the class film trip

After watched the short film, I can feel that little girl's emotion. She was new to an environment, the new school, new language, new friends. She try to fit in the place with her mom's stuff. But her new classmate make fun of her, she want to keep this friends so she give up of her mom's skies. This is also reflect the society that the pressure from the society influence people to do something that they do not want to do. 

it also reflect that if one have some new, or expensive stuff, other people will treat him or her better. More like submissive behavior. I can feel that the little girl feel sad and shamed of use old stuff. But she try to make herself become the same person as her new classmate. So the society can change person. 

Grandmas Pension

The short film about the father and daughter living of the grandmother's pension was quite interesting. There seemed to be no "debt" involved because it was not exposed or explained that the father would pay his mother back for taking care of them. It could be viewed as an alternative perception of giving money to another person compared to the hegemonic thought of today. Maybe it is the sense that it is family and that's why there was no "debt" involved between the father and grandmother? Or it was because there was a daughter that needed taken care of? Either way, it could be viewed as an alternative perception to debt.

Movie

I felt like there was a sense of reciprocity in the movie where the nurse helps the man get away from the police.  I think of it as more of a moral reciprocity in the sense that what you give you get. You help someone out you get help in return one day when you need it.  

There can also be a sense of giving in the last movie.  They give their time to help stand up against the government in an attempt to stop them from kicking another family out on the street. They all join together in order to be as "big" as possible in a way to i kind of make the police think twice about coming up.

field trip

I enjoyed the class field trip and I think the movies showed were very interesting. The movie, which impressed me a lot, is the one called “class trip”. Before the little goes to her new school, she enjoyed using her mother’s old skies but as long as she goes to the new school and meet all the other rich students, she changed her mind. She tries to fit into the friend circle by throwing away her old skies so that the other students will not laugh at her. At the end of the story, the little girl was looking through the window and look at the other classmates holding their fancy skies. I wonder that she can stay away from this time, there is going to be a lot more in the future. Before she saw the others using fancy skies, she enjoyed using her old skies. Peer pressure can change what people think and how people act.

mobile money

After read the article, it remind me think about the the social network in China, not only one people sale their product in the social network. There are million of people post picture in their social network and sale these product, then use the online bank to transfer the money. these people link the bank account to the cell phone, and save the address, card information, number on it. So they don't need to write the information again. I think this is not very save for the customs, if the hacker want to know the account information and hack people's card, it is very easy form them. 

The social network related people together, make the information exchange become easier, but it is also very convenient for those people who want to steal the money online. 

Class trip

This short film was very well done technically but it also had a powerful resonance with me, specially regarding some of the readings that we have done through the semester. Specially the ones about non monetary value of goods and inexchangeable objects.

Due to the change of setting in her life the little girl is given a crash course in class differences, a course in who is rich and what makes them different from her, the skis being the object that the filmmaker chose to show us that difference  but it could have been any number of things.

Trying to fit in her new school and among her new classmates, the little girl doesn't care at all about the value that the skis may have, not even the symbolic value that they had because they belonged to her mother.It is a perfect metaphor for what happens with neoliberalism and the idea that economic behavior happens in a historical and cultural vacuum. If that were the case, What rationality has the act of throwing away something that you have and even more contracting debt to fulfil that function?
Yes, it is a little girl. But precisely for that the film leaves you with a bad taste. She shouldn't have been put in the place to make that decision to begin with.    

The film

The film we watched for class last week was quite interesting. The last part of the series stood out to me in particular. That was the one addressing people being forced out of their home in what i think was Spain. The thing that stood out the most to me was how the community was being transformed and greatly impacted by this economic issue. From what i gathered, people were being forced out of their homes, even though they may have been paying their leases or mortgages.

This film gives an example of how property or rights to property can change in a "credit" society. When people do not technically "own" their property, it will be subject to being taken away from them even if they do the right thing, and are making their payments. What I think upset people the most in the film was that even those who were being "virtuous" and paying their rent or mortgages were still having their homes taken from them. This for those protesters was a breach of both the legal and social contract of the right to own something as long as debts are being paid. When this contract is being broken, especially by the government, people become very angry, as we saw from the intense protests. Also this creates a societal issue as no one is able to now feel their property is safe from simply being taken from you.

Sharing and collaborative consumption online

In this article Russell Belk brings into discussion the idea of collaborative consumption that we saw on the video in class but takes it a step beyond from what the video stated. The idea of collaborative consumption and sharing goods and services is a very interesting one, even though I believe that the idea itself is very elitist and the "world" or the "market" they talk about, both in the video and the article, is actually just a minor piece of the real world or the real global market.

If more than 50% of the population of the world does not have internet access, and more than 75% is digitally illiterate, why these concepts are applied as blanket terms to the whole world?

That is why I think these are elitist ideas and does not provide any real alternative for a global economy. The scholars that make them are so comfortable in their ivory tower that is impossible for them to even acknowledge that the everyday reality they experience is not the same for everyone in the world, not even to the majority of the world.

That being said, I think that  the idea of an economy based on sharing some key resources and services is powerful but more complexity has to be added for it to be valid, or even to present an alternative. 

Film

The film about Spain and the reposition of houses and eviction of families was interesting, because it went against the idea of neoliberalism that we have discussed in class. If the women in the video were to be successful on a large scale, it would involve bucking the entire capitalist system that is run on neoliberal principles of competition. Personally, I think that the system focuses too much on competition and profit and not enough of people. Unlike alternative economies, where, even in cases of debt, there is a human element, a system of trust, a social contract, the capitalist system has forced the devolvement of many countries into profit driven societies. Still, it is strange and interesting to think about breaking out of the cycle of neoliberalism, by, as a society, refusing to honor the eviction notices of the big banks. Spain is in the Euro Zone, which is having a lot of trouble now as it is, but I wonder what would happen if people started to break the rules of the capitalist system on a large scale.

Source: Mortgaged Lives. Directed by Michelle Teren

The Class Trip Film

The short film The Class Trip was wonderfully done. I felt that it really showed how society can make us feel pressured into giving up things that are more valuable to us than valuable in money. The little girl who wanted to try to stay friends with the kids that she had just met, threw away skies that had belonged to her mother in the hopes that her new friends wouldn't make fun of her. This is something that many people can relate to, and something that I feel is occurring more often. With a new iPhone that is always coming out, it's easy to want to give up your old phone that works perfectly well, for the new phone that everyone else will have. We talked about how the more valuable the object, the higher your status is in the group. If you have all the nice things that are brand new, you are seen at the top of the hierarchy rather than the person who has a lot of the old models and hand-me-downs. I feel that is one of the messages the film tried to show. The little girl was a new student and didn't have much, and didn't want to loose her status among her new friends. At the end of the film, however, the little girl is looking out the bus window and looks sad. I believe that she feels guilty for giving up her mother's skies in the hopes of using newer ones with her friends.
-Teghan