel they are offered confusing and conflicting advice about their health during pregnancy.

The guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence are aimed at cutting through that. They discuss weight and exercise before, during and after pregnancy.

(…)

If a woman is obese during pregnancy, she has an increased risk of developing serious complications like pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, miscarriage and stillbirth. She is also more likely to have a Caesarean section.

NICE says women with a body mass index of more than 30 should be encouraged to lose weight before they become pregnant. During pregnancy, losing weight can be harmful to the unborn child, so women are advised to eat healthily and to do gentle exercise.

After they have given birth, women are told they should lose their baby weight gradually. Experts from NICE say celebrities who regain their pre-baby figures very fast can put unrealistic pressure on ordinary mothers.

“Women should understand that weight loss after birth takes time, and physical activity and gradual weight loss will not affect their ability to breastfeed,” said Professor Mike Kelly, NICE public health director.

“Losing weight gradually can actually help women maintain a healthy weight in the long term.”"

Note that this is not just during pregnancy to protect the fetus: it’s before, during, after, and long term. Also, how high are these risks, exactly, compared to the general population. They might be higher but not significantly so. Equally, it has long been established that BMI is not a measure of health. It is one of these fitness measures that have changed over time, that are culturally used to define standards of bodily acceptability.

And of course, patriarchal control also extends to parenting and marital health.

The bottom line is that control over women and their bodies and sexuality is exercised at multiple levels: culturally, individually and institutionally, It is a tightly-woven web of symbolic, interpersonal and structural violence from which there is limited escape.

“Structure. Agency is for psychologists, economists, and suckers. Give me structure any day.”

A-freakin’-men!

“Britons are not getting the broadband services they are being sold, suggests a government report.

Ofcom’s analysis of broadband speeds in the UK shows that, for some services, 97% of consumers do not get the advertised speed.

It also shows a growing gap between the claims ISPs make for broadband and the speed being delivered.

To fix the problem, Ofcom is revamping the code of conduct for ISPs and asking for changes to how broadband is sold.

(…)

Unveiling the figures Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, said the survey revealed a “growing gap” between what people are sold and the reality of their broadband service.

“The gap between the average headline speed and actual speed has increased in this period even though the actual speed has risen,” he said.

In 2009, he said, when actual speeds for broadband were 4.1mbps, the average that those services were being advertised for stood at 7.1Mbps. In 2010, when people are generally getting 5.2Mbps out of their broadband, ISPs are claiming they will support speeds up to 11.5Mbps.”

And the industry’s rationalizations are actually quite funny.

I should note that I also picked it as my first non-fiction Kindle reading, hoping that it would not be too scholarly and would be a good start in the process of doing all my reading on Kindle (that is, based on what is available since academic books seem to be underrepresented on the e-book market).

Bad Sports is a quick read. The writing is quite pleasant and informal. Obviously, Zirin enjoys throwing a few punches around. The book is about how extremely wealthy team owners make like bandits by blackmailing cities into getting them brand new (and obscenely expensive) stadiums and arenas, and gorge themselves on public monies while delivering lousy results, squeezing the fans for as much money as they can, all the while promoting ultra-right-wing politics and fundamentalist Christianity.

It is the story of mostly white men who got enormously successful (often by inheritance, almost always with political connections) in a variety of businesses and decided that being successful in one area would translate easily into another. So, they bought themselves teams (it does not look like which sport is involved actually matters, Zirin covers football, basketball, baseball and hockey), and then ruined them while laughing all the way to the bank at the expenses of the taxpayers and fans.

The book exposes the sense of entitlement, arrogance and condescension these men display. Somehow, they reminded me of the Wall Street CEOs after the collapse of 2008. In many ways, this is the same story. These men use their political connections to make a lot of money. They make a lot of really bad investments. Taxpayers are left to pick up the tab and watch the ruins. And, based on what Zirin writes, it is not like these men are really good at being sports team owners: they recruit the wrong players, fire competent coaches and managers, and hire toadies in their stead, and have nothing but contempt for the fans and the day-today workers of their team. In many ways, from the way Zirin tells it, they behave like the dictators of failing states. Good things these sports can’t be outsourced to the global South because otherwise, Americans would be watching their beloved sports on Tv with games played in peripheral countries.

This story represents one small aspect of what has happened to the economy in the past 30 years or so: the triumph of neoliberalism with massive redistribution towards the top of social ladder, and flat income lines for the vast majority of the population. It is the story of the triumph of the transnational capitalist class and its capture of the nation-state institutions that now work almost thoroughly as funding and enforcement arms of a corporate regime:

“During the economic boom of the 1990s, the longest period of economic expansion in U.S. history, publicly funded stadiums became the substitute for anything resembling an urban policy in this country. These stadiums, ballparks, arenas, and domes were presented as a microwave-instant solution to the problems of crumbling schools, urban decay, and suburban flight. They are now the excrement of the urban neoliberalism of the 1990s, sporting shrines to the dogma of trickle-down economics. In the past twenty-five years, more than $30 billion of the public’s money has been spent for stadium construction and upkeep from coast to coast.” (Highlight Loc. 211-16)

And even this, stadium construction as public policy, does not work. It is just another form of plunder, or as Zirin puts it, a form of “shock doctrine”:

“This, remember, is the best-case scenario for stadium development. Recently, sports economists Dennis Coates of the University of Maryland and Brad R. Humphreys of the University of Alberta asked whether building new stadiums spurred the local economy. In their study—which spanned nearly thirty years and examined almost forty attempts to lure teams—they failed to discover a single example of a sports franchise jump-starting the local economy, including of course, the Camden Yards example. In fact, they uncovered the opposite trend: “a reduction in real per capita income over the entire metropolitan area. . . . Our conclusion, and that of nearly all academic economists studying this issue, is that professional sports generally have little, if any, positive effect on a city’s economy.” This is seen ever so clearly in the service jobs created not only by the gentrification that surrounds Camden Yards but the stadium jobs themselves. They are poverty-wage occupations where $7.00 an hour is the going rate.” (Highlight Loc. 2026-34)

It is though a form of blackmail: if owners do not get a taxpayer-funded arena, they take their ball and move to another city. As Zirin puts it, it’s “your money or your team“. This is another aspect of these owners that Zirin emphasize as well: they are vindictive and love to punish everyone and anyone who does nor bow to their will, again, from moves in the middle of the night, to blackout policies, to shutting out of critical reporters.

For Zirin, most of what ails sports (including steroids and other drugs) can be laid at the feet of these owners. The buck stops with them even though they often get away with a lot, and the blame gets assigned lower on the sports stratification ladder. Political connections are useful in that respect.

So what is the solution? When an owner ruins a team, athletically and financially, then, the community should be able to take over, in the form of a Green Bay Packers model kind of ownership and management (even though it is not possible, as the masters of the game have ruled it out of their by-laws). Zirin is a populist when it comes to sports: the fans matter, the players matter and that is what makes the heart of the game. Corporatization and its strongmen have ruined it.

It is quite an entertaining read even for someone like me with non-existence knowledge of the subject. Zirin is quite an encyclopedia of sports. He is a true fan of the sports he writes about. But don’t be fooled by the punchy writing style, there is a lot of information and analysis in the book and a lot to learn. As I mentioned above, count this a another datapoint in the triumph of neoliberalism and corporatism with the same effects in sports as in other economic areas.

Highly recommended even if one is not a sports fan.

In the Guardian:

Afghanistan: The war logs | World news | guardian.co.uk via kwout

Der Spiegel:

The Afghanistan Protocol: Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International via kwout

And the New York Times:

The War Logs – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com via kwout

And yes, any cultural practice that involves involuntary mutilation is wrong.

Also, this:

“Like any 12-year-old, Jamelia was excited at the prospect of a plane journey and a long summer holiday in the sun. An avid reader, she had filled her suitcases with books and was reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when her mother came for her. “She said, ‘You know it’s going to be today?’ I didn’t know exactly what it would entail but I knew something was going to be cut. I was made to believe it was genuinely part of our religion.”

She went on: “I came to the living room and there were loads of women. I later found out it was to hold me down, they bring lots of women to hold the girl down. I thought I was going to be brave so I didn’t really need that. I just lay down and I remember looking at the ceiling and staring at the fan.

“I don’t remember screaming, I remember the ridiculous amount of pain, I remember the blood everywhere, one of the maids, I actually saw her pick up the bit of flesh that they cut away ’cause she was mopping up the blood. There was blood everywhere.”

Some 500 to 2,000 British schoolgirls will be genitally mutilated over the summer holidays. Some will be taken abroad, others will be “cut” or circumcised and sewn closed here in the UK by women already living here or who are flown in and brought to “cutting parties” for a few girls at a time in a cost-saving exercise.”

]]> http://globalsociology.net/2010/07/24/the-patriarchy-continuum-breast-ironing-in-cameroon/feed/ 0 http://globalsociology.net/2010/07/24/women-in-refrigerators/ http://globalsociology.net/2010/07/24/women-in-refrigerators/#comments Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:34:21 +0000 SocProf http://globalsociology.com/?p=4277 This is a pattern I had not noticed but now, I see it in A LOT of movies (even Up) but isn’t it mostly an American phenomenon?

“10 years ago, comic writer Gail Simone coined the phrase “women in refrigerators” to draw attention to the number of wives and girlfriends that die to aid male character development. She was talking about comic books, but it’s no less true of movies. Disposable female characters who die just so that male characters are allowed to go on emotional journeys are legion. The director Christopher Nolan features heroes grieving their wives’ tragic demise in a good number of his films: Memento, The Prestige and Inception. But he’s not alone: Hollywood films contain more dead wives than Bluebeard’s basement.

This Dead Wives’ Club is so large it takes us from gory movies such as Gladiator to family-friendly Finding Nemo. James Bond picks up his membership in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – or if you count love interests instead of just wives, in every film. The ultra-deadliness of getting jiggy with 007 is blatant enough to be a throwaway gag in Austin Powers. The same goes for Martin Riggs’s killer kiss in Lethal Weapon, who also starts the first movie with a dead wife. I know Mel Gibson’s hardly a feminist icon, but while we’re here, Braveheart begins with the death of William Wallace’s wife.

In Se7en, Gwyneth Paltrow’s character doesn’t die until the end of the film – but her death is the pivotal deux ex machina that will affect her hubby enough for him to be overwhelmed by a desire for revenge. Sure, Paltrow is irritating, but could anyone’s macrobiotic diet be infuriating enough that their movie character deserves to be turned into a head-in-a-box just so Brad Pitt’s character can be shown to feel something? We are meant to be thinking, “Oh, poor guy!” Poor guy? At least his spine and skull are still in the same postcode.

I don’t want to sound like I’m down on any film or filmmaker in particular, just this godawful trope. Inception is an intelligent, thoughtful film that self-reflexively challenges ideas about narrative. But sometimes it seems like enjoying popular culture and being a feminist seem mutually exclusive. I don’t want to have to turn my feminism off in the theatre just so I’m not niggled by the fact that instead of being treated as human beings with their own unique subjectivity, women in films are cheerfully shoved into white goods just so the hero can react to it with his best-ever acting and broody, brooding brood-face.”

I would argue that it allows writers / directors to have it both ways: you have a feminine character, but being dead or ghost-like makes it more passive and obviously a reflection or projection of male characters. The narrative view point that dominates then, and reconstructs the dead woman, is the male one. It also allows male characters to have other romantic relationships in the film, ans that is then seen as therapeutic.

Does the opposite happen in films? I can think of “La mariée etait en noir” but that is about it.