Company Town Sociology

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Recommended: Scenario of intersectionality in everyday life

According to the textbook, intersectionality is “a sociological perspective that holds that our multiple group memberships affect our lives in ways that are distinct from single group memberships” (page 205). Intersectionality begins with social stratification. Social stratification is “the existence of structured inequalities between groups in the society in terms of their access to material or symbolic rewards” (page 205). For example, some social stratifications include gender, age, and race. Statuses due to social stratification interact in which the inequalities become additive. The interacting effects of inequalities due to these sources creates an extra oppression on those who are facing it. Through social stratifications, intersectionality …show more content…

In order to address such a large term in such a large movie, I will narrow it down by applying the term to one character in the film. This person will be David Bouie. In the film, David Bouie is an elderly, African American, lower to mid-class male. Although he is a male, some of his attributions make him the perfect candidate to experience intersectionality: his age, race, and income. Not only is Bouie African American (which already sets him up for an inequality), but he is in the lower to mid-class as well. In the movie, Bouie is trying to fight with Georgia Pacific, a big factory. There is a Georgia Pacific Mill right near his town and this mill is majorly polluting the air and water. In fact, a lot of people in his town died from cancer, and they are tracing the cause of cancer to these pollutants. Because Bouie is African American and is not a part of the upper class, however, Georgia Pacific will not even consider any of his requests to get the pollution under control. In fact, everyone in the town forming a group and they got the EPA involved, but Koch Industries still did not give them the time of day. I believe that if it were upper class, white males getting harmed by these chemicals, there would be a change. It is saddening to say that being an upper class, white male leads to greater power. As you can see, David Bouie was oppressed due to structuring inequalities

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