KDocsFF 2015 - Library Resources - KDocs Film Festival - LibGuides at Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Selected Library Resources

Are Markets Moral?
Despite the remarkable achievements of free markets--their rapid spread around the world and success at generating economic growth--they tend to elicit anxiety. Creative destruction and destabilizing change provoke feelings of powerlessness in the face of circumstances that portend inevitable catastrophe. Thus, from the beginning, capitalism has been particularly stimulative for the growth of critics and doomsayers. While early analysts such as Karl Marx primarily emphasized an impending economic disaster, in recent years the economic critique of capitalism has receded in favor of moral and environmental concerns.
Capitalism: A Crime Story
A mugger to a stranger, "Give me your wallet or I will beat you to pulp!" It is a crime. An employer says to a worker: "Adding lung-saving ventilation will reduce my profit. Give me back some of your wages and I will let you keep your lungs!" This is not a crime. Our assumptions about the world condition us to see these situations as legally different from one another. But what if we, the critics of corporate capitalism, instead insisted on taking the spirit of law, rather than its letter, seriously? It would then be possible to describe many of the daily practices of capitalists and their corporations as criminal in nature, even if not always criminal by the letter and formality of law.
Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent
How do the one percent hold on to their wealth? And how do they keep getting richer, despite financial crises and the myriad of taxes on income, capital gains, and inheritance? Capital without Borders takes a novel approach to these questions by looking at professionals who specialize in protecting the fortunes of the world's richest people: wealth managers. Brooke Harrington spent nearly eight years studying this little-known group including two years training to become a wealth manager herself. She then followed the money to the eighteen most popular tax havens in the world, interviewing practitioners to understand how they helped their high-net-worth clients avoid taxes, creditors, and disgruntled heirs all while staying just within the letter of the law.
Curing Affluenza : How to Buy Less Stuff and Save the World
Affluenza has not just changed the world, it has also changed the way we see the world. Short of money? Borrow some. Caught in the rain? Buy an umbrella. Thirsty? Buy a bottle of water and throw the bottle away. Our embrace of "convenience" and our acceptance of our inability to plan ahead is an entirely new way of thinking, and over the past seventy years we have built a new and different economic system to accommodate it. There is nothing inevitable about this current way of thinking, consuming, and producing. On the contrary, the vast majority of humans who have ever lived would find the idea of using our scarce resources to produce things that are designed to be thrown away absolutely senseless.
In Whose Interests: An Essay on Multinational Corporations in a Canadian Context
In In Whose Interests, Patricia Marchak adopts a critical perspective, arguing that multinational corporations do not operate in the interests of society at large or in the interests of a national society such as Canada. Creating and sustaining a set of interests particular to their own well-being and growth, they are efficient organizations for which human labour and management of technical resources are primarily of monetary value. Such resources, along with natural materials, are managed by and for corporations so that technology, labour, and knowledge are harnessed to corporate growth rather than social welfare.
Kickback : Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network
The World Bank estimates that rich multinational corporations pay hundreds of billions of dollars in bribes every year to officials overseas. The perpetrators are not a handful of rogue companies, but many members of the Fortune 500. Kickback is a sweeping, global investigation into corporate bribery around the world and how these back-door financial transactions undermine democracy and the free market system by lining the pockets of some of the world's worst dictators and criminals.
On fire : The Burning Case for a Green New Deal
Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of "perpetual now," to the soaring history of humans' ability to change rapidly in the face of grave threat, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of "climate barbarism," this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink. Above all, she underscores how we can still rise to the existential challenge of the crisis if we are willing to transform our systems that are producing it, making clear how the battle for a greener world is indistinguishable from the fight for our lives
People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent
A Nobel prize winner challenges us to throw off the free market fundamentalists and reclaim our economy. We all have the sense that the American economy--and its government--tilts toward big business, but as Stiglitz explains in his new book the situation is dire. A few corporations have come to dominate entire sectors of the economy, contributing to skyrocketing inequality and slow growth. This is how the financial industry has managed to write its own regulations, tech companies have accumulated reams of personal data with little oversight, and our government has negotiated trade deals that fail to represent the best interests of workers. Too many have made their wealth through exploitation of others rather than through wealth creation.
Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation--as the merely wealthy are left behind by the rapidly expanding fortunes of the new global super-rich. Forget the 1 per¢ Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at break-neck speed. What';s changed is more than numbers. Today, most colossal fortunes are new, not inherited--amassed by perceptive businessmen who see themselves as deserving victors in a cut-throat international competition.
The Political Economy of Inequality
During the last few decades, the gap between the incomes, wealth and living standards of rich and poor people has increased in most countries. Economic inequality has become a defining issue of our age. In this book, leading political economist Frank Stilwell provides a comprehensive overview of the nature, causes, and consequences of this growing divide. He shows how we can understand inequalities of wealth and incomes, globally and nationally, examines the scale of the problem and explains how it affects our wellbeing. He also shows that, although governments are often committed to 'growth at all costs' and 'trickle down' economics, there are alternative public policies that could be used to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
What Money Can't Buy : The Moral Limits of Markets
Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets?
Why We Can't Afford the Rich
As inequalities widen and the effects of austerity deepen, in many countries the wealth of the rich has soared. Why we can't afford the rich exposes the unjust and dysfunctional mechanisms that allow the top 1% to siphon off wealth produced by others, through the control of property and money. Leading social scientist Andrew Sayer shows how the rich worldwide have increased their ability to create indebtedness and expand their political influence. Winner of the 2015 British Academy Peter Townsend Prize, this important book bursts the myth of the rich as specially talented wealth creators. It shows how the rich are threatening the planet by banking on unsustainable growth.

For additional items try the following searches in the Library Catalogue

Streaming Videos

Generation Wealth - Lauren Greenfield's postcard from the edge of the American Empire captures a portrait of a materialistic, image-obsessed culture.

Naomi Klein : Rise of Disaster Capitalism - In this compelling film, Naomi Klein boldly challenges and exposes the popular myth of the free-market economy's peaceful global victory.

Common Good Capitalism - In this video, Hazel Henderson interviews Terry Mollner, author of Common Good Capitalism: It's Next!.

The Evils of Polygyny : Evidence of its Harm to Women, Men, and Society
Why do men act violently toward women? What are the consequences of "normal violence," not only for women and children but also for the men who instigate it, and for the societies that sanction it? The Evils of Polygyny examines one powerful structural factor that instigates, enforces, and replicates patterns of male dominance: the practice of polygyny. From more than a decade's worth of study, Rose McDermott has produced a book that uncovers the violent impact of polygyny on women, children, and the nation-state and adds fundamentally to the burgeoning focus on gender concerns in political psychology and international relations.
Facing Patriarchy : From a Violent Gender Order to a Culture of Peace
Facing Patriarchy challenges current thinking about men's violence against women. Drawing upon radical and intersectional feminist theory and critical masculinity studies, the book locates men's violence within the structures and processes of patriarchy. Addressing the limitations of current violence prevention policies, Bob Pease argues that a nuanced conceptualisation of patriarchy, that accounts for a variety of patriarchal structures, intersections with other forms of inequality, patriarchal ideologies, men's peer group relations, men's sexist practices and the construction of patriarchal subjectivities, is required to understand the links between gender and men's violence against women.
A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing
An honor killing is the cold-blooded murder of girls and women simply because they are female. Being born female in a shame-and-honor culture is, potentially, a capital crime; every girl has to keep proving that she is not dishonoring her family; even so, an innocent girl can be falsely accused and killed on the spot. Dr. Phyllis Chesler has been studying the nature of honor killings for the last fifteen years. During that time she has published four studies at Middle East Quarterly and is working on a fifth. While this barbaric custom is tribal in origin, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam have not tried to abolish it as a crime against God or humanity.
Forced Marriage : Introducing a Social Justice and Human Rights Perspective
Forced Marriage: Introducing a social justice and human rights perspective brings together leading practitioners and researchers from the disciplines of criminology, sociology and law. Together the contributors provide an international, multi-disciplinary perspective that offers a compelling alternative to prevailing conceptualisations of the problem of forced marriage. The volume examines advances in theoretical debates, analyses existing research and presents new evidence that challenges the cultural essentialism that often characterizes efforts to explain, and even justify, this violation of women's rights.
Honor on Trial: The Shafia Murders and the Culture of Honour Killings
A black car is pulled from the Rideau Canal near Kingston, Ontario, containing the bodies of three girls -- sisters Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti Shafia -- along with their presumed aunt, Rona Amir Mohammad. Later in the day, after family members report the women missing, Kingston police become suspicious. The stories told by parents Tooba Mohammad Yahya and Mohammad Shafia, and their eldest son, Hamed, don't match up with the rapidly gathering evidence. An extensive investigation unfolds, revealing a troubling story of physical and emotional abuse in the Shafia home -- including threats of murder. Police begin to suspect that this is a quadruple "honour killing," planned and carried out to wipe away the family's shame caused by the eldest girls.
Honour Killing in the Second Decade of the 21st Century
Honour killing is considered the worst form of domestic violence against human beings, particularly against women. It is clear that societies across the world - through their laws and their courts - continue to countenance legal defences which overwhelmingly benefit males committing violence against females. Despite the statistics that honour killings are being reported from all over the world, the greatest number of shocking reports of honour killings come from Muslim countries.
Inside an Honor Killing : A Father and Daughter Tell Their Story
A shockingly intimate look at the world of honor killings, as seen through the eyes of both the perpetrator and the victim. What drives a person to murder their sister, mother, or daughter? What is life like in a society in which women are imprisoned for their own "protection," while their potential killers walk free? In this powerful and affecting book, writer and journalist Lene Wold offers a rare window into the world of "honor killings"--the controversial practice that sees more than five thousand women murdered at the hands of close relatives each year, all to restore their family's reputation.
Marriage by Force? : Contestation Over Consent and Coercion in Africa
With forced marriage, as with so many human rights issues, the sensationalized hides the mundane, and oversimplified popular discourses miss the range of experiences. In sub-Saharan Africa, the relationship between coercion and consent in marriage is a complex one that has changed over time and place, rendering impossible any single interpretation or explanation. The legal experts, anthropologists, historians, and development workers contributing to Marriage by Force? focus on the role that marriage plays in the mobilization of labor, the accumulation of wealth, and domination versus dependency. They also address the crucial slippage between marriages and other forms of gendered violence, bondage, slavery, and servile status.
When Norms Collide: Local Responses to Activism Against Female Genital Mutilation and Early Marriage
Many transnational campaigns, and particularly the transnational campaign on violence against women, promote international norms that target the behavior of local nonstate actors. But these international norms are often at odds with local practices. What happens when the international andlocal norms collide? When does transnational activism lead individuals and communities to abandon local norms and embrace international ones?In When Norms Collide, Karisa Cloward presents a path-breaking theoretical framework for understanding the processes by which individuals negotiate competing demands placed on them by international and local norms.
Why Does Patriarchy Persist?
The election of an unabashedly patriarchal man as US President was a shock for many--despite decades of activism on gender inequalities and equal rights, how could it come to this? What is it about patriarchy that seems to make it so resilient and resistant to change? Undoubtedly it endures in part because some people benefit from the unequal advantages it confers. But is that enough to explain its stubborn persistence? In this highly original and persuasively argued book, Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider put forward a different view: they argue that patriarchy persists because it serves a psychological function. By requiring us to sacrifice love for the sake of hierarchy, patriarchy protects us from the vulnerability of loving and becomes a defense against loss.
Women and Violence in India : Gender, Oppression and the Politics of Neoliberalism
India's endemic gender-based violence has received increased international scrutiny and provoked waves of domestic protest and activism. In recent years, related studies on India and South Asia have proliferated but their analyses often fail to identify why violence flourishes. Unwilling to simply accept patriarchy as the answer, Tamsin Bradley presents new research examining how different groups in India conceptualise violence against women, revealing beliefs around religion, caste and gender that render aggression socially acceptable. She also analyses the role that neoliberalism, and its corollary consumerism, play in reducing women to commodity objects for barter or exchange.
Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities: Critical Feminist and Postcolonial Analyses
Bringing together feminist analyses of economic processes and outcomes with feminist critiques of Orientalism, this book examines the diverse economic realities facing women in a range of Muslim communities. This approach pays special attention to the role of Islam in economic analyses of gender equality and women's well-being in Muslim communities, while at the same time challenging biased and inaccurate accounts that essentialize Islam. Nuanced case studies conducted in Bangladesh, Iran, Israel, Nigeria, and Turkey illustrate the historical and institutional diversity of Muslim communities and draw vivid pictures of the everyday economic lives of Muslim women in these communities.

For additional items try the following searches in the Library Catalogue

Streaming Videos

Tribal Wives : Challenging Western Views of Polygamy and Female Circumcision Challenging Western Views of Polygamy and Female Circumcision - In this documentary Dionne grapples with troubling subjects like polygamy, female circumcision, and the virtual powerlessness of women in Maasai society-all while struggling to refrain from imposing Western views and morals.

The Cutting Tradition - An award-winning and moving film narrated by actress Meryl Streep, which at times is hard to watch and even harder to listen to. It’s an up-close and personal look at the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM).

Act of Dishonour - In a land beset by endless strife, honour can come at a high price – even for the innocent.

Eat Sugar and Speak Sweetly : Forced Marriages in Europe - This shocking documentary reveals the scale of forced marriages in Europe.

Activism and the Fossil Fuel Industry
In less than a decade, activism against the fossil fuel industry has exploded across the globe. While environmentalists used to focus on legislative goals, such as carbon emissions trading or renewable energy policies, today the most prominent activists directly attack the fossil fuel industry. This timely book offers a comprehensive evaluation of different types of activism, the success and impact of campaigns and activities, and suggestions as to ways forward.　 This book is the first systematic treatment of the anti-fossil fuel movement in the United States. An accessible and readable text, it is an essential reference for scholars, policymakers, activists, and citizens interested in climate change, fossil fuels, and environmental sustainability.
The Big Stall : How Big Oil and Think Tanks are Blocking Action on Climate Change in Canada
The Big Stall traces the origins of the government's climate change plan back to the energy sector itself -- in particular Big Oil. It shows how, in the last fifteen years, Big Oil has infiltrated provincial and federal governments, academia, media and the non-profit sector to sway government and public opinion on the realities of climate change and what needs to be done about it.
Biodiversity and Climate Change : Transforming the Biosphere
The physical and biological impacts of climate change are dramatic and broad‑ranging. People who care about the planet and manage natural resources urgently need a synthesis of our rapidly growing understanding of these issues. Leading experts in the field summarize observed changes, assess what the future holds, and offer suggested responses. From extinction risk to ocean acidification, from the future of the Amazon to changes in ecosystem services, and from geoengineering to the power of ecosystem restoration, this book captures the sweep of climate change transformation of the biosphere.
Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth
In order to rescue ourselves from climate catastrophe, we need to radically alter how humans live on Earth. We have to go from spending carbon to banking it. We have to put back the trees, wetlands, and corals. We have to regrow the soil and turn back the desert. We have to save whales, wombats, and wolves. We have to reverse the flow of greenhouse gases and send them in exactly the opposite direction: down, not up. We have to flip the carbon cycle and run it backwards. For such a revolutionary transformation we'll need civilization 2.0.
The Climate Change Debate: A Reference Handbook
The Climate Change Debate: A Reference Handbook provides an in-depth look at climate change facts and statistics. It also discusses debate surrounding the scientific consensus. The Climate Change Debate: A Reference Handbook covers the topic of climate change from the earliest days of planet Earth to the present day. Chapters One and Two provide a historical background of climate change and a review of current problems, controversies, and solutions. The remainder of the book consists of chapters that aid readers in continuing their own research on the topic, such as an extended annotated bibliography, chronology, glossary, noteworthy individuals and organizations in the field, and important data and documents.
Environmental Activism on the Ground: Small Green and Indigenous Organizing
Environmental Activism on the Ground draws upon a wide range of interdisciplinary scholarship to examine small scale, local environmental activism, paying particular attention to Indigenous experiences. It illuminates the questions that are central to the ongoing evolution of the environmental movement while reappraising the history and character of late twentieth and early twenty-first environmentalism in Canada, the United States, and beyond.
The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis
Climate change: it is arguably the most urgent and consequential issue humankind has ever faced. How we address it in the next thirty years will determine the kind of world we will live in and will bequeath to our children and to theirs. In The Future We Choose, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac--who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015--have written a cautionary but optimistic book about the world's changing climate and the fate of humanity. The authors outline two possible scenarios for our planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris climate targets. In the other, they lay out what it will be like to live in a carbon neutral, regenerative world.
Getting to Zero: Canada Confronts Global Warming
Canadians have been coming to a greater understanding of the threat posed by global warming and the need for urgent action by governments, industry and the public at large. The Trudeau government has, more or less, taken up the cause. Provinces are recognizing the need for action, even as they fight over what that should be. Some multinational corporations are suddenly promoting themselves as environmental stewards. Concerned citizens are looking for ways to effectively reduce their carbon footprint. Yet progress has been slow and limited. In this book, long-time social and environmental activist Tony Clarke provides the hard-to-find information and analysis about what Canada is and is not doing right now to get to zero.
Global Green Politics
In light of growing urgency in tackling the global environmental crisis, there is a need for new visions and strategies to ensure a more sustainable and just world. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Green perspectives on a range of global issues, including security, the economy, the state, global governance, development and the environment. Drawing on academic literature on Green political theory, combined with insights from real-world practice and the author's own extensive personal experience, it provides a timely and accessible account of why we need to embrace Green politics in order to tackle the multiple crises facing the world today.
Grassroots Rising : A Call to Action on Climate, Farming, Food, and a Green New Deal
Grassroots Rising is a passionate call to action for the global body politic, providing practical solutions for how to survive--and thrive--in catastrophic times. Author Ronnie Cummins aims to educate and inspire citizens worldwide to organize and become active participants in preventing ecological collapse. This book offers a blueprint for building and supercharging a grassroots Regeneration Movement based on consumer activism, farmer innovation, political change, and regenerative finance--embodied most recently by the proposed Green New Deal in the US. Cummins asserts that the solution lies right beneath our feet and at the end of our forks through the transformation of our broken food system.
Renewable Energy: A Primer for the Twenty-First Century
From wood to coal to oil and gas, the sources of energy on which civilization depends have always changed as technology advances. Now renewables are overtaking fossil fuels, with wind and solar energy becoming cheaper and more competitive every year. Growth in renewable energy will further accelerate as electric vehicles become less expensive than traditional automobiles. Understanding the implications of the energy transition will prepare us for the many changes ahead. This book is a primer for readers of all levels on the coming energy transition and its global consequences.
Thirty Years of Failure: Understanding Canadian Climate Policy
Thirty years ago, Canada was a climate leader, designing policy to curb rising emissions and demanding the same of other countries. But in the intervening decades, Canada has become more of a climate villain, rejecting global attempts to slow climate change and ignoring ever-increasing emissions at home. How did Canada go from climate leader to climate villain? In Thirty Years of Failure, Robert MacNeil examines Canada's changing climate policy in meticulous detail and argues that the failure of this policy is due to a perfect storm of interrelated and mutually reinforcing cultural, political and economic factors -- all of which have made a functional and effective national climate strategy impossible.

For additional items try the following searches in the Library Catalogue

Streaming Videos

Greening of Energy - Although renewable energies are seen as clean and green, their development can often be cause of conflict as local residents are opposed to their impact on the visual landscape.

Ice on Fire - An eye-opening documentary that focuses on many never-before-seen solutions designed to slow down our escalating environmental crisis, Ice on Fire goes beyond the current climate change narrative and offers hope that we can actually stave off the worst effects of global warming

Something in the Air - Pollution is killing tens of thousands of people every day around the world. Cities across Asia and Europe have had to shut down and stop traffic to manage "Airpocalypse" pollution events when the air is unsafe for the people who live there.

TEDTalks, How We Could Change the Planet's Climate Future - The climate crisis is too vast and complicated to solve with a silver bullet, says author David Wallace-Wells.

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Selected Library Resources