Corporate Crime

The section in the 'Crime and deviance' chapter on corporate crime is a bit of a shocking eye opener. I mean I'd heard about most of the incidents before, but I hadn't seen them all lined up together with costs and death tolls. And I hadn't seen them compared to 'crime' statistics, or the amounts of money that go into disaster relief. Any one of the incidents have worse consequences than the kind of crime the media goes on about in crime rates, the street crime. And yet there's more and more of it!

I guess the same theory - goals mattering more than means - still applies. People trying to make money however they can, ends up being a big huge mess.

But with the kind of crime where you pick up a stick and hit someone with it, you know you're doing it, know it is a bad thing. With the kind of crime where someone makes or ignores a rule, there is the possibility of not noticing one has picked up the stick, or even that there are people all lying there bleeding from it.



I'm thinking Angel again, and thinking this - corporate billions - is the kind of crime Lindsey would be playing with. The bits that Angel noticed and stopped, the murders and that, are tiny little side projects compared the the major activities here. No wonder Angel never felt like he was doing something once he was boss and signing papers. Nothing bleeding, can't see the crime. But its still way bigger in effect than a random vampire.


The kind of crime Angel stops is also important to stop, of course. People getting killed is of the bad however it happens.

I'm just trying to get my head around a section that talks in billions. Billions are very big numbers.

And one guy who got convicted and imprisoned and fined $650 million is actually still very very very rich, because they reckon he nicked more than $1 billion.

That kind of math is just... weird, and very big.



You know, the more I read, the more I understand how people get all shouty-Marxist about stuff. The false consciousness bit is still really annoying, but I can understand the shouting.

(no subject)

The labelling bit of the deviance chapter is just like in the education chapter except people get prison instead of grades.

and none of this is helping me do my homework

(I'm now getting thoughts about how all this applies to fandom

and how the labelling thing applies online, where we can change most of our labels by conjuring up a new name)

deviance is not in the actor or the act but in the labels applied to it. Nothing is deviant until people say it is.

Like nudity - it all depends on context.

People don't just respond to structures and forces, they put meanings on them and make decisions.

The words in all the chapters not-media are different than the media labels. I mean theres positivist and interactionist and functionalist and a bunch of other ists and isms. And Marxist. Which is there in the Media chapters too, but means something a bit different, neo-Marxist. And feminist is all through everything too, but different. In the media chapter suddenly we're talking Manipulative, Pluralist, Hegemonic and Postmodern (I think, I might have got the Ps muddled up). Teach says this is why they're probably not going to teach media again when they don't have to, for it has a different framework going on.


I need to go write essays.

Writing essays is much more boring than reading more stuff.

Grrr, arrgh

Right. I decided no more faffing around, so I sat down and wrote a plan and started trying to write up my research essay.
I wrote 1000 words of absolute crap.
I have decided that the more I know about a subject from personal experience, the less good it is as a topic for an essay, because I keep on ending up all gossipy and anecdotal. Essays are not con reports! Though I guess con reports could get quoted in essays... Not the point though. I need to put a bunch of theories on paper, and put examples, and evidence, and *research*, and that just isn't happening.

I headdesk. I thought I was getting better at the deadlines thing, but nooooo.

Laptop is all run down again. I think I'll stick it in my bag and charge it up in class tomorrow.



The other problem is I've got 3 essays to write on roughly the same theories, 2 at 1000 words (one finished, other needs doing *soon*) and this one at 2000. I didn't think I was going to use all the same models, but here I am with no better structure for it. But the essays keep trying to squish together! The one we just did on violence keeps splodging bits into this one about fandom, and the one about stereotypes also.

I could try picking a different bit of the chapter. Its not like I've got any useful work I'd have to undo.



I also need to quote mine properly. Writing it all from memory is all very well, but quotes prove I've read stuff, so quotes there must be.


I have a whole bunch of days left to do these. I think. Next week for hand in.
But... next week isn't very far away, really.

*headdesk*

things I have seen at conventions

at conventions I have seen

very new babies
... being passed round and introduced to the rituals of their people
assorted birthday celebrations
... including 18, 21, 30, 40 and similar milestones
people getting engaged
... up on stage, in front of a thousand people. courage! (she could have / said no)
people getting married
... okay, I didn't personally see this due to being asleep somewhere, but I think it was on the programme
and no actual funerals
... but a very interesting wake



(fandom is a way of life)



I think people who mock Star Trek weddings and the rest have maybe missed that, while Star Trek is fictional, the wedding is real, and so are all the people at it.