Video Links

Is Wal-Mart Good For America?
Wal-Mart is a ubiquitous and controversial presence in American consumer-culture. Though many decry the retail giant for its labor practices and believe it has played a significant role in loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, many of us continue to shop there because we want the low prices and convenience it offers. Through interviews with economists, manufacturers, retail industry experts, and business analysts, this program offers an even-handed consideration of how Wal-Mart has affected and been affected by U.S. consumer culture.

Futurama- Bureaucrat’s Song
Hermes sings a song about being a bureaucrat.

Inside Small Schools
Adlai E. Stevenson High School in The Bronx was once a dangerous school that had poor performance ratings. In an effort to improve student safety and educational outcomes, the school was divided into 9 “small schools” that would be more flexible and allow more personal interactions between educators, administrators, and students. This New York Times video examines the successes and failures of this “small schools” experiment.

The Legacy of Tailhook
This New York Times video revisits 1991’s Tailhook scandal, an incident that drew attention to the little-discussed problem of sexual assault in the U.S. Navy. It provides a look at how the Navy responded to allegations of sexual assault at the time and how things have (and have not) changed since then.

Audio Links

This American Life 215: Ask An Expert
Act One of this program reports on the "Recovered Memory" movement. In the early 1990s people across America turned to experts in psychology for help and many people were told that the source of their problems could be traced to traumatic events they could not even remember, to memories that had to be recovered through special techniques. In the last ten years, this whole approach to psychology has fallen out of favor. So what happened that so many experts came to believe in a treatment that turned out to make many of their patients worse, not better and what happened when the patients and therapists figured all this out?

This American Life 350: Human Resources
This episode features a true story of little-known rooms in the New York City Board of Education building. Teachers are told to report there instead of their classrooms. No reason is usually given. When they arrive, they find they've been put on some kind of probationary status, and they must report every day until the matter is cleared up. They call it the Rubber Room. Average length of stay? Months, sometimes years. This program also examines other stories of the uneasy interaction between humans and their institutions.

Web Links

The Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics.

The National Congregations Study
The National Congregations Study used the model of the NOS to generate a nationally representative sample of religious congregations. Congregations--the relatively small-scale, local collectivities and organizations in and through which people engage in religious activity--are a basic unit of American religious life.

McDonaldization.com
McDonaldization.com--Exposing the Iron Cage! is a Web site whose purpose is to help spread the word about McDonaldization and explore the wide-ranging impact this process has on our society (self-characterization).