Matrix Maps
I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography
Toni Morrison
God, Pedigree & the Architects of the Classroom
Schools were not always such a dominant part of the human experience as they are today. Many parents had to be persuaded, even forced, to send their children to school. Before World War II, a college education was thought to be unimaginable or unnecessary for the average person. Deeply influenced by the British and German educational systems, the schools today continue to support the differentiation, efficiency and compulsion needed for stabilizing social hierarchies, the workforce and the economy. Ironically, schools educate and nationalize at the same time they privilege and punish, making it difficult for all academic institutions to deliver on a democratic mission, particularly as charter schools, student loan debt and the information economy threaten the entire system. This Matrix Map will provide you with opportunities to explore the purposes of education and how it picks up where faith and religion leave off. Also, it reveals some of the figures who have influenced education and why the system tends to yield the same unequal access and opportunities today as it did in the past. Click the covers to preview.
Love, Money & the Reproduction of Debt and Desire
Marrying for love has not always been the norm. Land, wealth and alliances were considered more important for marriage than romantic love. Unions between men and women resembled business deals and money often sat at the center of the marriage exchange system. Not only would this system define and reinforce gender roles and divisions of duties in the household and workplace, it would also be instrumental in producing and reproducing the consumers and consumption patterns that influence education and the circulation of goods and services across industries and institutions locally, nationally and globally. This Matrix Map will provide you with opportunities to explore traditional and non-traditional ideas about love and money, and it reveals how the fate of money, debt and banking are intrinsically tied to the body, human relationships and financial illiteracy.
Food, Frankensteins & the Business of the Body
Food fuels the human body, but it also greatly influenced early human relationships and community development. The need to hunt and gather food created the cooperation needed for survival. However, agriculture, animal domestication, food surpluses and enclosures changed these relationships in ways that established patterns of social divisions and political arrangements that are still prevalent today. The human body as a site for the consumption of food gave way to its becoming a site of labor exchange for profit and protection and later a site for medical experimentation and exploitation. This Matrix Map will provide opportunities for you to explore how food, health and life turn into mathematics. Also, it reveals how special interests in agriculture and medicine make it increasingly difficult to determine where government policies begin and corporate goals end.
American Dreams, Global Realities & the Story of Work
Market forces and the control of land, food, natural resources and human bodies created the disruptions that helped to establish labor systems such as indentured servitude, slavery, peonage, and eventually, wage labor. As most of the world has transitioned from agrarian to industrial to knowledge-networking economies, there are concerns about the potential impact on human identities, labor competition and law and order. The mass production that followed industrialization required mass consumption, mass education, mass marketing and mass incarceration. The information economy is reshaping this paradigm as globalization, outsourcing and technology create unemployment, displacement and an international underclass. This Matrix Map will provide opportunities for you to explore the changing nature of work and the potential shocks to civic relations at home and abroad when work runs out. Also, it reveals the benefits, struggles, distractions and internal problems of unions and their decreasing influence in the wake of powerful trade agreements.
Sports, Branding & Control of the Modern Gladiator
Modern athletics have roots in pagan celebrations and war preparations. In ancient Rome, sports would acquire the commercial and entertainment value that we recognize today, as spectacular events and deaths became an effective way to defuse social, political and economic tensions among the people. Today, sports help regulate leisure, but they also promote the integration of people from diverse backgrounds into a national system of values so vital to the discipline and sense of meritocracy found in our social institutions and the workforce. This Matrix Map will provide opportunities for you to explore how sports continue to reflect the problems of the larger society and create the action dramas that often play out in subsidized stadiums as well as classrooms, court rooms, bedrooms, boardrooms and emergency rooms. Also, it reveals how physical prowess and fame deify sports stars and why their star power makes them icons for selling products, culture and simulations.
Hollywood, Avatars & the Politics of Entertainment
California became the home of the movie industry because it provided a way for early filmmakers to escape a movie monopoly. The immigrants who founded Hollywood claimed they wanted to create films that offered escapism, fantasy and an idealized America. In reality, they often established stratified studio systems and reproduced images and narratives that sustained rather than challenged the status quo. Although the entertainment industry consolidated over the years and shored up its connections in Washington through lobbying, campaign contributions and the election of celebrities, the number of those who participate in the development and creation of the simulations we see on the silver screen still do not adequately reflect the larger society. This Matrix Map will provide opportunities for you to explore how the entertainment industry has appropriated and repackaged culture and marketed it for amusement, propaganda and politics. Also, it reveals how some of the ethnic communities that influence Hollywood and popular music continue to face challenges inside and outside the industry.
Unforgettable Differences & the Intersection of Race, Gender and Class
Race, gender and class are social constructions carved by people and power. The three are dynamic on their own. However, they are often experienced under similar conditions of oppression. Even today, they network and intersect in ways that maintain, reproduce and reinforce inequalities, often with the help of stereotypes, philanthropy and leaders who exploit differences instead of similarities. In spite of major changes, fear of difference continues to haunt our social and cultural spaces. This shapes identities and experiences, sometimes under extraordinary instances of psychic, physical and economic violence. This Matrix Map will provide opportunities for you to explore how the African-American experience offers one analytical framework for surveying the interconnected nature of race, gender and class as systems of difference. Also, it reveals the ways these constructions have formed a symbiotic permanence that is always open for alteration but never eradication.
Unforgettable Differences & the Intersection of Race, Gender and Colonialism
Anticolonial movements after World War II are linked to the quest for civil rights for minorities in America. Protests and solidarity movements unite them around common experiences of inequality. Their calls for liberation from discriminatory policies and practices in the U.S. mirror those of Third World countries oppressed by years of colonial rule. U.S. domestic and foreign policies often follow a similar trajectory in responding to all of these movements as surveillance, sabotage, propaganda and violence became strategic tools for limiting the spread of disruptive ideas and re-establishing a new colonial order that needed to maintain access to cheap labor, natural resources, international markets and strategic geographical locations. This Matrix Map will provide opportunities for you to explore how colonialism in the context of the African Diaspora manifests and reflects differences associated with race, gender and class. Also, it reveals the ways the three often coalesce as systems of difference and easily split under the weight of competing visions of democracy and structuralism.
Enemies, Empires & the Rhetoric of War and Conspiracy
As the European powers relinquished their status and colonies, the U.S. filled the void in order to limit the march of communism and to control the growing anticolonial sentiments at home and across the world, but not without British networks. The U.S. distinguished the way it managed its role in the world from the British Empire. Yet, the power dynamic is the same and questions abound concerning the use and abuse of propaganda, austerity programs, technology, the military-industrial complex and the security-industrial complex. Also, accusations about cover-ups, support for dictators and bungled operations have created a sense of public paranoia that inspires the conspiracist blowback that is often discounted but remains a persistent part of the American public imagination. This Matrix Map will provide opportunities for you to explore the conflicting interests and shifting narratives surrounding many famous foreign entanglements around the planet. Also, it reveals why limited transparency makes distinguishing rhetoric from reality very difficult, raising even more concerns about the permanence of war and the economics of misery and violence in the nation state.
Superheroes, Salvation & the Architects of Utopia
Throughout time, people have dreamed of utopias or ideal communities beyond their current realities. Whether it is in the form of ancient legends, cartoons, literature or films such as The Matrix, the longing for a hero and a better world is a common sentiment among the religious and non-religious, especially during times of personal and national crisis. Visions of ideal societies have offered hope to the despondent. They have influenced the establishment of colonies, cities, immigration patterns and the aspirations of marginalized people around the world. However, utopias seldom turn out to be such ideal paradigms, as The Autobiography of Moon County reveals. Utopian enterprises often morph into dystopias due to bad leadership and ideology, especially when they combine to personalize problems rooted in politics and policy. This Matrix Map will provide opportunities for you to explore various utopian arrangements, both real and imagined, and why they succeed or fail. Also, it reveals how heroism, faith and hope continue to assuage discontent and inspire re-creations in spite of a long record of global tragedy.