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3 Making photographs that make demands: stories from the oil industry There are strong links between the audio files in Activity 2 and the series of photographs in Activity 1. The discus
2.3 Activity 1: Flora Macdonald temp – ground stewardess – office manager – accountant 2.1 Activity 1: Oil Lives Oil Lives consists of a series of photographs of an individual and some written text based on interviews with them. Two of these series are reproduced in this section, with Logan's ‘War Scrapbook’ in between them. Take some time to look at the photographs and to read the words accompanying them. Try to work out first what parts of the photographs have been brought together from different originals. What do Owen Logan's decisions about how to picture the industry and some of its workers su 1 Capturing the oil industry The oil industry is perhaps the archetypal globalised industry. Dominated by a few multi-national companies, it is highly centralised at the level of corporate power but, like corporations, investment and trade in the oil industry are also highly mobile. The long reach of the global oil economy is a consequence of the distance between the location of significant oil reserves and the location of the major markets for oil. The reserves of oil currently expected to last more than fifty years are Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: describe how photographs affect a globalised industry; understand the global dimension of the Scottish oil industry and how that has affected the local population. Introduction Photographs can solicit powerful emotional responses and are often used to draw people's attention to issues or to raise awareness of demands. This unit takes a look at how one set of photographs, used as part of a particular demand, was created. It looks at the process of producing images by exploring a series of photographs made with the intention of affecting the way a globalised industry is seen and understood. The industry in question is the oil industry based in Aberdeen, on Scotland's Acknowledgements The material below is contained in chapter 1 of Economics and Economic Change Microeconomics (2006) (eds) Graham Dawson, Maureen Mackintosh and Paul Anand which is published by Pearson Education Limited in association with The Open University. Copyright © The Open University The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and not subject to Creative Commons Licence and used under licence (see terms and conditions). Grate 4.2 Questions for review and discussion 3.3 The downside of the new economy During the US boom of the 1990s, some economists attributed the paradox of economic growth, rising productivity, but stable or only modestly rising wage costs, to the growing sense of insecurity in the labour force (Greenspan, 1998). Employment insecurity is also emphasised by sociologists such as Ulrich Beck (2000) and Richard Sennett (1998). This section outlines some of their arguments because they are central to those who take a critical view of the new economy. Their arguments also conta 3.2 The benefits of the new economy The benefits claimed for the new economy are mainly concerned with technological change, productivity and economic growth. Manuel Castells (2001) argues that we have entered a new technological paradigm centred around microelectronics-based information/communication technologies. The development of the internet, in particular, is said to have profound implications for the organisation of economic activity and for increasing productivity. The internet provides a new communication medium 3.1 Introduction As well as looking at the behaviour of firms and the industries and markets to which they belong, economists also engage in a different style of inquiry, thinking about what economic change means for the lives of the people involved. Once again there is a variety of interpretations and different ideas but this time they concern the desirability of economic change. What benefits does the ‘new economy’ bring and what costs, or negative effects, does it impose on people? In analysing these b 2.5 Looking ahead: understanding economic change Section 2 has looked at different ways of understanding the new economy, of understanding what is actually happening. Look back over the different understandings of the new economy. Is there really a new economy – ju 1 What is the ‘new economy’ 10 p.m. Friday evening Sunil, in India, has just received an email from Claire in Brighton, England, who runs a micro enterprise from her front room, clarifying details of some programming she has just subcontracted. Tom is at a wine bar celebrating news of a £1 million investment of venture capital in his company. Stephen has just begun the night shift in a call centre. Joyce has just left her cleaning job, one of three jobs she currently holds. She is also a Introduction This unit considers four ways in which some social scientists have claimed that there might be a ‘new economy’ coming in to being: the switch from manufacturing to services, globalisation, new technology and flexible labour markets. The good and bad points of economic change, its benefits and costs, are discussed. For example, what does it mean for people trying desparately to balnace the urgent demands of work and life? This unit is an adapted extract from the course Author(s): Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. This extract is taken from D315: Crime, order and social control, produced by the BBC on behalf of the Open University. © 2007 The Open University. Learning outcomes On completion of this unit, you should be able to: give examples of racial violence from a European perspective. Acknowledgements This unit is subject to Creative Commons licence (attribution, non commercial, non derivative). For copyright reasons any third party materials must not be used in isolation from the unit or for any other purpose. Acknowledgements must always accompany use of unit. Any adverts contained in this unit are for the purposes of academic analysis only and do not represen 5 Celebrities and newsworthiness Celebrity has become one of the principal ways in which information is disseminated, including information about such apparently different fields as entertainment and politics. Even health advice is provided through stories about celebrities’ encounters with illness and their recoveries. For example, on the back of the announcement of Kylie Minogue's breast cancer treatment, the press were full of breast cancer reports and personal stories all of which began with a reference to Kylie. This 3.1 Categorising texts: introduction Whether we are producing, analysing or consuming texts, one of the principal ways in which we make them meaningful is by considering what type of text we are dealing with. This helps to identify appropriate codes so we do not try to make meanings by calling on unsuitable frames of reference by, for example, analysing the items in a gossip magazine as if they had been subject to exhaustive checking for verifiable facts. There are many ways to categorise texts, a few of which are examined next.
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