Related Guides
Find Films and Multimedia
- Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition contains a curriculum-aligned collection of videos and segments curated to support the teaching of introductory anthropology courses. Each video and segment within this collection are accompanied by a teaching guide providing background information, lesson plans, and classroom exercises and activities.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume I-II: Foundational Films This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. I-II: Foundational Films contains classic and contemporary ethnographies, documentaries and shorts from every continent, providing teachers visual support to introduce and contextualize hundreds of cultural groups and practices around the world.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume III: Indigenous Voices This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. III: Indigenous Voices contains documentaries, feature films and shorts made by and for indigenous people and communities. Topics are simultaneously local and global, with particular emphasis on the human effects of climate change, sustainability, indigenous and local ways of interpreting history, cultural change, and traditional knowledge and storytelling.
- Ethnographic Video Online, Volume IV: Festivals and Archives This link opens in a new window Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. IV: Festivals and Archives contains award-winning titles from contemporary ethnographic film festivals. The collection also includes field recordings and edited films by students and faculty from universities and institutions around the world, including Berkeley Media and Manchester's Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology.
- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
Featured Films
Streaming
- Outsourced! (streaming, Academic Video Online) OUTSOURCED! explores the experiences of young women who work in call centres in India and Australia. It is a defining moment for both countries, providing exciting career opportunities and momentous social change for Indian women and uncertain futures for their Australian counterparts.
- Guangzhou Dream Factory: The African Community in Guangzhou, China (streaming, Kanopy) Immigration, globalization, Chinese factories and African dreams...This documentary weaves stories of Africans chasing alluring, yet elusive, "Made in China" dreams into a compelling critique of 21st century global capitalism.
- Contact: Australia's indigenous people confront the space age (streaming, Academic Video Online) As British and Australian governments began testing space rockets in the mid-20th century, members of a nomadic Indigenous population in Western Australia were still living off the land, surviving the desert's extreme conditions.
- Made in L.A. (streaming, Academic Video Online) Made in L.A. is an Emmy award-winning feature documentary that follows the remarkable story of three Latina immigrants working in Los Angeles garment sweatshops as they embark on a three-year odyssey to win basic labor protections from trendy clothing retailer Forever 21.
- Calcutta Calling (streaming, Academic Video Online) In India, 350,000 people currently work in call centres to maintain the contact between western companies and their customers. From a busy office in Calcutta, Vikhee Uppal pretends to be a guy named Ethan Reed and calls Americans, Brits and Australians to try and sell them cell phones and subscriptions. Vikhee pretends to be a westerner at work. Indian traditions remain very important for him. He wants to marry a girl from Punjab, and if he doesn't succeed, his family will find him a bride.
- T-Shirt Travels (streaming, Academic Video Online) What happens to all those old clothes you bring to the Salvation Army or Goodwill Industries? This comprehensive program is about Third World debt and secondhand clothes. The filmmaker travelled to Zambia and was amazed to find almost everyone wearing Calvin Klein, MTV and James Dean t-shirts! Huge bales of American secondhand clothing are sold to African importers, putting the African manufacturers out of business.
- Banana pancakes and the children of sticky rice (streaming, Academic Video Online) For centuries, the economic and social fabric of life in this small, remote village in northern Laos has remained essentially the same. But that changes when the widely-read Lonely Planet guidebooks identify it as a place where one can experience a traditional way of life; quickly making it a popular destination for Western backpackers.
- The King of Calls (streaming, Academic Video Online) At a call center in the Indian city of Hyderabad, work starts at 8 P.M. India time. It's morning in the U.S., when America is beginning to work. A business directory, 'The American Yellow Pages,' similar to the original 'Yellow Pages,' has outsourced their telemarketing to India. Kabith is the Indian executive-in-charge, trying to build his career as a call center tycoon.
- Mardi Gras: Made in China (dvd) Winner of twenty-one national and international awards, Mardi Gras: Made in China follows the path of Mardi Gras beads from the streets of New Orleans during Carnival - where revelers party and exchange beads for nudity - to the disciplined factories in Fuzhou, China - where teenage girls live and sew beads together all day and night. Blending curiosity with comedy, Mardi Gras: Made in China is the only film to explore how the toxic products directly affect the people who both make and consume them.
- Maquilapolis : city of factories (streaming, Academic Video Online) Carmen Durán works the graveyard shift in one of Tijuana's 800 maquiladoras; she is one of six million women around the world who labor for poverty wages in the factories of transnational corporations. After making television components all night, Carmen comes home to a dirt-floor shack she built out of cast-off garage doors from the U.S., in a neighborhood with no sewage lines or electricity. She suffers from on-the-job kidney damage and lead poisoning from her years of exposure to toxic chemicals. She earns six dollars a day on which she must support herself and her three children.
- My Brooklyn (streaming, Kanopy) My Brooklyn follows director Kelly Anderson's journey, as a Brooklyn gentrifier, to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood. The film documents the redevelopment of Fulton Mall, a bustling African-American and Caribbean commercial district that - despite its status as the third most profitable shopping area in New York City - is maligned for its inability to appeal to the affluent residents who have come to live around it. As a hundred small businesses are replaced by high rise
- Tiempo de vals (streaming, Academic Video Online) Located in Tlaxcala, central Mexico, Tetlanohcan was until recently a very poor agricultural village that remained largely isolated from the outside world. But following the establishment of some assembly plants in the vicinity and with the remittances sent back by migrants to the US, new wealth is flowing into the community.
- Mind the Gap (streaming, Academic Video Online) Tracing your origin and finding your identity have become important issues in a multicultural and globalised world. Mind the Gap follows a Sikh family, originating from Kenya, living in London, who emigrates to Australia and finally travels to India - in search of their roots. Their story epitomises the problems confronting thousands of families struggling with the clash of cultures, religions and generations in the 21st centur
- Drifting City (streaming, Academic Video Online) This film depicts the journey of a Mexican, Roberto, resident in China. On his way to renew his visa, Roberto meets an African at a railway station between China and Hong Kong. “Why is an African in China?” soon changes into a reflexive inquiry: “Why is a Mexican in China?”
- Dancing with the Goddess: the Ras-Garba Traditions of Gujarat (streaming, Academic Video Online) An ethnographic film focusing on the performative traditions of Goddess worship in Gujarat, India, with particular attention to the regional variations of the garba, garbi and ras dances performed during the religious festival, Navaratri (festival of nine nights celebrating the nine forms of the Goddess Shakti). The film exemplifies the impact of globalization, giving rise to new forms such as the disco-garba.
- Playing with Nan (streaming, Academic Video Online) Playing with Nan is the story of a Nepali young man who migrated to work in a Nepali restaurant in northern Japan. The film explores his daily life at work and his family at home, which reflects socio-cultural problems related to globalization.
- Undiscovered Country: A Tale of Color and Development (streaming, Academic Video Online) The forces of globalization, cultural and economic imperialism, foreign military interests, and climate change all converge in the Central Pacific where the Marshallese are trying to forge a path towards 'development.' 'The Undiscovered Country' explores the clash between tradition and modernity by fusing three art forms: documentary film, cell animation and theater.
- Journey of a Rose (streaming, Academic Video Online) This film about growing and selling roses is an illuminating study of the globalization of the floriculture industry. "Roses are for you, but thorns are for us," says a worker at the Ecuadorian plantation which grows these flowers for export
- A Decent Factory? The Ethics of Chinese Manufacturing (streaming, Academic Video Online) With the fastest growing economy in the history of the world, China is the workshop of globalization. But are workers paying the price for a manufacturing revolution? This unique fly-on-the-wall documentary uncovers the hard realities of working conditions in a Chinese factory.
- Matamoros : the human face of globalization (streaming, Academic Video Online) This video reveals the alarming environmental and human toll of NAFTA, the free trade agreement of the Americas, initiated by the U.S. government, on the border-town, Matamoros, Mexico. Through NAFTA, U.S. companies are encouraged to build factories in border-towns like Matamoros, escaping tough pollution control laws, labor standards, and taxes that pay for social and environmental needs. The people of Matamoros, attracted by the promise of employment, suffer low wages, inadequate housing, poor sanitation and disease, revealing the true human face of globalization.
- How Fair is Fashion? (streaming, Academic Video Online) Using the international fashion industry as a case study this resource asks: what is globalization, what are the causes, and what is the role played by TNCs? It then looks at the effects of globalization and asks what are the pros and cons and who benefits? Filmed in Bangladesh, it compares the working and living conditions of textile workers employed in large scale factories in Dhaka, with those employed by a small rural fair trade fashion initiative.
- Diverted to Delhi (streaming, Academic Video Online) This film explores a new phenomenon in the global economy. The toll-free telephone numbers used to place orders or get information are often answered thousands of miles away, by Indians impersonating local operators.
- Afro@digital (streaming, Academic Video Online) Afro@Digital begins with a provocative question: 'Why speak of new technologies on a continent which wakes up and goes to sleep to the terrorism of poverty?' In other words, how can Africa escape the logic of poverty and unequal development by making sure that digital technology doesn't pass it by, become an agent of neo-colonialism or marginalize it still further?
- The Dark Side of Chocolate (streaming, Academic Video Online) he Dark Side of Chocolate conflicts with the pictures painted by large international companies like Nestle, Berry Callebaut and Mars who signed the Cocoa Protocol in 2001 promising to work for a total eradication of child labour in the cocoa sector by 2008. Now, two years later, this film documents that child labour and trafficked children still is a heavy burden to the cocoa industry.
- DHARAVI: Slum for Sale (streaming, Academic Video Online) At the heart of the constantly growing megacity Mumbai lies Dharavi, India's biggest slum. Close to a million immigrants from all over the country live and work here, contributing a vital share to the city's economy. In this no - man's land urban planner Mukesh Mehta sees his chance of a lifetime.
- West Africa Today: The Lebanese and Chinese Entrepreneurs (streaming, Academic Video Online) In this age of globalization, here is a cameo portrait of how the local population of a "developing" African nation responds to the advances of foreigners bringing economic growth, but also potential cultural conflict.
- In the Wind of the Factory (streaming, Academic Video Online) In the south of the overseas French territory of New Caledonia, a multinational corporation is building a gigantic chemical and mining complex in order to extract precious nickel from the ground. In the nearest village of Yate, the Kanaks are directly involved in the process: some already work at the plant, some are still strongly opposed, but it does not matter. They are now facing social, cultural and environmental mutations provoked by this invasion of global modernity in their daily life.
DVDs
- Globalization is Good (dvd) In this program, controversial writer Johan Norberg examines three developing countries and how they fit into the globalization debate, building a case for deregulation, the abolishment of subsidies and tariffs, and a long-term view of industrialization. He defends the use of sweatshop labor, through which Taiwan has cultivated a vigorous, targeted manufacturing sector and transformed agrarian poverty into affluence. Praising Vietnam for following the same path and criticizing Kenya as an unfortunate example of isolationism, Norberg's assertions compose a powerful catalyst for classroom discussion.
- Globalization: Winners & Losers (dvd) As Sabeer Bhatia, inventor of Hotmail; Narayan Murthy, founder of Infosys; and many other industry leaders attest, globalization has raised the standard of living in developing economies through high-tech opportunities, foreign investment, and debt relief. However, Harvard's Jeffrey Sachs and other experts point out that the world market is being exploited through shortsightedness, including the aggressive deployment of genetically modified crops, environmental negligence, and the abuse of NAFTA. This program - produced in the aftermath of the WTO protests in Seattle - addresses the pros and cons of doing business in the global marketplace.
- Life and Debt (dvd) Featuring a reggae soundtrack and a voice-over based on text by Jamaica Kincaid, as well as interviews with former Jamacian Prime Minister Michael Manley, Deputy Director of the IMF Stanley Fisher and President of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Life and Debt portrays the relationship betwen Jamaican poverty and the practices of international lending agencies while driving home the devastating consequences of globalization.
- Mojados: Through the Night (dvd) Over the course of ten days, filmmaker Tommy Davis tags along with four men from Mexico as they leave their families and embark upon a 120-mile journey across the Texas desert, evading the U.S. Border Patrol and fighting off dehydration and hypothermia. Davis captures firsthand the danger of illegal border crossing. English and Spanish dialog with English subtitles.
- Mandabi (dvd) Ousmane Sembene's witty and deceptively simple story of a man who receives a money order and, in his attempts to cash it, encounters an intimidating barrage of Third World bureaucracy, becomes a masterful portrait of an ancient civilization in the throes of change. Wolof dialog with English subtitles.
