The Underground Journal, St. Lawrence University, Fall 2015

Fall 2015 Volume 5 Issue 2

A Peer Reviewed Academic Journal of Undergraduate Research Fall 2015

Volume 5 Issue 2

ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSIT Y CANTON, NY

EDITORIAL POLICY

THE UNDERGROUND is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes the work of students whose creative endeavors reflect issues in mediums of representation and discourse (i.e. PCA, Film, Gender, Fine Arts, Art History, etc.). Last semester the journal broadened its scope to focus on the inclusion of multimedia submissions such as artwork, audio and videos.

The goal of this journal is to provide an outlet which allows St. Lawrence students to share the results of their work with the rest of the academic community. All submissions must be original and reflective of the learning goals in the above mentioned fields and of St. Lawrence University academia.

The journal will be published online once a semester. Each submission will undergo a rigorous editorial process based on a series of blind peer reviews. Submissions may be subject to a series of revisions. All work must be submitted in an electronic copy. Students are limited to submitting only one piece of their work per semester. Submissions may include but are not limited to written pieces (i.e. plays, research papers, creative pieces, etc.) and visual art (i.e. photography, video of performances, etc.). It is recommended that submissions be sent in by the time determined and announced by the editorial board and should be addressed to Jessica Prody (jprody@stlawu. edu) or Allison Rowland (arowland@stlawu.edu).

EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Emily Baldwin ‘16 Managing Editor Morgan Danna ‘17 Graphic Editor Jane Eifert ‘16 Public Relations and Social Media Chair Alexa Mitchell ‘16 Editorial Board Jordan Ahrens ‘16 Samantha Colton ‘16 Kathryn Corbitt ‘18 Elsa Coughlin ‘19 Emma Cummings-Krueger ‘16 R. Christopher DiMezzo ‘18 Rachel Faust ‘17 Paige Friedlander ‘16 So Hyeong Lee ‘19 Katherine McGarrity ‘17 Thomas Mathiasen ‘16 Elizabeth Miller ‘17 Elise Miner ‘16 Emma Parish ‘16 Faculty Advisors Jessica Prody Ph. D. Allison Rowland Ph. D.

LETTER TO THE READERS Dear Reader, Welcome to the tenth edition of The Underground Journal! The Underground has experienced tremendous growth this semester, including the addition of three executive editorial board members, a record number of submissions, and the acceptance of multimedia pieces.

The Underground Journal truly embodies how Laurentians have excelled in research. Olivia Mathieu leads the issue with her fascinating piece on the political economy of academic publishing. Following this, Anderson Good discusses Comcast Corporation’s rise from a cable provider to a media conglomerate. Julia Raue delves into E-Waste in Guiyu, China and the importance of electronically redesigning our future. The fourth piece, by Dakota Noyes, offers potential reforms for the Palestinian Constitution. Next, Katie McGarrity investigates “English” values in Charlotte Bronte’s Villette. Olivia Tompkins conducts a textual analysis of the representation of mental illness in the media. Finally, India Harvey closes our issue with “In Touch”, a video highlighting how one can find happiness anywhere.

This issue also includes artistic work by Alanna Blackburn, Spencer Lewis, Emma Garfield, and Ellen Bischoff.

On behalf of all of us at The Underground, we hope you enjoy our fall 2015 edition. Congratulations to all of our published authors!

Sincerely,

Emily Baldwin ‘16 Editor-in-Chief

ON THE COVER

ON THE COVER: Photograph of Martha Wasserbauer ‘14, performing “Child’s Play” during the Fall 2013 Dance Showcase, captured

by Tara Freeman/St. Lawrence University.

TABLE OF CONTENTS The Political Economy of Academic Publishing Olivia Mathieu

1

The Comcast Corporation:

Using Vertical and Horizontal Integration in a Smart Way or an Illegal Way? Anderson Good

5

E-Waste in Guiyu, China:

Importance of Electronic Re-Design for our Future Julia Raue

15

Updating the Palestinian Constitution: A System of Consociational Government Dakota Noyes

19

Charlotte Bronte’s Villette:

A Study of “Englishness” and its Effects Katie McGarrity

27

Depression: Fashionable or Debilitating or None of the Above?

A Textual Analysis of Depression in the Media Olivia Tompkins

In Touch

India Harvey

31

37

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Olivia Mathieu

The Political Economy of Academic Publishing ABSTRACT: Over time, academic publishing companies have divided the market, essentially forming a monopoly and making a tremendous profit off of selling textbooks and journals. This paper will investigate how this problem is integrated into the St. Lawrence community, and will be composed of ethnographic interviews with administration, students and the staff at the bookstore. This paper will go into brief detail how the publishing companies have progressed over time to the point of control that they currently obtain, and how students are finding loopholes to challenge the existing power structure.

KEYWORDS: Academic Publishing, Maximized Profit, Elsevier, Monopoly, Bundling Many academic publishing companies have dominated the market in selling journals and textbooks to universities at inflated costs every year, and successfully get away in doing so. Numerous universities are frustrated in being forced to pay these extreme prices for resources that are absolutely vital and necessary to provide to students and professors.

Similarly, many students are irritated for having to face such high costs for required textbooks, but fail to place the blame on the correct source of the financial problem: the publishing companies. While conducting ethnographic interviews, it became clear that this proves to be a prominent problem resonating at St. Lawrence. It is evident that these publishing companies have not only created difficulties for students and professors, but for the library and bookstore as well.

The origin of textbook publishing dates back to a time as early as the second century, and it has significantly progressed since the initial step of textbook making. It wasn’t until the sixth century that textbook printing really started to take off to craft its own business. Long before books were produced, scripts were the dominant means in which academic material was produced. The sixth century became the time of the “universal adoption of parchment as a writing surface”(Talarico, 2003). Parchment tended to be thick and rough, traditionally having been made from sheepskin. After the process of re-washing and scraping, the parchment would then be equipped for use with the commonly used, permanent iron-gall ink (ibid). Often times, scribes would create multiple copies of works in scriptoriums, which were rooms that often “contained a large central table and seven writing desks ranged along the walls” (ibid). Scripts on this parchment were originally popular among the monasteries, but were soon expanded beyond the monasteries and adopted by the medieval universities, in Bologna and Paris for example, for use in scholastic studies.

This new secular book trade became a “licensed appendage of the university, consisting of stationers, scribes, parchment makers, paper makers, bookbinders, and all those associated with making books” (Talarico, 2003). Textbooks were sold, bought back and resold at discounted prices (which still holds true to how current textbook purchases operate).

Booksellers were assigned by the university to handle the buying/selling operation, and were under strict oath to “conduct themselves faithfully and legitimately” (Thorndike, 1944, p. 100) in selling textbooks. Any bookseller failing to do so was “’utterly ousted from the grace and favor of the university’ as well as not having ‘the liberty of exercising the office on behalf of the university’” (Thorndike, 1944, p. 101).

The pecia system of copying was instituted in thirteenth century, and had a strong presence at multiple universities. Through this system, students and scribes could rent out parts of books for a specific time to copy and then return (Talarico, 2003). This is similar to how any current library functions for academic use. Books had made the transition from

print-specific scripts to “made to order” material, in the sense that university stationers were able to print many copies of the same book with no specific buyer in mind (ibid). This started the evolution of true mass production for textbook material. These manuscripts would be produced by groups of scribes working in different locations. “A single scribe stationer might receive a commission and then farm out sections to independent scribes” (ibid) in which one scribe assigns work to his affiliates who then complete the work for him in order to sell. In comparison, this is a small preview to what the large, invincible publishing companies have become today.

The lack of affordability of college textbooks have drawn attention and raised suspicion in the past few decades. Michael Apple, author of Textbook Publishing: The Political and Economic Influences, notes that “the textbook dominates the curriculum and teaching practices of many classrooms” (p. 282). The publishing market is controlled by a handful of competitive text publishers, which makes it harder to break through the high costs that they set for books. “Seventy-five percent of the total sales of college textbooks were controlled by the 10 largest text publishers, with 90 percent accounted for by the top 20. Prentice-Hall, McGraw Hill, the CBS Publishing Group, and Scott Foresman accounted for 40 percent of the market” (Apple, p. 283). According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, college textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation over the past two decades, increasing by 186 percent between 1986 and 2004 (GAO, 2005) with an average increased rate of six percent per year. Some publishing companies will sell textbooks for hundreds of dollars each. In 2014, an article in the USWJ reported that an average college student would normally spend about $600.00 - $1,200.00 annually on textbooks alone, despite all un-related tuition costs that a college student faces (Mitchell, 2014).

The rising costs of textbooks can be attributed to the different tactics that publishing companies adopt in order to generate more profit. The increasing costs can be associated with “developing products designed to accompany textbooks, such as CD-ROMs and other instructional supplements” (GAO, 2005) as well as unnecessarily making updated editions of textbooks with minimal changes. “Short revision cycles, or more frequent revisions, limit students’ ability to reduce their costs by purchasing used textbooks and selling their textbooks back to bookstores at the end of the term” (Nicholls, 2009, p. 7). This hinders students’ opportunities to buy used books, forcing them to buy new books to ultimately create more profit for the publishers. On average, the California Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) cited that new editions cost approximately 50 percent more than used copies of the previous edition (ibid).

In order for one to understand the extreme prices for textbooks and journals, we must first understand the structure of academic

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publishing companies. Eileen Meehan, author of Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!, states that, “profit, not culture, drives show business: no business means no show” (Meehan, 1991, p. 48). This correlates because these publishing companies’ goals are to make maximize their profit; we must not forget that publishing is a business. However, “how one makes a profit and what strategies publishers use to accumulate ‘capital’ can be very different” (Apple, 1989, p. 283). Academic publishing companies “create internal markets where product for one unit could be recycled to provide product for multiple units” (Meehan, 1991, p. 52) which is demonstrated through companies’ multiple edition text-books in order to maximize profit and earn multiple revenues.

Academic publishing companies have also formed a major monopoly over selling journals to universities. In 2012, the USA Today pointed out that, “more than a decade ago, the big publishers secured what is often referred to as the ‘big deal’, a form of bundling in which a large university library, instead of subscribing to individual journals, subscribes to hundreds at a time” (Owen, 2012). In theory, this drives down the per-journal cost, but college libraries are forced to spend a substantial amount more on journals they would have never showed interest in buying if it wasn’t for the aspect of bundling. Since the majority of libraries will not take the chance of not providing the university with the most up-to-date research, they are forced to buy the journals and spend the money. Therefore the publishing companies will continue to raise their journal prices because they know the libraries will still subscribe.

Elsevier is the hardest-hitting publishing company that supplies every university with scientific journals. As of May 3, 2015 there are 14,994 signatures of researchers taking a stand against Elsevier, and they are all in support of putting an end to this monopoly as well as all other ones out there (Cost of Knowledge). There are over 3,000 academics (including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale universities) that have signed their names to a petition declaring their intention of boycotting this company (Flood, 2012). This petition states that Elsevier charges “‘exorbitantly high prices’ for its journals and criticizes its practice of selling journals in bundles so that libraries must buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all” (ibid). Due to the bundling, Elsevier claims that the average price of articles in a bundle is $2.00 comparing to the $10.00 per article if it were bought alone. Although, because of the bundling that companies such as Elsevier require, libraries end up spending a fortune more altogether because they have to pay for the unwanted journals that are already fixated in the cost of the bundle, which ultimately generates a greater expense.

In order to control the competitiveness between companies, the academic publishers work together to create an external market of “bringing together media industries that were once distinct and separate” (Meehan, 1991, p. 56) to control who gets to make profit off of what. For instance, the academic publishers divide the market where only certain companies publish books for specific subjects, and they aren’t allowed to publish another subject without an agreement. This relates to the theory that, “media are industries specializing in the production and distribution of cultural commodities” (Baran & Davis, 2012, p. 347). We also see this external market continually demonstrated through Hollywood, and how production companies have an agreement of when to release major blockbuster movies; they divide the market to produce a maximum profit so everyone wins. Additionally, TV companies “bundle” their shows just like publishing companies do with their journals. Even though a consumer may hate sports and is not interested in watching “ESPN”, they are still required to buy that channel within the package if they want to watch the channels they are interested in buying.

All universities have had to face the outrageous expenses to buy journals and textbooks to offer the academic necessities to students and professors, and no one is happy about it. After conducting a thorough investigation with financial coordinators of the budget for the St. Lawrence

University ODY Library and the Brewer bookstore, it is apparent that academic publishing companies negatively impact our school. Michelle Gillie, the St. Lawrence collection development/ acquisitions librarian, disclosed the information that the whole ODY Library budget is $1.35 million annually ($562.00 per student), where 1.2 million of that goes towards the cost of serials and digital content (which consist of data bases, journal articles, and scanned copies). That leaves a mere $150,000 budgeted for books and videos, as most of the overall budget goes to digital content. Simon Owens, reporter for World News, states that, “Major periodical subscriptions, especially to electronic journals published by historical key providers, cannot be sustained” (Owen, 2012).

Elsevier has power over St. Lawrence because it is one of the most expensive packages, and a major science journal provider. Therefore, considering the high importance and demand of our science department, St. Lawrence is forced to buy from this vendor. Gillie revealed that the St. Lawrence Library paid Elsevier a total of $212,644 for two journal packages and an online book series in the 2014-2015 school year. Due to the “bundling”, St. Lawrence uses only a very small portion of the purchased journals, yet has to pay for the whole thing. Most other journals cost closer to “[$]40,000 each a year, though some particular ones have increased 145 percent in the past 6 years” (ibid). Comparatively, $3.75 million dollars of Harvard’s budget goes toward journal subscriptions (ibid). Although, Gillie pointed out that the difference in budgets between colleges are the fact that publishers have what’s called, “tier pricing”. The pricing is based on enrollment, so smaller institutions will pay a little less. The cap for the next tier level is 2,500 students, and St. Lawrence is just below that at 2,406. If St. Lawrence were to ever go past the 2,500-student enrollment, Gillie said our “serials would go through the roof ”. Owens drew the conclusion that, “librarians feel they’ve been held hostage to these steep pricing increases because of the constant pressure to provide access to the most up-to-date research for their campus faculty and students” (ibid). Michelle Gillie feels this same pressure, noting that “no one wants to be the librarian who comes back to their faculty and says ‘sorry, but we’re not going to provide this core resource anymore because the vendor won’t agree to our demands’”.

Not only do academic publishing companies control the high pricing of journals, but they have major power over textbook prices as well.

In this case, the bookstore is not the only one who faces the large deficit, but rather the students as well. Kevin Collen, Brewer Bookstore Assistant Director, points out a common misconception that people have regarding textbook purchases at the bookstore. “Bookstores are profit centers, which are responsible for generating their own revenue without any funding from the university. Textbooks are our least profitable product, generating only about 10-15 percent gross profit every year,” Collen says.

Though most revenue figures are not public, some of these commercial publishing houses are “commanding between a 30 and 40 percent profit margin” (ibid).

Collen explained that the prices of the textbooks are based on the publishers’ costs, therefore after buying from them and selling to the students, they end up pretty consistently losing money on textbook sales.

Collen divulged that the bookstore offers a 50:50 ratio of used books to new books, but because of the new editions that publishing companies keep producing, the number of used books available are vastly decreasing. Collen stated that, “the perception is that college stores take advantage of the patrons, but that is clearly not the case. A lot of the stores are going out of business.”

Commodification-of-culture theorists believe “the elite who operate the cultural industries generally are ignorant of the consequences of their work” (Baran & Davis, 2012, p. 349), where academic publishing companies are guilty of this claim. Publishing companies are only interested in their profit, despite the fact that it is taxing universities and students at ridiculous prices. The publishing companies want

MATHIEU | 3

everything to be merchandise in order to make a profit, even if authors of articles do not get any compensation in turn for their personal work.

Juraj Kittler, assistant professor of Communication Arts at St. Lawrence University, has published articles in journals that fall under this publishing scrutiny. Kittler explained that authors do not get any compensation for publishing their articles in journals, but would have to purchase the entirety of the journal to have access to something they (themselves) wrote. “The irony of it all is that I published an article with full support and funding from St. Lawrence, I didn’t get a penny for it by the publishing house, and then St. Lawrence has to buy the subscription of the journal just to acquire my article. The University is paying in three different forms for the same content. This is a big racket.”

It becomes nearly impossible to break through this monopoly that the publishers have crafted. First of all, the academic publishing companies have created their own form of gatekeeping through having the power to not publicize any controversies about the publishing itself.

Therefore, as cited by an academic publishing company itself, “existing research does not go into detail about such things within the college text industry” (Apple, 1989, p. 285). It is easy for publishers to filter out what information is published, which in part made it more difficult for me to find articles when researching about this topic. Secondly, publishing companies charge unfair amounts of money to Universities for journals because they know the Universities have to buy them either way. Lastly, the publishing companies have the power to repackage old textbooks and maintain the high price to continually create profit off of the same old texts. The companies get away with that because they know that the students will have to purchase the books if professors keep assigning them.

Inevitably, people will always find ways to challenge the system; they’ll work around it, they will always find the cracks (Peuter & Dryer-Witheford). Students are constantly finding ways to purchase textbooks at cheaper costs. “Forms of rebellion go beyond illicit reproduction to forms of autonomous production” (ibid). Many students have discovered alternative modes to avoid purchasing full-price textbooks at the bookstore. They will buy used copies, buy discounted books on Amazon.com, scan or share books. “Previous research by the Student PIRGs found that the high cost of textbooks could interfere with education.

Some students may delay buying the required text for a class, and fall behind; or they simply don’t buy it at all, putting themselves at a disadvantage” (Carns, 2015). Kara McDuffee, a senior at St. Lawrence, prides herself in not paying full price for textbooks. “Very rarely do I purchase a book from the bookstore. If anything, I usually buy it for a week while I wait for my books from Amazon to come in” McDuffee Says. “I have also bought older editions of the book because it is significantly cheaper.”

It is a vicious cycle because the students are the ones that face these large costs due to “many faculty members choose and assign their textbooks with little regard to the cost of the textbooks” (Nicholls, 2009, p. 8). Three out of the four professors that I interviewed at St. Lawrence openly admitted that they do not consider the price of textbooks when making their syllabus, and they furthermore did not even know the price of the textbook that they require their students to have.

Many universities are fed up with the academic publishers and have taken strides to break away from their monopoly. There has been a shift to digital products in the past ten years, as a lot of emphasis has been put on the idea of “open-source” textbooks. A handful of universities have made this transition into free or “low cost” electronic versions of textbooks that could save an average of $128 dollars a course if traditional textbooks were replaced (Carns, 2015). St. Lawrence has not yet made this transition but is looking into it for the future. The E-book was a popular alternative for a few years, but sales have recently started to decline, as students still prefer the print.

“To date, e-books have offered students some cost savings; those savings just haven’t been enough to get them to put down their more

familiar print textbook and switch over to digital” (Novack, 2014). Although, figures have shown that students are spending less on textbooks than several years ago, so the students are finding a loophole some way or another to avoid purchasing the textbooks. “The average amount students spent on textbooks- whether new, used, rented or electronic- fell 17% between 2010 and fall of 2014” (Mitchell, 2014).

Although I was not provided with an exact figure, Collen reported that the Brewer Bookstore textbook sales have significantly decreased over the years at about an annual 5 percent deficit, showing that students at St. Lawrence too, have slowly stopped purchasing books. John Buschman, librarian at Georgetown University, stated that he does not believe academic publishing companies can maintain the prices and still get away with it. “They can’t keep rising. At some point they have to stabilize or drop back. That’s just simply an economic reality” (Owens, 2012).

It is evident that the frameworks of academic publishing companies were established as early as the second century. Printing presses have evolved over time to form monopolies over selling textbooks and journals to college universities, generating an enormous profit. Students have taken steps to purchase their books elsewhere and defy the academic publishing companies, although individual efforts aren’t enough to defeat the publishing companies. The St. Lawrence Library and Brewer Bookstore have directly been affected by this monopoly, and will continue to suffer as this problem persists. With more universities acknowledging the high costs of textbooks and journals and implantation of alternative online sources, they band together to push back against the publishing company monopolies. However, only time will tell whether academic publishing companies will continue their textbook and journal domination over the political economy of academic publishing, or whether an end will ever be put to the madness.

Works Cited Apple, M. (1989). Textbook publishing: The political and economic influences.

Theory Into Practice, 4(28), 282-287.

Baran, S., & Davis, D. (2012). Media as Culture Industries: The Commodification of Culture. Mass Communication Thoery, 347-355.

Carrns, A. (2015, February 25). Putting a dent in college costs with open source textbooks. NY Times. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://www.nytimes. com/2015/02/26/your-money/putting-a-dent-in-college-costs-with-open-sourcetextbooks.html?_r=0 College Textbooks: Enhanced Offerings Appear to Drive Recent Price Increases.

(2005, July 29). Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://www.gao.gov/products/ GAO-05-806 Collen, Kevin. Personal Interview. 25 April 2015 Flood, A. (2012, February 2). Scientists sign petition to boycott academic publisher Elsevier. The Gaurdian. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://www.theguardian. com/science/2012/feb/02/academics-boycott-publisher- elsevier Gillie, Michelle. Personal Interview. 20 April 2015.

Kittler, Juraj. Personal Interview. 22 April 2015.

McDuffee, Kara. Personal Interview. 21 April 2015.

Meehan, E. (1991). “Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!” The Political Economy of a Commercial Intertext, 47-62.

Mitchell, J. (2014, August 27). A Tough Lesson for College Textbook Publishers.

Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://www.wsj.com/articles/a- tough-lesson-for-college-textbook-publishers-1409182139

4 | THE UNDERGROUND JOURNAL VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2 Nicholls, N. (2009). The Investigation into the Rising Cost of Textbooks. 4-40.

Retrieved January 1, 2015.

Novack, J. (2012, May 18). Should college students be forced to buy e-books? Retrieved April 15, 2015, fromhttp://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnvack/2012/05/18/ should-college-students-be-forced-to-buy-e-books/ Owens, S. (2012, July 3). Is the Academic Publishing Industry on the Verge of Disruption? US News. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://www.usnews.com/news/ articles/2012/07/23/is-the-academic-publishing-industry-on-the-verge-of-disruption Peuter, G., & Dryer-Witheford, N. (n.d.). A Playful Multitude? Mobilising and Counter-Mobilising Immaterial Game Labour. The Fibreculture Journal, (5).

Talarico, K. (2003, January 1). ORB: The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies. Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://www.the-orb.net/ The Cost of Knowledge. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2015, from http://thecostofknowledge.com/ Thorndike, L. (1944). Regulation of Booksellers, Paris. In University Record and Life in the Middle Ages (pp. 100-102). Colombia University Press.

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Anderson Good

The Comcast Corporation: Using Vertical and Horizonal Integration in a Smart Way or an Illegal Way? ABSTRACT: In this essay, I look at the Philadelphia-based media conglomerate the Comcast Corporation and its use of vertical and horizontal integration to track its rise from a small cable provider to one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. I use a political economy method to analyze my findings on Comcast. In my paper I have tracked the major business acquisitions in Comcast’s history, analyzing how Comcast’s usage of vertical and horizontal integration in these acquisitions has spawned its massive growth over the last three decades. The main acquisitions I look at are Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal (NBCU) in 2009 and the proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC) in 2015, not only looking at how these purchases play into their use of horizontal and vertical integration, but also looking at, and questioning the legality of these mergers. The main issue of legality I look at here is whether or not the merger with NBCU gives Comcast an unfair advantage in the media industry. I look at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation into the NBCU merger, as well as various legal academic journals and news articles to back up my claims. Lastly, I look at Comcast’s business model in a bigger picture, and at how Comcast and other major media conglomerates have consolidated the media industry’s power to six major conglomerates, and whether or not this is a good thing for the media industry.

KEYWORDS: Vertical and Horizontal Integration, Monopoly, Consolidation, Comcast, NBC Universal, Time Warner Cable Merger The Comcast Corporation is a monopoly. That is what countless opponents tried to convey to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), legislators, or whoever would listen in regards to the merger between Comcast and NBCU. Legislators, broadcasters, and public figures feared what this merger would mean for the diversity of rhetoric being presented to them from the media industry. People thought Comcast was done acquiring corporations since they had already amassed a multi-billion dollar multimedia conglomerate. But they weren’t. On February 13, 2014 Comcast officially announced its agreement to acquire 100% of Time Warner Cable (TWC) for a price of $45.2 billion (Comcast). A merger of this size could concentrate the power within the multimedia industry to such a degree that competition would be virtually impossible with this potential multimedia juggernaut. The merger, which was recently disbanded by Comcast and TWC, would combine the first and second largest cable and Internet providers in the United States to create a behemoth multimedia corporation which would own the cable services for 1/3 of America (freepress.net).

To best explain the magnitude of what this merger could have meant for the way Americans receive information, I will first detail a timeline of the events of the Comcast/TWC merger before it was disbanded. Next I will present both sides of the argument for supporting or opposing this merger. Finally, I will end with an op-ed style analysis of what this merger could have meant from my own point of view, and connect this analysis to the growing problem of consolidation within the media industry in the United States.

Comcast/Time Warner Merger Timeline Since Comcast and TWC disbanded the merger, the timeline for this merger is not as extensive as Comcast’s acquisition of NBCU in 2011.

Rumors began circulating in the press that TWC was for sale and willing to hear offers from their competitors in November of 2013. Initial rumors said Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable provider in the U.S., was the first to bid on TWC. In the subsequent days following these reports, rumors began circulating that Comcast was going to make an offer, a corporation with a noticeable financial advantage over Charter (CNNMoney). There were reports saying that Charter and Comcast were in a bidding war for the rights to TWC, but as you will come to learn,

Comcast does not like to lose. Continuing their trend of business victories, Comcast officially announced in February of 2014 that they had reached a deal with TWC to completely acquire its ownership rights. In actuality this deal would have been between three companies, Comcast, TWC, and Charter Communications. “Under the deal, Charter would pay Comcast $7.3 billion for 1.4 million subscribers. Comcast would divest another 2.5 million subscribers into a new publicly traded company that would be two-thirds owned by Comcast shareholders and one-third owned by Charter. In addition, Comcast and Charter would trade about 1.6 million subscribers in different parts of the country” (Baker and Chatterjee).

When this information was released, news outlets all over the country immediately presented the potential problems this could have caused for people across the country, but what people failed to realize was that this was only an agreement. A deal had been reached between the two corporations, but a merger of this magnitude could not have taken effect without thorough review by the FCC. The implication to the public is that the FCC is being as thorough as possible in its review of this merger, as they have delayed their ruling twice since the potential deal was announced. The first delay occurred in December of 2014 when the FCC announced that they had received thousands of pages of documents from TWC lawyers that had been previously withheld from them (Schatz). The second delay occurred in March of 2015 when the FCC announced that it would wait while a federal court could hear potential arguments for a technical problem that could change the logistics of the merger (CNNMoney).

Bryan Bishop has created a diagram detailing the top 50 television markets in the United States. The diagram lists these top 50 markets and then next to them notes whether Comcast or Time Warner is already present in these city’s TV and Internet markets (see Appendix Section; Appendix E). Out of these 50, only seven don’t have either Comcast or TWC present in their city’s cable TV or Internet market. The highest ranked TV market that doesn’t have either Comcast or TWC in their city is Phoenix at #12. The other 6 are in the 21-50 rankings. To understand the clout of what the Comcast/TWC merger would have meant to American consumers, I looked at the amount of homes each of these Comcast/ TWC-less TV markets has. According to Nielsen, these seven TV

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markets combined produce a total of 6,751,140 homes, for an average of 964,448 homes or about 0.85% of all American homes with TV’s.

The top ten TV markets in America all have either Comcast or TWC present in their Internet and Cable TV markets. The top ten markets total 33,946,000 American homes, or about 30% of all American households with a television (all statistics courtesy of Nielsen). This statistic doesn’t even include the 32 other TV markets that either Comcast or TWC has a presence in. Looking at these numbers, the control a combined Comcast and TWC would have had over the American TV market would be astronomical and virtually impossible to compete with. It is unlikely that these numbers would have remained true if the merger had been approved, as the FCC would have definitely placed sanctions within the deal to decrease these numbers. But for purposes of contextualizing the potential clout this multimedia behemoth would have had, these numbers offer an eye-opening look at the power of these two companies.

Interesting sets of allegations were presented against Comcast in an article on theverge.com written by Spencer Woodman. The article details an alleged “ghostwriting” scheme led by Comcast officials.

“Ghostwriting” means that Comcast officials physically wrote letters to the FCC, but under the name of various local and state elected officials.

The article references several examples of Comcast’s ghostwriting. One is from Mayor Jere Wood of Roswell, GA and the other is from Oregon’s Secretary of State, Kate Brown. The article reads, “Neither Wood nor anyone representing Roswell’s residents wrote his letter to the FCC. Instead, a vice president of external affairs at Comcast authored the missive word for word in Mayor Wood’s voice.” The article goes on to discuss Brown’s letter: Secretary of State Brown’s letter to the agency was almost wholly written by a Comcast Government Affairs specialist. After a conversation with Brown’s staff, the Comcast official sent Brown a letter he had prewritten for her that even included her typed sign-off, name, and title. Brown’s office sent the Comcast document — containing just three sentences with new or altered language — to the FCC emblazoned with the official seal of the State of Oregon. (Woodman).

These are all of the concrete events that happened leading up to the present in regards to the potential Comcast/TWC merger. During this time, Comcast issued several publications dubbing the merger “Pro-Consumer, Pro-Competitive, Approvable” (Comcast). On the other hand, several news outlets bashed the now disbanded merger, declaring the potential cable and Internet provider as a monopoly and citing concerns over the distribution of information in the American media that a combined Comcast/TWC could have had. The pros and cons of this potential merger are what I will focus on in my next section.

Arguments for and against the Comcast/Time Warner Cable Merger To completely understand the disbanded merger between Comcast and TWC, I will first present the arguments that supported the merger, and then counter with the dissenting opinions. There was an overwhelming opposition to the potential deal in comparison to its supporters. The opponents had very consistent rhetoric; yet Comcast did have notable support as well.

Supporting Arguments for the Comcast/Time Warner Cable Merger Comcast and Time Warner were the biggest cheerleaders for the completion of this mega-merger. The media rhetoric surrounding the merger was almost strictly discussing its negative consequences as opposed to the benefits it could have offered to the American people, which was to be expected. In an effort to try and change this rhetoric, Comcast launched an entire webpage dedicated to promoting the positives of the merger, they also published a fact sheet that I will reference, along with the merger’s webpage, throughout this section.

In the Comcast-published “Comcast and Time Warner Cable Transaction Fact Sheet,” Comcast attempted to convince people that this deal would have supported the competitiveness of the media industry.

It read, “Comcast and Time Warner do not compete to serve customers…Instead, they serve distinct geographic footprints. This absence of horizontal overlap in local markets means that the transaction will not harm competition or reduce customers’ choice in any way.” In this same document, Comcast also mentions how they specifically would not have threatened the competitiveness with companies like AT&T, DISH or Verizon with this merger.

On Comcast’s webpage dedicated to this potential transaction, they have a page with support for the merger from legislators, academics, and diversity groups. All of the quotes praise the technological advancement this merger would have created, but only a handful mention the issues surrounding what this merger would have meant for the consolidation of the media industry. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter says of the merger, “I am enthusiastically supporting this acquisition as I believe this is the ultimate triple play- great for consumers, great for the company and great for [Philadelphia]” (Comcast). Interestingly enough, none of the legislators who were quoted on this webpage are from outside of the state of Pennsylvania, which hinted at a lack of widespread congressional support for the deal. James Gattuso, Senior Research Fellow in Regulatory Policy at the Heritage Foundation says, “This deal is far from the threat indicated by critics. Instead, it is a sign that competition in the marketplace is growing, and a signal to all to up their games. Regulators should quickly approve the merger and let the competition proceed” (Comcast). New York University law professor, Richard Epstein, wrote an article for forbes.com explaining that the merger should have been passed since there was no real concrete evidence that the merger would harm net neutrality or competition within the telecommunications industry.

Epstein wrote, “the FCC should let the merger pass, in this case without conditions. And Congress should instruct the FCC not to meddle with any form of regulation unless and until it can prove some abuse under the antitrust laws, for which there is at present no credible or persuasive evidence.”

These academics, public figures, and Comcast executives support the merger because they are under the impression that a merger of this magnitude would have only advanced the technology within the American media industry as opposed to hindering its competition. One of the main arguments from Comcast that this merger would not have hindered competition within the industry was that Comcast and TWC don’t compete against one another in any geographical markets. If anything, the supporters of this merger believe it would have only raised the bar for its competitors to continue the rapid technological advancement the media industry has been experiencing over the past decade.

As of February of 2015, California Administrative Law Judge Karl J. Bemesderfer was the first member of a major government entity to give public support for the disbanded Comcast/TWC merger. Bemesderfer says the merger would have been good for consumers, with several conditions to regulate Comcast’s power within the American media industry. Most of these conditions focused on Comcast’s Internet services to low-income families with schoolchildren for $10 a month, called “Internet Essentials.” Bemesderfer called for increased advertising for the program and also wanted to spread the program to every California family with an income below the 150% of federal poverty level (Fernandez). Comcast praised Judge Bemesderfer’s support, but expressed their skepticism about some of the conditions he proposed.

Opponents to the Comcast/Time Warner Cable Merger In May of 2014, activists from groups such as Free Press and the Media Mobilizing Project rallied outside of the Comcast shareholders meeting in Philadelphia to express their opposition to the then proposed

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Comcast/TWC merger. In a video produced by these groups, one of the leaders presented a Comcast representative with a petition with over 400,000 signatures. Similar to the protest in May, in December of 2014, DISH Network, BEIN Sports (Aljazeera’s sports network) and public advocacy group Public Knowledge, among other less notable groups, bonded together to form the “Stop Mega-Comcast Coalition” (Byers).

Interestingly enough, in Comcast’s Merger Fact they mention DISH, as being one of their competitors who this merger would have specifically not harmed. Clearly there is substantial disparity between the two corporations on the implications and repercussions of a merger of this magnitude. Not only was there public disapproval for this disbanded transaction, but there were also countless journalists and legislators who have come out and publicly opposed the merger.

Tim Wu is a professor at the Columbia Law School, and the chair of Free Press. He wrote an article for The New Yorker detailing three problems with the failed Comcast/TWC merger. His first problem aligns with the stranglehold Comcast has on the Philadelphia sports market talked about earlier in this paper. Wu says Comcast’s model of controlling the broadcasting rights to almost all of the Philadelphia sports teams allows them to freeze out competition, thus enabling them to continue to increase prices. Wu says if Time Warner could have been on their side (Time Warner owns several local sports networks, similar to Comcast) this would have continued and promoted a less competitive market. Wu’s next reason for opposing this merger was that it would allow Comcast to “wage war” on Internet companies like Netflix and Amazon TV. Wu says Comcast’s increased power would have enabled them to demand special fees or even strike deals with Hollywood production companies that would hurt Comcast’s competitors. Lastly, Wu says this deal would have allowed Comcast to increase prices and make high-priced cable and broadband Internet a norm in the United States. Bryan Bishop concurs, stating that “approving Comcast’s purchase of Time Warner Cable would essentially rip away the already perishingly tiny hope of new competition ever emerging in the cable landscape, taking what’s been a constant frustration for consumers and cementing it into a permanent state of affairs.”

Some academics even believe this merger could have enabled Comcast to lower its prices, but assuming history repeats itself, Comcast would not have ever done such a thing.

Wu even said this merger could have allowed Comcast to lower prices, but as he says, “the crazy part is that this deal would actually put Comcast in a position to lower prices, if it wanted to. It could use efficiencies of scale to cut the price and increase the speed of broadband…That’s what the company would do in a parallel universe where it faced actual competition. But passing on savings has never been part of Comcast’s business model, and, absent a corporate lobotomy, it may never be” (Wu).

With such a financial control of the cable and Internet industry, Comcast/ TWC would have had enough subscribers to be able to lower its prices.

But as I have previously indicated, Comcast is only focused on one thing: profit. Lowering prices means less money for Comcast, so even though they could have showed some mercy to their customers, the likelihood of that happening was very low.

According to several media reports, the support in Congress for this merger was very low, even though having or not having congressional support was technically irrelevant to Comcast since the FCC is the bureaucratic organization that ruled on this proposed merger’s legality.

Regardless, congressional support is still important for a corporation, they need their support at all times to avoid creation of legislation that could hurt or hinder their business.

It is important to note that Comcast’s merger with NBCU is very different from its disbanded merger with TWC. The NBCU merger was Comcast venturing into a new market, which presented certain anti-trust concerns. Since the failed Comcast/TWC merger was within an industry Comcast was already in, the anti-trust concerns were completely

different. In regards to Comcast’s political support, Gene Kimmelman, the president of Public Knowledge, an organization that recently joined the Stop Mega Comcast Coalition said, “Comcast is running into more trouble than they had anticipated.” Kevin Werbach, former FCC advisor, explains, “There’s a widespread sentiment that the prospects for approval of the merger have decreased over the past year” (Tamari). These views on the likelihood of success in this merger for Comcast turned out to be true as Comcast disbanded its attempt to acquire TWC before the FCC could even officially defeat it.

The last opposition I will detail about Comcast’s failed merger with TWC comes in the form of litigation. In February of 2015, Entertainment Studios and the National Association of African-American Owned Media (NAAAOM) filed a $20 billion lawsuit against Comcast, TWC, Rev. Al Sharpton, and the NAACP. The lawsuit claims that had the Comcast-TWC merger gone through, it would have continued an already present trend in neglecting black artists in the TV and media industry.

The more specific language of the suit claims that Comcast refused to do business with several black media executives. So along with criticism from the media and legislators, the merger had opposition from the African-American community.

My Opposition to the Comcast/TWC Merger I initially thought Comcast acquiring NBCU was the worst possible thing that could happen to the U.S. media industry, I was wrong. The proposed Comcast/TWC merger could have been the worst thing that could have happened. The simple definition of American Anti-trust laws is that companies cannot acquire other companies that allow them to expand to a level that presents an unfair advantage to competitors. How could the combination of the country’s two largest Cable and Internet providers have been framed as being pro-competitive in any way? It ha sgotten to the point where questions are being facetiously asked like “What doesn’t Comcast own nowadays?” It is kind of scary to think that these questions, although fueled by mockery, actually maintain some validity for the future of the media industry. The way I like to dumb down this merger was by putting it into the context of sports. This merger would have been like combining Michael Jordan and LeBron James to create one super-basketball player. This does not seem very fair, does it?

From the perspective of a consumer, this merger could have brought about some cool technological innovations, but that is about it.

It certainly would not have improved customer service. At least for me, that is one of the most important things I think about before I give my business to a major corporation. And unsurprisingly, Comcast and TWC rank among the worst in customer service for Cable and Internet providers in America. According to the University of Michigan’s American Consumer Satisfaction Index, TWC was voted the least consumer-friendly corporation in America for 2014, while Comacst was the second-worst (Fottrell). The two most companies that were literally the least popular in America wanted to merge. Aside from all of the anti-trust concerns this merger created, shouldn’t this fact alone have raised some red flags? Why would combining the two worst and wealthiest things in any walk of life, ever be okay?

Since we now know that Comcast has terrible customer service, you would think that one of their priorities as a corporation would be to change this. Instead they have been giving out “preferred” customer service cards to their friends in Washington. “[Comcast’s] government-affairs team carried around ‘We’ll make it right’ cards stamped with ‘priority assistance’ codes for fast-tracking help and handed them out to congressional staffers, journalists, and other influential Washingtonians who complained about their service” (Morran). Instead of trying to make customer service better for their millions of customers, Comcast decided to give priority customer service care to the people who make sure the actions in Congress go their way. Seems pretty backwards, does it not?

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Shouldn’t a corporation strive to be well liked by its customers and exert manpower and effort to ensure that this is the case? Comcast was constantly promoting how “exciting” their proposed merger with TWC could have been for their customers, but wouldn’t you think they would have wanted to make sure they were well liked by their customers first?

This is not a business issue at this level; it is an issue of Comcast’s morals as a corporation. They care about making money more than they do their customers, and to me that seems very unethical from a business standpoint.

I have one more example to illustrate Comcast’s lack of quality customer service. Comcast is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, a great city and my hometown. But part of the deal of being headquartered in Philadelphia means they have to conduct surveys of their customers within the city to make sure they are providing sufficient customer service. These surveys were sent out almost two years ago and yet their results still have not been made public. An article in The Consumerist by Chris Morran says it has been confirmed that the surveys and the report on those surveys have been completed and submitted to Comcast. No local advocacy groups have been able to see them, and people are beginning to speculate, myself included, that the reason these reports were not released was to avoid bad customer service press with the ruling on their TWC merger set to handed down soon. I think it is clear that Comcast’s customer service is atrocious, and everyone knows it. Yet Comcast withheld the information on these surveys for their own PR well being. The well being of Comcast’s customers who have had to endure torturous 4-hour phone calls to resolve simple problems with their Comcast products, however, have not been addressed.

What about the financial power these corporations possess? The market capitalization, or more commonly “market cap,” is the best way to estimate the value of a company. The market cap is calculated by multiplying the price of each share by the number of outstanding shares a corporation has issued. For instance, if a company’s shares are trading at $10, and there are 100 outstanding shares, then the company would be worth $1000. According to Yahoo! Finance, Comcast’s most recent market cap is currently $148.18 billion, while TWC’s market cap is $43.58 billion. In total, that is $191.76 billion. To put this gargantuan number into perspective, Comcast and TWC had merged, and they were a country, they would have been the 63rd wealthiest country in the world. They would have been richer than countries like Ecuador, New Zealand, and Serbia. Comcast alone would be the 72nd richest country in the world (worldsrichestcountries.com). If a statistic like that does not terrify you about what the power of a combined Comcast and TWC could have been like, then I do not know what could.

The failed merger between Comcast and TWC also raised questions with a larger issue facing the American media industry. As of 1983, 50 companies controlled 90% of the media industry. Today, six companies, otherwise known as “the Big Six,” control 90% of the media industry (Lutz). Those six companies are: Comcast, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner (not affiliated with TWC), and CBS. (See Appendix F) The combined market cap of the Big Six is $465.14 billion, with Comcast and Disney being the two richest out of the six. This combined market cap would put the Big Six as the 39th richest country in the world, richer than countries like Singapore, Switzerland, and Sweden (worldsrichestcountries.com). The financial clout these companies currently have within arguably the most important industry in America is unavoidable and scary. (See Appendix G) The Bill of Rights is one of the most recognizable documents in American history; it outlines basic rights that every American is provided with upon birth. The first right on that list is Freedom of Speech. How can freedom of speech be truly in effect when 6 companies control 90% of the production companies that produce the movies, TV shows and news broadcasts that shape how millions of Americans think on a daily

basis? How can there be freedom of speech in an industry that’s combined market cap makes it financially equal to one of the richest countries in the world? When that much money is at stake, ethics and truthfulness tend to take a backseat to financial gains. The Big Six control all of the major news networks. How can you argue against the fact that these news broadcasts could be tampered with to support corporate gains? Say NBC was going to run a story on the poor Comcast customer service ratings, wouldn’t Comcast executives kill the story? It is impossible to say that would not happen, or has not happened. The news used to be an honorable broadcast, it was a program that presented the facts on issues going on in the world, it wasn’t censored based on corporate relationships, yet that is what is happening today. Comcast and TWC merging would have continued this depressing trend. It is a trend that is robbing people of the straight facts, facts they are entitled to hear. It is not outlandish to allege that the consolidation of the media industry violates the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. Patricia Lancia wrote on article on how the monopolization of the media industry violates American’s right to freedom of expression, she says: Monopolistic media ownership interferes with or restricts the exercise of free expression in a number of ways, mostly through restricting access to media outlets. In the most concrete terms, as media outlets are consolidated and ownership is concentrated, staff are cut and the real number of people working on or contributing to a given media outlet is reduced. More indirectly, the cost of using the media prevents or discourages people outside the media industry from accessing the media as tools of communication.

Finally, the current media environment stifles freedom of expression by making it extremely difficult for new, independent media outlets to be created and to survive. The end result is a situation in which public discourse is dominated by the voices of corporations and those individuals who have the resources to access a profit-motivated media system (ohio.edu).

The First Amendment provides the right to the freedom of speech and expression, yet, the information in that speech is directly developed and influenced by the news and film industries (See Appendix H & I).

These industries are so consolidated that only a couple hundred executives are in control of the messages that are shaping the opinions on issues of hundreds of millions of Americans.

The TV and Film industries have some of the most impactful influences on people’s opinions on all sorts of topics. The continued consolidation of this industry will only create a more narrow-minded American populous, something nobody wants to have happen. The beauty of America is the wealth of diversity in beliefs within its people, but the consolidation of the media industry hinders this diversity, one of the defining traits of the American people. Congress, the FCC, someone has to step up and begin to enact serious regulations for this mammoth industry before it gets out of hand and the executives that control it can be counted on one hand. I will be praying I never live in a time like that.

Post Script: What now, now that Comcast/TWC was disbanded?

The news of the proposed Comcast/TWC merger being disbanded created an interesting paradigm for me. On the one hand, I was extremely happy these two corporate juggernauts gave up their plight to rule the media industry. On the other hand, it was admittedly frustrating to see my hours of research turn into merely hypothetical warnings for the future. Regardless, I find my research on the failed Comcast/TWC merger provides a good basis of outlining the repercussions of what the merging of media conglomerates could mean for the American consumers. If anything, I hope my analysis of what the Comcast/TWC merger could have caused was a very thorough warning to my readers about the amount of power these media conglomerates possess and what the consolidation of the American media industry means going forward.

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Much to my disdain, reports have now surfaced that Charter Communications, the corporation Comcast was in a bidding war with for the initial bid on TWC in 2014, has now placed a second bid to buy TWC now that Comcast has ended its pursuit of its rival. Charter is expected to have an easier time with FCC regulators than Comcast did, but Charter is by no means a small corporation, they are the 6th largest cable provider in America according to Leichtman Research Group. Consequently, with news of the disbanded Comcast/TWC merger, the proposed AT&T/DirecTV merger now has a good chance of getting approved (Brodkin). The FCC approved the $49 billion AT&T/DIRECTV merger in July 2015, although this merger means a further consolidation of the media industry, it does provide a direct competitor to Comcast which I view as a positive for the sake of the media industry as a whole (Yu).

If anything, I hope this paper has established several negative repercussions that the consolidation of the media industry entails; even though it seems like this consolidation is just gaining momentum with the disbanding of the Comcast/TWC merger. I believe the media has the most influence on how people think nowadays, yet the diversity of its rhetoric is dwindling every day. George Mason University professor, Tyler Cowen, said a quote that I think applies directly to this issue and contextualizes the importance of trying to halt the consolidation of the American media industry: “Real cultural diversity results from the interchange of ideas, products, and influences, not from the insular development of a single national style.”

Analysis of Diagrams (See Appendix) Now that Comcast’s history has been described, I will provide several diagrams that support and expand on the claims I am making of Comcast’s illegitimate use of vertical and horizontal integration.

Appendix A: Owned assets by Comcast Resulting from NBCU Merger This diagram shows the entirety of the subsidiary companies that Comcast gained control over because of their acquisition of NBCU. This diagram provides a clear picture of the immense power Comcast holds in the multimedia industry, as this diagram shows 36 separate subsidiary businesses that Comcast controls. Incredibly, this does not even demonstrate the entirety of Comcast’s corporate influence since the assets controlled by Comcast-Spectacor are not even displayed in this diagram, such as Comcast’s ownership of the NHL franchise Philadelphia Flyers.

Appendix B: Chart of Highest Earning American Media Companies in 2011 This diagram shows how Comcast stacks up against the other media conglomerates present in the United States today. As of 2011, Comcast is now the fifth largest media company in the United States. This diagram is less to support the claims I am making specifically towards Comcast, but rather, to support the growing problem of the consolidation of the media industry. You can see from this figure that these company’s profits are astronomical, thus establishing how much power these ten corporations have in a market that has seen its power and influence be consistently consolidated over the past decade.

Appendix C: Diagram of Comcast’s Horizontal and Vertical Integration in the specific Case Study of the Philadelphia Flyers Comcast’s use of horizontal and vertical integration is extremely clear in their association with the Philadelphia Flyers franchise. As a reminder, horizontal integration is a business model that consolidates holdings across multiple industries and allows these industries to benefit from one another. On the other hand, vertical integration is a business model where the parent business can acquire or create other businesses or services in the same industry industry that can benefit one another.

Comcast owns the Flyers, the stadium they play in and the ticketing

services where Flyers fans purchase their tickets. This is Comcast’s use of vertical integration, as all of these owned entities create the Philadelphia Flyers “industry.”

Comcast also uses horizontal integration in their association with the Philadelphia Flyers. They use this integration, not only because they own the Flyers, but they also own the TV channels that broadcast every Flyers game. NBC and NBC Sports Net broadcast the nationally-televised NHL games (i.e. playoffs and primetime games), and Comcast Sports Net broadcasts the non-nationally televised Flyers games, Comcast owns all three of these TV channels. This is where you begin to see the horizontal integration in Comcast’s association with the Philadelphia Flyers industry because Comcast’s holdings across multiple industries (professional sports and multimedia industries) begin to compliment and benefit one another. Comcast not only receives revenue from the Flyers game itself, but also receive revenue from advertisers on the channels they own. This is a pretty blunt description of how Comcast has used horizontal integration in this specific case study to almost “beat the system,” to maximize their profits that stem from the overall production of a Philadelphia Flyers game.

Lastly, these games are televised in millions of homes of Comcast cable subscribers. As illustrated in Appendix C, the games being broadcasted on Comcast cable is, for lack of a better phrase, “vertical integration within horizontal integration.” I say this because Comcast owning the Flyers and the network that broadcasts them is horizontal integration, but Comcast providing the cable television signal for people watching the games is vertical integration. This is the case because Comcast providing the cable to thus allow someone to watch the Flyers on a network they own, is vertical integration because Comcast is providing businesses or services in the same industry that benefit one another.

Appendix D: Ownership Structure of Comcast post-NBCU Merger in 2009 This figure shows how Comcast was combining their controlled assets with General Electric (GE) and their subsidiary companies that resulted in a joint NBCU (GE previously owned NBCU) business venture, with Comcast operating as the majority stockholder. If this structure were to be updated to Comcast’s current ownership structure, GE wouldn’t be present, as Comcast now owns 100% of NBCU. Providing this diagram is important in understanding the power structure within Comcast because understanding this power structure can directly correlate with the influence they have attained and established in the multimedia industry.

Appendix E: Rankings of the United States’ Largest Television Markets with Notation as to Whether Comcast or Time Warner Cable Is Present in that City’s Cable TV and Internet Market This diagram shows the top 50 television markets in America, and then next to the markets it is noted whether Comcast or TWC is present in that city/region’s cable and Internet market. Although New York City is the only city that has both Comcast and TWC in it, this diagram shows the breadth of power these two corporations hold within the cable and Internet industry. Another noteworthy aspect of this diagram is that Phoenix (ranked #12) is the highest ranked TV market that does not have Comcast or TWC in its cable and Internet market. The next highest is the number 37 ranked TV market, Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville in North Carolina. This diagram is a very explicit indicator of the power and wealth these two companies hold within their industry.

Appendices F, G, H, I: Diagrams documenting the power of the “Big Six” All of these diagrams come from the same source and deal with the same topic of analyzing the Big Six’s power within the American media industry, hence why I will be analyzing the four diagrams in one

10 | THE UNDERGROUND JOURNAL VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2 section. Appendix F details the Big Six and lists some of their notable holdings.

This diagram gives a frightening illustration of the power these six corporations hold within their industry as well as showing how the ownership within the media industry has changed in a little over 30 years. It’s pretty amazing how virtually all of the iconic media companies are all owned by one of these Big Six. Appendix G is an important diagram for the sake of this research essay, as it provides important and eye-opening statistics regarding media consolidation in the American media industry. But it also presents relevant statistics to help contextualize how much money is in the industry and the power that money wields. This diagram accentuates the points I am making about the very real and terrifying repercussions media consolidation could have for the American people in the near future. Appendix H looks at the Big Six’s power within the film industry and again paints a very clear picture of how much power these six corporations have within the film industry.

The scary thing is that their power within the film industry is only a part of these corporations’ overall power. Lastly, Appendix I looks at the Big Six’s involvement in the television industry and presents socially relevant statistics to show how much power the Comcast/NBCU merger wields. Not only does it explain the power of this merger, but it also shows how much the Big Six controls in comparison to everyone else, thus again showing the stark power these corporations hold in an industry that is so integral in shaping the everyday thoughts of millions of Americans.

Appendix A: Owned assets by Comcast Resulting from NBCU Merger1 (“Creating a Premier Media and Entertainment Company,” 2013)

Appendix C: Diagram of Comcast’s Horizontal and Vertical Integration in the specific Case Study of the Philadelphia Flyers

Appendix D: Ownership Structure of Comcast post-NBCU Merger in 2009 (Securities and Exchange Commission, 2009)

Appendix B: Chart of Highest Earning American Media Companies in 2011 (billions of US dollars) (“Top Ten Global Media Owners,” 2013)

Appendix E: Rankings of the United States’ Largest Television Markets with notation as to whether Comcast or Time Warner Cable Is Present in that City’s Cable TV and Internet Market (Bishop, 2015)

1 Does not include Comcast’s owned assets from Comcast-Spectacor (Philadelphia Flyers, Wells Fargo Center etc.)

GOOD | 11 Appendiz F: Diagram Detailing Media Consolidation since 1983 and Major Holdings of the “Big Six”2 (Lutz, 2015)

Appendix H: Statistics on Consolidation of the Film Industry (Lutz, 2015)

Appendix I: Statistics of the Consolidation of the Television Industry (Lutz, 2015)

Appendix G: Statistics on the Consolidation of the American Industry (Lutz, 2015)

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Alanna Blackburn, Indian Head, Screenprint

Spencer Lewis, Protect Our Winters, Woodcut on Paper

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Julia Raue

E-Waste in Guiyu, China: Importance of Electronic Re-Design for Our Future ABSRACT: As our society becomes more obsessed and reliant on the various technologies at our fingertips, it is inevitable that more electronic waste will accumulate. The question of where this waste ends up is often not considered when “recycling” an old iPhone or laptop. However, we are beginning to get to the point in which we desperately need to consider our electronic waste because we are affecting the poor, undeveloped countries.

Citizens of first world countries are being tricked into thinking that they are properly disposing of their electronics, when in reality, these items are being illegally smuggled to small villages across the world. One specific village notorious for being an international hub of e-waste is Guiyu, China. By analyzing and understanding the negative effects this e-waste is having on the people of Guiyu, we can see how bad the process of dismantling e-waste is.

KEYWORDS: E-Waste (electronic waste), Planned Obsolescence, Extended Producer Responsibility, Guiyu, China, Environmental Justice Introduction to Electronic Waste In today’s culture, we rely on technology for almost everything we do. From keeping our food from spoiling to submitting job applications, we are dependent on electronically powered machines. This, of course, was not always the case. With our increasing reliance on all things electronic, comes a mounting consumption of these technologies. Because of the materialistic world we now live in, we have a constant need to replace our “outdated” electronics with the newest ones on the market. We see these technologies as helpful and amazing, however this newfound consumption and replacement of technologies is having a serious effect on our environment, along with the health of several thousands of people around the world. The disposal of used electronics, such as cellphones, refrigerators, TVs, and electronic toothbrushes, is fairly complicated.

There are essentially two ways to discard electronics. You can do what 80% of Americans do, and toss them in the trash to eventually end up in U.S. landfills (Walsh, 2009, p. 3), or you can do the more “environmentally responsible” thing, and recycle them. The choice of recycling may seem like the obvious option, however, interestingly enough, neither choice is ideal. Because the expense of disposing and refining electronics properly is fairly high, recycling companies find value in selling these electronics to poorer nations, or towns where the laws are loose and enforcement is non-existent. With 70% of electronic waste globally generated ending up in China, it is obvious that wealthier nations, including the U.S., are taking advantage of the poorer and less educated people across the world (Watson, 2014, p. 2). The exportation of e-waste has become such a problem that the United Nations has recognized the issue of technology disposal and recycling as an urgent problem (Olds, 2012, p. 828).

Consumption The statistics found in regards to the United States’ consumption and disposal level of electronics is distressing. There have been several studies done on the topic, and with each and every one comes a new number that demonstrates just how large of a problem it really is. Our society has developed a throwaway culture that has led to electronic waste becoming the fastest growing segment of the waste stream in the United States, with 350,000 cell phones and 130,000 computers being thrown out each day (Hull, 2010, p. 1). Furthermore, the global volume of electronic waste is expected to grow by 33 percent in the next four years (Vidal, 2013, p. 1). This shows that our consumption and disposal patterns will not only remain as high as they are, but they will actually continue to increase over time. Last year, nearly 50 million tons of e-waste were generated worldwide, adding up to about 7kg per person

(ibid., p. 1). Because there are millions of people around the world who are not adding to the disposal of e-waste, those who are disposing are doing a lot of it. Sadly, Americans are playing a huge role. On average, each American generates 29.5kg of e-waste each year, while in China, each person on average generates less than 5kg (ibid., p. 1). Although China has a much larger population than the United States, the US’s per capita amount is significantly larger than that of China, and this is because of our horrible consumption oriented culture. The United States has an absolutely absurd amount of electronics being disposed of daily, and it is very likely that these numbers will continue to grow.

Why does our society put such a huge emphasis on always having the most ‘hip’ or ‘cool’ electronic gadgets? Research proves that the people of today’s culture consume specific technological products to help distinguish themselves and to achieve a certain status that they feel is necessary to fit in. We tend to want to advance ourselves socially and we are in the habit of using technology to connect with others (Pugh, 2013, p. 1). Other research on our world’s obsession with technological consumption has found that we purchase the most up-to-date technologies to imply to others that we are living a ‘perfect’ life and everything in our world is excellent (ibid., p. 2).

Another relevant reason a majority of developed countries have had an exponential increase in technological consumption throughout the years is because of planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the amount of time an item can be used before it becomes unusable is planned and built into it from its conception (Economist, 2009, p. 1). This is done so that in the future consumers will feel a desperate need to purchase the newest and more up-to-date product on the market (ibid., p. 1). The interesting thing about planned obsolescence is that our society is beginning to notice what these technological companies are doing, however the people who understand the concept of planned obsolescence are still constantly updating their technologies. This demonstrates that technological companies really do not care if society is aware of the process, because it still leads to the same conclusion This is exactly why developed countries are having such a huge increase in electronic waste.

Health Hazard Though it may be obvious that the number of electronics our country discards is larger than acceptable, it is not obvious exactly why this is such a problem. Electronic waste is extremely hazardous to our environment and directly affects people towns, such as Guiyu, China, who make a living off collecting the precious metals within our electronics. E-waste releases persistent toxic substances into the air when

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exposed to extreme heat, which is exactly how these precious metals are contracted from our devices (Pugh, 2013, p. 184). Guiyu, China is located on the South China Sea coast and is made up of four small villages. This location has allowed Guiyu to be a major hub for the unethical business of e-waste disposal (Olds, 2012, p. 831). Electronic waste may provide Guiyu with over $75 million dollars a year by processing 1.5 million tons of it, however the process is hurting the inhabitants more than they know (Exporting Harm Documentary, 2013).

Chemicals such as lead, mercury, tin, aluminum and cadmium are very prominent in the materials that the people of Guiyu are melting away in order to retrieve precious metals (Olds, 2012, p. 827). These chemicals then seep into the air and water and are directly inhaled by the workers (Pugh, 2013, p. 185). Water samples from the Lianjiang River from 2000 show that the level of lead within the samples were 2,400 times higher than levels considered to be safe by the World Health Organization (ibid., 185). Further studies have looked into the concentrations of these heavy metals within different aspects of the community. One study looked at hair samples of children and adults in Guiyu to examine the mercury levels within them. 48.29% of the samples had hair mercury concentrations exceeding the United States Environmental Protection Agency threshold (Ni et al., 2014, p. 88). These high levels of heavy metals have a huge effect on the health of the children and adults in Guiyu.

The World Health Organization found that lead poisoning could reduce a child’s IQ by one to three points for each 10 milligrams of lead in the child (Hull, 2010, p. 10). Along with this, lead can cause adults to suffer from severe reproductive problems, high blood pressure and hypertension, nerve disorders, memory and concentration problems, and muscle and joint pain (ibid., p. 11).

Environmental Injustice This situation in Guiyu, China is one of the clearest examples of environmental injustice, or the lack of fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies (EPA). The less affluent people in the world are being significantly harmed due to actions of those who are affluent. The majority of the e-waste disposal workers are migrants from different regions around China and are very poorly educated, if educated at all (Watson, 2014, p. 2). Because of this lack of education, the workers often cannot get a good grasp on just how bad their work is for their health. The problem in the United States is that electronic waste recyclers are charging the public a disposal fee, and then gaining additional income by selling waste to the Chinese (Exporting Harm Documentary, 2013). Essentially, the America is just using their waste to make money by turning around and selling it to another party.

It is also sometimes the case that they can receive tax breaks from the U.S. Federal government because they advertise themselves as a “green” recycling operation (ibid.). This system is extremely unethical, especially due to the fact that people are giving these companies e-waste thinking that it will be disposed of correctly.

The disparity of the people of Guiyu has led to them not caring about their own health, or that of those around them. The focus on making as much money as possible has taken over this town, and the United States is just exacerbating the situation by providing the people with exactly what is causing such serious health issues. These workers pick through circuit boards, cathode ray tubes, ink cartridges, metal frames, and cables with unprotected hands and no safety clothing (Pugh, 2013, p.

185). Women and men put torches to circuit boards, inhaling the smoke, which causes a deep and thick cough. Along with this, the majority of workers suffer from skin rashes due to the lack of protective gear, which causes their skin to be directly exposed to these horrific chemicals (Exporting Harm Documentary, 2013). They then collect these metals and

sell them back to large corporations such as Foxconn (ibid.), a Taiwanese company that manufactures products for many electronic companies around the world (Watson, 2013, p. 2).

The streets of Guiyu are lined with circuit boards and hard-drives, just waiting for people to sift through them (Watson, 2013, p. 2). But the workers do not care. They are satisfied with their business of making about $8 a day, and will continue to do so until they are stopped, which needs to be soon for their own sake (Exporting Harm Documentary, 2013). To them, this is the most flexible job out there. Mothers and fathers are able work hard and make a fair living while being right in their backyard or just down the street from their house (Watson, 2014, p. 2). They are able to do their job, while still watching their children.

This is a great alternative to factory work, which traps workers inside all day, working long hours, and often being forced to live on the factory property. Their current job seems like freedom to the people of Guiyu. As you can see, this is an obvious case of environmental injustice, however there is more to this story. More people than just the workers are severely effected by this e-waste disposal method.

Originally, Guiyu was known for being a rice-growing community (Leung, 2005, p. 7). Prior to 1995, Guiyu thrived as one of the many rice providers internationally. The town was perfectly located somewhat near a river, and was full of lush rice patties (ibid., p. 7). This, however, has obviously changed within the past 20 years. There continues to be a rice industry within Guiyu, but it is certainly not the same. Those in the e-waste dismantling industry are negatively affecting farmers who have nothing to do with the e-waste industry. Because of the severely polluted water, farmers have said that they do not drink their water, use their water to clean their clothes, and even refuse to eat the very rice they harvest (Watson, 2014, p. 3). When asked who eats their rice, the farmers explained that they had no idea and that people should be careful because there are no labels on packaging explaining where rice comes from. This shows that our own poor behavior could also be affecting us without us being aware of it (ibid., p. 3). In terms of environmental injustice, the e-waste industry may not economically affect the rice farmers, however, it certainly affects their health and everyday well being due to the lack of clean water. These less wealthy communities are essentially being forced to put their lives on the line because of our horrible disposal methods, which is extremely unethical.

Laws/Regulation/Enforcement Although not the main cause of this environmental issue, the laws regarding e-waste and its disposal to other countries, along with the lack of regulations for the handling of the dangerous waste, have been major issues in the entire electronic waste debacle. In 1989, the United Nation’s Environment Program met in Basel, Switzerland to discuss the control of trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal in order to respond to the public outcry of e-waste being dumped in parts of Africa and other developing countries (Onzivu, 2013, p. 622). At the Basel Convention, a treaty was created to reduce the movement of hazardous waste between nations, and to prevent transferal of waste from a developed to an undeveloped nation (ibid., 2013, p. 623). 180 countries signed and ratified this agreement, however the United States signed but did not ratify it (ibid., p. 622). This tells us a lot about the United States’ view on dealing with hazardous waste. It seems that we do not want to deal with our own electronic waste because of how expensive and time consuming it is. Along with this, China has laws that prevent any importation of hazardous materials, however there is absolutely no enforcement of these laws. Boat loads of American e-waste pour into Guiyu’s harbor where they are checked for illegal substances, such as nuclear waste, however inspectors are not concerned with simple laptops and cell phones (Exporting Harm Documentary, 2013). Adding to this, the Chinese government does not put any effort into the enforcement of these laws

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because they see it as a great money generator. E-waste dismemberment provides many of their citizens with jobs, which in turn leads to a better economy.

The Environmental Protection Agency lacking enforcement is another key reason why the people of Guiyu are being exploited and taken advantage of. The EPA is supposed to oversee the export of e-waste, however researchers have found that they are doing a very mediocre job (Walsh, 2009, p. 2). This is likely due to the vast amount of e-waste being imported and exported daily. The huge amount makes it simply impossible to enforce set laws. One would think that this general lack of enforcement would frustrate the people of Guiyu because it’s as though they are forgotten about, however the Guiyu workers are actually very nervous that the government may start being stricter with their laws (Watson, 2014, p. 4). This would greatly affect their business and drastically alter their everyday lives.

Solutions In terms of effective solutions to this horrible problem, there have been several suggestions from scientists and sociologist involving many different aspects of the issue. One common thought of solution to the e-waste problem is to eliminate the smuggling of all foreign garbage. The United States should start being responsible enough to take care of their own waste, and no longer take advantage of the less wealthy in the world.

Although this is a great solution, it is easier said than done. This is a large operation, and as long as we continue to consume these electronics at a staggering rate, a market for the disposal will continue. Another common solution often mentioned in the e-waste discussion is to completely shut Guiyu down (Exporting Harm Documentary, 2013). Although this is a great thought, it is not that simple. As mentioned before, China has a ban on the import of electronic waste, but because of the massive revenue involved, human rights are put on the back burner (ibid.). Adding to this, China also takes full advantage of the plastics and metals extracted from these electronics by re-using them in their products (ibid.). If the town was to shut down, they would need to find a new source for these products, which would likely be much more expensive. One last thing to consider with this solution is that if Guiyu were to shut down, the industry would re-locate to anther poor area so the problem would not be solved at all. Some also believe that companies should only work with recyclers that pledge to not export any of the materials. This is also a great solution, however, it is not really fixing the source of the problem.

So, what should we do? The answer is simple, re-design! This is not a problem of where to put the waste, but of why we have so much waste in the first place. We need to start encouraging large technology companies to re-design their products so that they will last longer, as well as contain fewer dangerous chemicals and be much easier to recycle (Gui et al., 2013, p. 264). If a NGO (Non-Government Organization) were trying to get this process started, they would need to look beyond the broad solution of re-design and figure out what could possibly encourage companies to re-design their products (Hickle, 2014, p. 254). It is a tricky thing to think about because large companies usually do not have the environment in mind when they design their products. Companies have money on their minds at all times, so encouraging them to change has to include much more than simply asking. A NGO would also need some backup help with conquering a mission this large. In order to do this, they would need to partner with a few other organizations such as Green Peace and International Sustainable Electronic Competition, as well as large retail companies who sell us our electronics. Partnering with these groups will allow NGOs to gain some serious power and begin to make a difference.

The first step in persuading electronic companies to re-design their products is to join forces with large retail companies. Retail companies hold a huge amount of power, and if they alter their standards for the

products they are willing to sell, companies will do whatever they have to do to sell appropriate products. Green Peace currently has a “challenge” called “Cool IT” in which they are “urging IT companies to put forth innovation, mitigate their own carbon footprint, and advocate for significant policy changes in the mutual interest of business and the climate” (GreenPeace, 2014, p.1). The Cool IT sector of Green Peace has environmental report cards for all of the major electronic companies, ranging from Apple to Samsung. These report cards provide some very valuable information about the steps these companies are taking to reduce their carbon footprint, along with scores in a variety of categories. If retail chains such as Target or Best Buy used these report cards to create some sort of standard, it would push companies who do not have a great report to re-design their products in order to score better. It may not sound very feasible to get these huge companies to agree to something of this sort, however if they create these environmental standards, they will be able to advertise themselves as being very “eco friendly”. This act of greenwashing is very powerful in the retail market because consumers these days are constantly trying to be “environmentalists” and by branding themselves as eco-friendly, companies’ consumer group will greatly increase (Baran, 2014, p. 280). Being able to advertise themselves this way would greatly increase their sales since people are now keeping their eyes out for more environmentally conscious goods and products. If a retail company created these standards, it would not take long for major electronic companies to develop a new plan of action in regards to creating products.

These companies will do whatever they can to get their product sold, and will react if a company like Wal-Mart is refusing to sell their product.

This is just one plan to help reduce the amount of electronic waste we create as a country.

Conclusion With the worlds’ current problem of increasing consumption of electronics, comes the injustice of developed nations taking advantage of those who are desperate for money. The lives of these despairing people, along with the environment that they are living in, are being put on the line. It is unfair that workers directly inhale extremely dangerous chemicals and children drink contaminated water just because we live in a society where we do not consider our products after disposal. We must change this as soon as possible, however in order to make such a change we need to start small. By encouraging, and essentially indirectly forcing, companies to have to re-design their products, we can create a world where we no longer have to dispose of our products as often, and where we know that this disposal is being done in a safe manner. Our government is going to have to begin to look beyond the economic strain of properly disposing electronics, and start developing a system in which it is absolutely unacceptable to dump dangerous waste onto other countries.

With these small steps, we can help save individual lives, as well as help save the environment, which we would be nothing without.

18 | THE UNDERGROUND JOURNAL VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2 Works Cited Baran, S. J. (2014). Introduction to mass communication: Media literacy and culture (Eighth ed.) McGraw-Hill.

Basel Action Network (Producer), & Puckett Jim (Director). (2013). Exporting harm: The high-tech trashing of asia. [Video/DVD] “Cool IT Challenge.” Greenpeace International. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2014.

Environmental Justice | US EPA. (n.d.). Retrieved November 12, 2015, from http:// www3.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/ Grossman, E. (2006). High tech trash :Digital devices, hidden toxics, and human health. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books.

Gui, L., Atasu, A., Ergun, Ö., & Toktay, L. B. (2013). Implementing extended producer responsibility legislation. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 17(2), 262-276. doi:10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00574.x Hickle, G. T. (2014). An examination of governance within extended producer responsibility policy regimes in north america. Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 92, 55-65. doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2014.08.007 Hull, E. V. (2010). Poisoning the poor for profit: The injustice of exporting electronic waste to developing countries. Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum, 21(1), 1-47.

Leung, Anna. Environmental Contamination From Electronic Waste Recycling at Guiyu, Southeast China. Www.environmental-expert.com. N.p., 17 May 2005.

Web. Ni, W., Chen, Y., Huang, Y., Wang, X., Zhang, G., Luo, J., & Wu, K. (2014). Hair mercury concentrations and associated factors in an electronic waste recycling area, guiyu, china. Environmental Research, 128, 84-91. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2013.10.005 Olds, L. (2012). Curb your E-waste: Why the united states should control its electronic waste exports. Cardozo Journal of International & Comparative Law, 20(3), 827-873.

Onzivu, W. (2013). (Re)invigorating the health protection objective of the basel convention on transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal.

Legal Studies, 33(4), 621-649. doi:10.1111/lest.12000 Planned obsolescene. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/ node/13354332 Pugh, A. J. (2013). The planned obsolescence of other people: Consumer culture and connections in a precarious age. Culture & Organization, 19(4), 297-313. doi:1 0.1080/14759551.2013.827421 Vidal, John. “Toxic ‘e-waste’ Dumped in Poor Nations, Says United Nations.” The Observer. Guardian News and Media, 15 Dec. 2013. Web. 02 May 2014.

Walsh, Bryan. “E-Waste Not.” Time. Time Inc., 08 Jan. 2009. Web. 02 May 2014.

Watson, Ivan, and Connie Young Contributed to This Story. “China: The Electronic.

Wastebasket of the World.” CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 04 May 2014.

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Dakota Noyes

Updating the Palestinian Constitution: A System of Consociational Government ABSRACT: Fatah and Hamas have been in opposition for decades, which culminated in civil war in 2007. Since then, the conflict has taken a toll on the government of Palestine. Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Fatah, which controls the West Bank, had signed an agreement to form a unity government, however, this does not have a strong chance of success without constitutional reform. With consociationalist institutions such as executive power sharing, proportional representation, segmental autonomy, and mutual veto, it is possible for Palestine to have a more powerful government. In this essay, I will examine the current Palestinian constitution and create potential reforms using these consociational institutions.

KEYWORDS: Fatah, Hamas, Palestine, Consociationalism, Centripetalism, Communalism 1. Introduction Following the elections in 2006, Fatah and Hamas’ relationship has been strained. When Hamas won the election Fatah refused to hand over power, and civil war erupted between the two. What was once seen as a territorial conflict erupted into ideological differences, which created a power struggle between the two factions. Hamas had control of Gaza and Fatah the West Bank.1 One of the stark differences between Hamas and Fatah is religion.

Both groups are Muslim, however Hamas declares itself, through its name, the Islamic Resistance Movement, while Fatah was established as a secular national group. The Palestinian Authority, which is comprised mostly of Fatah members, is the quasi government in Palestine, however most of its control is now limited to the West Bank.2 The two organizations have come a long way from their civil war in 2007. Recently in 2014, the two formed a unity government, which, since its creation, has done very little to address the political climate of Palestine.

In order for there to be peace between Israel and Palestine, there needs to be a strong Palestinian government. To do so, Hamas will need to denounce terrorism and recognize Israel before they can agree upon peace with the Palestinians. While there are obvious extenuating circumstances that make it difficult for Hamas and Fatah to form a cohesive government, one of the first steps towards a more stable government is the creation of a system that will be not only beneficial and productive, but inclusive for both Fatah and Hamas. I will explore different systems of government that could be implemented into the Palestinian constitution in order to answer the question: Can Palestine have a successful government using institutions found in the consociationalist form of government? I argue that through institutions such as executive power sharing, proportional representation, segmental autonomy and mutual veto, the Palestinians can involve both Fatah and Hamas in governmental decisions and have a secure government and country. Because Fatah and Hamas have experienced violence and ideological differences, it will be beneficial to compare this case to other cases of ethnically divided societies. In the literature review I will explore scholarship based on different models of government.

2. Literature Review Governments of divided societies are notoriously unstable and lead to either the creation of civil wars or the perpetuation of them. It is no secret that throughout history, divided societies have been seen and experienced; Lebanon in 1943, Ireland in 1998, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, have all experienced strife between distinctive ethnic groups that have led to great conflict and unstable governments. Despite this, 1 Jonathan Schanzer, Hamas vs. Fatah : The Struggle for Palestine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 2.

2 Ibid, 7.

scholars and politicians, have created theories and systems such as consociationalism, communalism, and centripetalism that attempt to end conflict between divided groups, and work towards a more coherent and responsible government. Major schools of thought that relate to reconstructing divided societies include consociationalism, centripetalism, and communalism. Consociationalism, led by scholars such as Lijphart, McGarry, and O’Leary, focuses on creating proportionate government that represents different ethnic groups in a society. Centripetalism, whose scholars include Horowitz, Gerrings and Thacker, focuses on creating a multi ethnic government, eliminating the divide and promoting the integration of all groups. Communalism, a similar school to consociationalism, focuses on maintaining ethnic groups and representing all diversities within the government. Unlike consociationalism, however, communalism creates a model of equal representation rather than proportional representation. I will begin to explore these models of government to frame the discussion on the potentially appropriate model for Palestine.

2.1 Consociationalism Consociationalism is a school of thought that focuses on the protection of ethnic groups and their individual interests through “grand coalitions, mutual veto, proportional allocation, and autonomy.”3 Consociationalism is considered to be the most developed model of government as well as the most commonly institutionalized. This system pushes for institutions that bolster inter-ethnic cooperation and representation in public offices and parliament; power-sharing between groups; and the power to veto, which increases levels of autonomy in each of these ethnic divides.4 Self-government is pertinent to this school of thought; it creates a sort of functional autonomy that can lead to different personal laws on issues such as schooling, inheritance, and marriage.5 Consociationalists rely on “democratic institutions such as political parties, electoral systems, and cabinet governments and on the territorial divisions of state powers via federalism”.6 There are four critical institutions that arise from the system of consociationalism that are important in creating a government that properly represents all parties. The ones that I will explore include executive power sharing, proportional representation, segmental autonomy, and mutual veto.

Executive power sharing, also known as grand coalition, occurs when all or most of the determining parties in a country share 3 Philip G. Roeder and Donald Rothchild, Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy After Civil Wars (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2005), 35.

4 Benjamin Rielly, “Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies: Consociationalism, Centripetalism, Communalism Compared,” European Consortium for Political Research 259, no. 11 (2012): 261.

5 Choudhry Sujit, Constitutional Design for Divided Societies: Integration or Accommodation? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 60.

6 Benjamin Rielly, 261.

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executive power either equally or proportionally. In a consociational system, it is most common to see a parliamentary style government, consisting of cabinets and premiers. Presidential system can lead to majoritarianism7, which is often unsuccessful in divided societies, and is therefore not as ideal as a parliamentary style government. In Lebanon, a combination of the presidential and parliamentary systems is being implemented. The president’s seat is reserved for a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister-ship to Sunni and the Parliament’s speaker a Shi’ite.

In theory this system and the separation of seats should alleviate the conflict between the different religious groups and allow for proper representation, however, this system has not proven to be very successful in Lebanon because it has furthered the sectarian conflict rather than create a system that benefits everyone.8 Prime Minister Hariri’s assassination on February 14th 2005, furthered the divisions between heads of states and their role in the Lebanese government. These seats, while good in theory, were not sustainable given the outside influence of the Syrian Civil War and deeply seated religious differences. Although it is failing in Lebanon, it does not mean that it is not a more suitable system on other divided societies.

Segmental proportionality refers to the representation of different communities in the government in proportion to their demographic weight. More specifically, proportional representation works to divide the parliament seats between the different parties in proportion to the votes.

Consociationalism is formed on the basis of representation; therefore proportional representation is the most appropriate electoral system given its ability to properly serve the varying groups. The party list system, where voters elect the party rather than the candidate and parties gain seats depending on their number of votes, is most common due to the parity between a party’s proportion of the winning votes and the representation in parliament. The party list system is also applicable given the highly representative nature of multi-party parliaments. In addition, the closed list aspect of the system allows for parties to gain power rather than individuals. Another aspect of consociationalist governments is grand coalitions. Grand coalition governments give a share of executive power to all of the significant parties. This also allows minorities to veto issues that affect their community. In Lebanon for example, the number of seats is fixed for the different sects; there are 128 seats that are divided equally amongst the Christians and the Muslims and then further divided amongst the different confessions.9 Segmental autonomy is essentially giving different communities and groups self-determination and autonomy, if they so choose, that is separate from the other communities. This autonomy allows for a sort of sovereignty on matters concerning the community. For example, South Africa acts as a federal republic and the idea of segmental autonomy was discussed relentlessly when creating the new constitution. Despite this, however, different provinces hold some, often times, municipal powers such as: “roads and traffic, ambulances, recreation and amenities, and sports”.10 Therefore, while their powers are limited, they do maintain some sort of autonomy.

Mutual veto, or blocking rights, guarantees minorities protection with institutionalized blocking ability. This can be done in a number of different ways such as required unanimity, majority of both parties, or weighted majority, which establish cross-community support. This system of mutual veto has the ability to create deadlock amongst parties, therefore it is more useful for the consociationalist system to implement 7 Merriam-Webster , s.v. “majoritarianism,” accessed November 20, 2015, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/majoritarianism. Majoritarianism is defined as the philosophy or practice according to which decisions of an organized group should be made by a numerical majority of its members.

8 Imad Salamey, The Government and Politics of Lebanon, 11.

9 David Russell and Ian O’Flynn, Power Sharing : New Challenges for Divided Societies (London: Pluto, 2005), 141.

10 Ibid, 140.

these blocking rights in the areas of identity and security, rather than every aspect of government.11 Federalism is the most commonly used system of government in the consociationalist school of thought. In federalism, each region is delegated an equal amount of power with an equal relationship to the central government.12 A more specific form of federalism associated with consociationalism is ethnofederalism. The features of ethnofederalism are as follows: groups defined by territory, national sovereignty as well as territorial sovereignty where each has their own responsibilities, and finally a relationship between the national and territorial groups based on cooperation and autonomy. This system also creates trust between groups and gives stake in the democracy and state, all while establishing security amongst the groups.13 This system, under the guise of consociationalism, would work well with the internal Palestinian conflict. Although they are not divided ethnically, the characteristics of ethnofederalism could benefit the country as they provide territorial as well as national autonomy.

As with every school of thought, there are critics of the consociationalist theory. Many believe that Lijphart’s theory is based on areas that are not ethnically divided but rather ideologically divided. It is most common for a society to be ethnically divided and much harder for reconciliation than other societal divisions. This idea goes back to the notion of language and the important role it plays in negotiations in conflict.14 Another similar issue that arises with the consociationalist viewpoint is the assumption that politicians have a high level of freedom of choice and therefore will resort to consociational methods. This is not often the case, however, in severely divided societies.15 Belgium is a prime example of the consociationalist system of government. The country is divided linguistically between French and Dutch speakers. In order to have a more successful government, Belgium began to enact constitutional reforms in the 1970s to become more consociationalist.16 They transformed the constitution to require the same number of Dutch speakers as French in the parliament. In addition, Belgium’s regional government is in charge of “urban and regional planning, housing, public infrastructure and utilities, public transport”17 and much more. There are five ministers that make up the regional government.

They include two individuals from each linguistic group, and a President.

The amount of power each member of the regional government has correlates with the numerically stronger linguistic group.18 In relation to segmental autonomy, there are two commissions for both the French and the Flemish communities. They are in charge of culture, language, and education for their areas.19 Belgium has been able to maintain these institutions in its government with success, which could be indicative of potential success in the Palestinian government. There are, however, definite strengths and weaknesses to this form of government. While it does provide representation to the minority groups in a nation, it has the possibility for further separation of the groups by institutionalizing the divide.

11 O’Leary, Settling Self-determination Disputes, 48.

12 Philip G. Roeder and Donald Rothchild, Sustainable Peace, 88.

13 Bunce, Valerie. “Is ethnofederalism the solution or the problem?.” Nationalism after Communism. Lessons Learned, ed. Alina Mungiu and Ivan Krastev (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004), 180.

14 Dominique Arel, “Political stability in multinational democracies: comparing language dynamics in Brussels, Montreal and Barcelona,” in Multinational Democracies, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon and James Tully (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 67.

15 Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (California: University of California Press, 1985), 572.

16 Russell, Power Sharing : New Challenges for Divided Societies, 92.

17 Kris Deschouower, The Politics of Belgium: Governing a Divided Society (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 149.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid, 143.

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2.2 Centripetalism Centripetalism is the school of thought that assumes that successful governance occurs from central politics.20 This system promotes institutions that focus on integration and cooperation of ethnic groups rather than reinforcing the ethnic division.21 Centripetalists believe that breaking down the ethnic representation in legislature will increase cross ethnic voting. Governments following this model use various methods of maintaining assimilation. Such methods include electoral incentives, arenas of bargaining, and multi-ethnic political parties.22 Through electoral incentives politicians reach out to members of differing ethnic groups in order to garner votes. This creates a more moderate dialogue on dividing issues and policies that might benefit multiple ethnic groups. Examples of arenas of bargaining include the parliamentary and executive channel.

Politicians from various ethnic groups must come together; they must rely on deals between each other for electoral support. There is an assumption that these groups would cooperate in more substantial policies as well. Multi-ethnic groups act under the pretense that policies will be created that benefit a range of ethnic groups.23 The Second Nigerian Republic, which lasted from 1979-1983 is a key example of a centripetal government that has increased stability in a divided society. The country has historically been divided territorially between the Hausa-Fulani in the North, the Ibo in the East and the Yoruba in the West.24 Its use of geographically required plurality of votes created a form of mutual veto similar to that of the consociationalist system. This system, unlike the consociationalist system, had more intentions of the centripetal governmental system with the push towards a more national politics.25 One of the main differences between consociationalism and centripetalism is the dependency on integrated political groups. Centripetalism is focused on the process in which groups work together, such as elections and cross ethnic cooperation, rather than the fairness of the outcomes that is found in the consociationalist framework.

Electoral processes can be structured so as to require successful candidates to gain support across different regions of a country, thus helping to break down the appeal of narrow parochialism or regionalism.26 Theorists of this school of thought contend that multi-ethnic parties or coalitions depoliticize the social schisms between groups. In the centripetalist system there is often the occurrence of either majoritarian electoral rule or two-party rule. Majoritarianist governments occur when a majority arrives from elections where “Members of Parliament are selected in single-member districts by getting as few as one vote more than the nearest competitor.”27 This majority runs the Parliament through the branches and committees of government. Majoritarianism, in theory, creates a more efficient, stable, and responsible government than if run by minority rule.

Benjamin Reilly, author of “Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies”, describes one theory that supports the idea that certain two-party governments, with competition, will become more moderate towards the political center. This eliminates radical beliefs, allows for moderate politics with range of widely held interests.28 This is not true of every two party government. The United States, which is arguably the 20 John Gerring and Strom C. Thacker A Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 15.

21 Benjamin Rielly, “Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies, 262-3.

22 Ibid., 263.

23 Ibid.

24 A. McCulloch, “Seeking Stability Amid Deep Division: Consociationalism and Centripetalism in Comparative Perspective” (PhD diss., Queen’s University, 2009), 90 25 Ibid, 94.

26 Benjamin Rielly, “Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies”, 264.

27 Philip G. Roeder and Donald Rothchild, Sustainable Peace, 7.

28 Benjamin Rielly, “Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies: 265.

most well known two party system, is not, however, considered a moderate government. The divide between Democrats and Republicans can often be pushed to the extreme so that it goes against this theory that Reilly discusses.

Organizational forms in this theory differ from those in consociationalism. In centripetalism we find a unitary constitution, a parliament, and a closed-list proportionate representation electoral system. This unitarianist approach requires a stronger national government rather than a regional one, creating competition and reliance on coherence and consolidation.29 The unitary system has a focus on a single national identity through uniform institutions.30 Parliamentary democracies depend on represented parties, which unlike in the presidential model, can be elected out of office through the vote of no-confidence. This creates incentive for members of parliament to create a strong and effective government.31 The last institution regarded as part of the centripetalist theory is closed-list proportional representation electoral system. As mentioned in the consociationalist theory, proportional representation helps ensure the election of “broadly representative legislature”.32 Centripetalists such as Gerrings and Thacker believe that closed-list PR systems are best for a strong government. Rather than electing candidates, voters choose the parties that they believe best represent their governmental needs, thus creating a cohesive and strong party.

2.3 Communalism The third school of thought uses the social cleavages that divide ethnic groups as the foundation for their political system. This can be through previously set representation and ratios of ethnic groups as created by communal standards through key institutions including elections and parliament. This is often through the allocation of seats to different groups, in some cases this is the entire basis for the political system as seen in Lebanon, where there are seats reserved for Christians and Muslim members in the parliament.33 In some cases, communalism works to reduce or eradicate competitive communal interaction, which, if mutual, can lead to a decrease in communal conflict. The greater the number of powerful communal groups, the higher the chances of coherent political institutions.34 Communalism is becoming decreasingly popular because it perpetuates ethnic divisions without creating a more nationalistic view.

There is a distinct lack of group identity that delineates the different ethnic groups. Another challenge that communalism faces is lack of flexibility. There is often no recognition of changing ethnic proportionality therefore groups in power often do not reflect the current ethnic makeup.35 While each school of thought engages ethnically divided societies, there is a lack of engagement for societies that are divided politically.

When societies are divided ethnically, it becomes much more difficult for reconciliation because each group has conflicting beliefs. In the case ethnically Palestinian. That does not mean, however, that we cannot

29 John Gerring and Strom C. Thacker A Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance, 23.

30 Michael Keating, “So many nations, so few states: territory and nationalism in the global era,” in Multinational Democracies, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon and James Tully (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 47.

31 Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, “Constitutions and Economic Policy,” in Democratic Constitutional Design and Public Policy: Analysis and Evidence, ed. Roger D. Congleton and Birgitta Swedenborg (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 101.

32 Arend Lijphart, “Constitutional Design for Divided Societies,” Journal of Democracy 15 no. 2 (2004): 100.

33 Benjamin Rielly, “Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies”, 268.

34 Robert Melson and Howard Wolpe, “The Modernization and the Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspective,” The American Political Science Review 64 no. 4 (1970): 1114.

35 Benjamin Rielly, “Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies”, 268.

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of Fatah and Hamas, however, both groups are religiously Muslim and use aspects of each school of thought to create a solution to the Fatah and Hamas divide. In Lebanon for example, it is considered to be both communal by some36 and consociationalist by others.37 Lebanon’s confessional political system ensures that there is both Christian and Muslim representation in the parliament through executive offices such as presidency and prime ministry. Each religion in the Lebanese government is allotted a certain number of seats in parliament. As much as this system might be successful on paper, it has experienced conflicts due to sectarian conflict that has created instability in the region. Fatah and Hamas, however, do not have the same sort of sectarian conflict. While these two organizations have had differences in the past, they are not as deeply seated as they are in Lebanon.38 Fatah and Hamas, using institutions from the consociationalist system, can have a successful and powerful government since they do not suffer from the same ethnic divide. Consociationalism would be more successful in Palestine than communalism and centripetalism for two reasons. The first is the idea of representation, which in communalism is an equal system while in consociationalism, is proportionate. In Palestine, it would be more appropriate to implement a proportionate representative system due to the disparity between the populations of the West Bank and Gaza, which will be discussed in the analysis and assessment portion of this paper. The second justification for consociationalism in comparison to the alternative model is this notion of central government, which pushes to eliminate the differences between ethnic groups. Palestine, however, is not a divided ethnic group, but is instead divided geographically and ideologically. It would be pertinent to maintain autonomy of the different territories, which the centripetal system would work to dismantle. Therefore, the consociationalist system would have a higher chance of success given the current situation in Palestine.

With the implementation of institutions like executive power sharing, proportional representation, segmental autonomy, and mutual veto, the Palestinian government can have representation from both the West Bank and Gaza. This will give proportionate power to both Fatah and Hamas and the conflict between the two should subside.

3. Research Design In order for Palestine to have a functioning and successful government, it must implement a system into their constitution that introduces more consensual and consociational institutions. These systems, consensual and consociational, are typically associated with ethnically divided societies; however, aspects of these systems will help alleviate tension and strife between the politically and territorially divided Palestine.

In my analysis and assessment, I will look at four institutions from the consociationalist system that can help alleviate the current political situation if applied to the Palestinian constitution. The first institution is executive power sharing, which splits the highest offices of power to have representation from multiple parties. The second is proportional representation, which distributes the seats of the cabinet proportionately. Thirdly, I will examine segmental autonomy, which governs smaller offices such as the municipality territorially. The last institution that I will discuss is mutual veto, which requires the majority of votes from the minority party. Enacting these institutions will help to mend the divide between Fatah and Hamas.

I will use content analysis of each of these institutions and their implementation in the Palestinian constitution. I will examine the different articles of the Palestinian constitution and how these institutions will be enforced. I will also discuss how the Palestinian public’s viewpoint of 36 Ibid.

37 Adrian Guelke, Politics in Deeply Divided Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012),122; Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 575.

38 Imad Salamey, The Government and Politics of Lebanon (New York: Routledge, 2014), 10.

the unity government is partially indicative of the potential success of the government. Furthermore, I will argue the viability of this government in relation to the aspirations of both Hamas and Fatah.

To conclude my paper, I will insist that these institutions are ideal in order for the Palestinian government to flourish. They provide representation to all parties in Palestine and it will be necessary for a strong government to maintain that representation.

4. Analysis and Assessment Palestine’s political environment has had a destructive impact on the success of their government. The conflict between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Fatah, which controls the West Bank, has hindered the creation of a government that can properly govern the country. The Palestinian constitution, or the Basic Law, was created in 1997 and resembles other Arab constitutions such as the Egyptian constitution. Following the end of the Camp David peace negotiations, Yaser Arafat, the Palestinian president at the time, felt immense pressure to reform Palestinian politics from the United States. This ended with the creation of the office of the Prime Minister into Basic Law in 2003 where Arafat appointed PLO secretary Mahmud Abbas.39 The Basic Law, however, does not have institutions that ensure that there is representation from both Gaza and the West Bank. In examining forms of consociationalist and consensual governments, we can extract institutions that could help create a more successful government. Allowing Hamas the same power as Fatah will create a unified government. In this section I examine the different institutions and their application to the Palestinian constitution. I will then discuss the public’s views on the unity government, since the success of government is dependent on the public, especially in recent years with the Arab Spring. Finally, I will discuss factors that are hindering the unity government and whether Hamas and Fatah would ever agree and make strides to upholding this unity government.

4.1 Palestinian Constitution The Palestinian constitution was last revised in 2003, and it can be stipulated that the only reason these revisions were created was due to the pressure from the United States because they believe that Arafat was “dysfunctional and not making any efforts to prevent terrorism”.40 This amendment wasn’t created in order to ameliorate the Palestinian government, in fact, despite the formation of the office of the Prime Minister, Arafat made sure to retain power and dispelled any possible competition between the Prime Minister and himself. Therefore, given not only the nature of the reform but also the time lapse since, there is definite room for improvement. With the level of conflict and change that has happened within the past decade, it is understandable that the constitution might need to be revised to fit the current needs of the Palestinian people.

While the majority of the Palestinian constitution is on par with most democratic institutions such as seen in Article 43: “Private education shall be free and independent, and the law shall regulate the oversight of the state over its organization and curricula”41, there are other articles that might need to be revise to fit certain democratic systems which can be seen, for example, in Lebanon, Belgium, and South Africa. These consociationalist systems are generally more successful in divided societies; therefore implementing a similar system in Palestine could make a stronger government.

39 Feras Abu Helal, “Performance of the Palestinian Governments (20032013).” in The Palestinian National Authority: Studies of the Experience and Performance 1994-2013, ed. Mohsen Saleh (Lebanon: Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, 2015) 2.

40 As’ad Ganim, Palestinian Politics After Arafat: A Failed National Movement (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2010) 174.

41 Palestinian Const, Article 43, 2003.

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4.2 Executive Power Sharing in the Constitution In articles 131 and 132, the Palestinian constitution describes the position of the Prime Minister42, stating that the Prime Minister has the duty of forming the government by presenting the members of said government and his program to the Representative Council in order to receive confidence. In addition to articles 131-32, it is important to reevaluate article 112, which describes the position of the President of the State. The President of Palestine is in charge of “defend[ing] the constitution and the unity of the people, guarantee[ing] the continuity of the endurance of the state, national independence, and the orderly functioning of public authorities.”43 These articles should be amended in order to include executive power sharing qualities. This would involve reserving one office such as the presidency for one territory, such as the West Bank, and reserving the other office such as the Prime Ministry for the other territory such as the Gaza. This would allow for representation of both territories in principal offices of the government. There are definite issues that could arise from this system, for instance, Hamas could easily control both the West Bank and Gaza. Because of this, precautions should be instituted to ensure that neither faction would be able to control both territories. Holding elections for the Presidency and the Prime Ministry separately could make it possible to regulate the party representation on the candidate lists. For example, the seat for the Presidency would be held in the West Bank, and the party that won the seat would not eligible to run for the office of the Prime Minister.

4.3 Proportional Representation in Palestinian Constitution Proportional representation in the terms of the Palestinian constitution would affect the Representative Council (article 66), the Advisory Council (article 109), which are both currently comprised of 150 members, and the Council of Ministers (article 145). Currently, the representation is based on the number of votes each electoral list receives as seen in Election Law article 6, but this does not ensure that there is representation from both Gaza and the West Bank, or in the current situation, Fatah and Hamas. In order to secure representation from both territories, the seats should be proportional to the population size. Given that the West Bank has the majority of the Palestinian citizens with nearly 2.8 million people versus Gaza, which has almost 1.8 million, it should be allocated more seats. In order to accurately maintain representation from both factions in power, these seats should be restricted in terms of the party candidates. In relation to the office of the President and the Prime Minister, the party that wins the Presidency would also win the majority of seats due to this increased population in the West Bank. It is important to note that not designing these seats for a particular faction allows and accommodates for changes in the political environment. The implication of territorially distributing votes is to reduce the possibility of sectarian conflict. Fatah might not always control the West Bank and Hamas, Gaza. Therefore, it would account for situational changes through the years, and increase the possibility of a secure government. Much like the Belgian system where seats are given to both French speakers and Dutch speakers, and the French with the majority, seats proportionate to the population allow for proper representation in the government.

Since 2007, the Palestinian territories as a whole have been one territorial district44, therefore they hold one election for the district. In the efforts of maintaining unity, Palestine should continue to be one territorial district. Since the Parliament and the Presidency create laws and govern all of Palestine, every Palestinian should be able to vote for who they believe is the appropriate candidate.

42 Palestinian Const, Article 131-2, 2003.

43 Palestinian Const. Article 112.

44 Mostafa El-Nabarawy, “Parliamentary Elections in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Present Status and Future Prospects,” in Towards a Better Life: How to Improve the State of Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Abdallah Shalaby et al. (Istanbul: Istanbul Kultur University, 2010), 64.

4.4 Segmental Autonomy In the Palestinian constitution there are not many articles that discuss the autonomy of the different territories. The most relevant article is article 158, which states: “The law shall regulated [sic] the relationship between the government and the local unities on the basis of administrative decentralization.” In order to help create autonomy for Gaza and the West Bank, this article should be expanded to explain the different institutions that these individual territories are responsible of, for example what we see in South Africa with roads and traffic, ambulances, recreation and amenities, and sports. This is also key to ensure that Hamas will participate in the unity government since they want to maintain control over Gaza, and allowing them segmental autonomy will be beneficial to the success of the government.

4.5 Mutual Veto within Palestinian Offices With proportionate representation of council members from Gaza and from the West Bank, the idea of mutual veto rights would require the majority vote from both parties. This would affect articles 77-78, which discuss the proposal of drafting laws, and article 144, which discusses the duties of the Council of Ministers such as “setting public policy”, “implementing public policy as established, laws and regulations…” and “appointing civilian and military personnel”45. Because of the importance of these duties, having this mutual veto will require that both factions agree with the implementations.

How would this government affect the people of Palestine and would they be accepting of the change? Given the recent policy polls, it seems that Palestinians are unhappy with the current government, which means they might be more open to a systemic change. While the Palestinian people might accept change, it might take more for the political factions to commit to the change.

4.6 Public Policy on Fatah, Hamas, and the Unity Government By examining these public policy polls, we are able to better understand if the unity government would be sustainable. If the Palestinian people are not happy with their government, then as we’ve seen in other countries throughout the Middle East, a revolution is possible.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has reported that the overall opinion of Fatah has generally increased since the Gaza war in the summer of 2014 based on their involvement in the ICC. While there was a rise in satisfaction for Hamas after the Gaza war, there was a decrease in the three months following. In the most recent polls, 47% of Palestinians said they would vote for Ismail Haniyeh, the current leader of Hamas. Three months previously, the percentage of Palestinians who supported Haniyeh stood at 53%. There is a discernable difference in support for Hamas between the West Bank and Gaza. While 42% of people from the West Bank support Haniyeh, support from Gaza lies at a much higher percentage of 52%.46 The public’s opinion on the reconciliation government has continued to be unhappy, the level of dissatisfaction is currently at 63%.47 One of the main reasons that there has been a lack of satisfaction from the reconciliation government is due to the inability to gain control over Gaza, which is still currently controlled by Hamas.

Because the Palestinian Authority has not gotten involved in Gaza, the reconstruction efforts have slowed down since the war. There is a large majority of Palestinians who are not happy with the current state of the unified government because of their lack of action. Palestinians would like the government to maintain control of Gaza and to continue with reconstruction efforts. Within that control, the public would like the government to presume control over civil and security institutions and the police force in the Gaza area. The majority of Palestinians reject

45 Palestinian const., article 144, 2003.

46 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Public Opinion Poll, no.

55, 2015. http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/605.

47 Ibid.

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Hamas rule in Gaza and would like to have presidential and parliamentary elections within the next six months.48 It is important to note that there have been no official reports of a differing opinion on the reconciliation government between Gaza and the West Bank. There are, however, issues that primarily affect Gazans that need to be addressed by the unity government such as the payment of the civil servants in Gaza. Since the creation of the unity government in June 2014, there has been much debate about the payment of these employers, and while they have been compensated to some degree49, it is not enough for many Gazans.

4.7 Effects of the Unity Government on Fatah and Hamas There are obvious obstacles for both groups in order to come to a final agreement on their consensual government. If Hamas agrees to this government, they could lose their control of Gaza. Hamas is skeptical of Fatah and they believe that the Fatah leader could betray them.50 It is unknown whether or not Hamas will be allowed to run the security forces in Gaza or whether they will be able to hold public organizations in the West Bank, which they are currently unable to do. These two things would benefit Hamas, however, it is unclear whether they will be willing to concede in order to achieve this. Furthermore, Hamas does not recognize Israel as a country and this belief, paired with terrorist attacks, has made Israel wary of a government that includes Hamas. If Palestine hopes to have peace with Israel, it is important to have a government that Israel can negotiate with. An implementation of a consociationalist government could provide legitimacy to Hamas through holding executive offices. This could also restore balance to the Palestinian government.

One main concern that Hamas and Gazans have is the funding of public servants in Gaza, and with Hamas holding more power in the government they would be better able to provide for their citizens. Hamas is not the only one to gain from this model of government, given implements such as mutual veto, Fatah has the ability to centralize or moderate Hamas without losing all of its control in Palestine. Given the support of Hamas throughout Palestine it would be better for Fatah to work with Hamas rather than against them. In being inclusive, Fatah can gain support and popularity from Palestinians, while having a functioning government. While Israel may never be able to negotiate with a government that includes Hamas, if Fatah were able to pacify Hamas, it might ease tensions between Israel and Palestine. If that weren’t possible, however, a stronger Palestinian government would nonetheless be able to negotiate better with other countries, specifically Arab countries, for support. This support would benefit Hamas and Fatah as a whole.

which is in charge of exercising legislative authority, is comprised of 150 deputies. Around 60% of Palestinians come from the West Bank51; therefore 90 seats of the Representative Council would come from the West Bank in order to be proportionate. Following the previously proposed model, the potential candidates for such offices will depend on which party wins the heads of office. If Fatah wins the Presidency, then their faction will receive 90 seats of the Representative Council and Hamas could win the Prime Ministry and receive the remaining 60 seats, and the reverse if Hamas won the Presidency. Elections for the Presidency would occur before the Prime Ministry to ensure that neither faction could win both offices. Each of the territories would require some autonomy; this could consist of systems such as municipal offices, roads, and traffic.

Mutual veto would ensure that neither faction could pass laws without all factions agreeing. With our example of the Representative Council, it would require the majority of the 60 deputies from the Gaza party. These implementations would assure that each of the territories would have equal representation and power in the government, allowing for equal control. Equal control can allow for a higher opportunity for a unified and successful government.

5. Conclusions While the conflicts between Fatah and Hamas have not been completely solved since the Gaza War in the summer of 2014, both groups have made strides towards coming together. Both sides, however, need to be reassured of their stability as political groups. Hamas does not want to lose any power over Gaza and Fatah does not want to lose control over the West Bank. By amending certain articles of the constitutions, Palestine could have a successful shared government. In order to implement executive power sharing, the constitution should reflect the representation of both Gaza and the West Bank through the heads of office such as the Presidency and the Prime Ministry. The cabinet should be represented proportionately with the majority of seats allocated for the West Bank due to the higher population. For example, the Representative Council,

48 Ibid.

49 In October around 24,000 Gazan civil servants were given $1,000 due to the terms of a plan funded by Qatar. Al-Akhbar English, “Gaza Civil Servants, Palestinian Unity Gov’t Reach Deal on Overdue Salaries,” Al-Akhbar English, January 13, 2015. http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/23200 50 Hazem Balousha, “Hamas Unwilling to Leopardize Palestinian Reconciliation” Al-Monitor, February 6, 2015. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/hamas-fatah-unity-government-work-gaza.html#

51 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Total Population, 2014 http://www. pcbs.gov.ps/site/881/default.aspx

NOYES | 25 Bibliography Azzawi, Jawad, Salah al-Din al-Jurshi, Antoine Nasri Messarra, Mostafa El-Nabarawy, Abdallah Shalaby, and Moheb Zaki. Towards a Better Life: How to Improve the State of Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Istanbul: Istanbul Kultur University, 2010.

Balousha, Hazem. Hamas unwilling to jeopardize Palestinian reconciliation . 2015. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/hamas-fatah-unity-government-work-gaza.html# (accessed 2015).

Congleton, Roger D. , and Birgitta Swedenborg. Democratic Constitutional Design and Public Policy: Analysis and Evidence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

Deschouower , Kris. The Politics of Belgium: Governing a Divided Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Gagnon, Alain G. and James Tully, ed. Multinational Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Ganim, As’ad. Palestinian Politics After Arafat: A Failed National Movement.

Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2010.

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Horowitz, David L. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. California: University of California Press, 1985.

Hustedt, Thurid, and Jan Tiessen. “Central Government Coordination in Denmark, Germany, and Sweden,” Forchungspapiere ,, Regierungsorganisation in Westeurope 02 (2006): 1-63.

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Settling Self-determination Disputes : Complex Power-sharing in Theory and Practice. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2008.

Lijphart, Arend. “Constitutional Design for Divided Societies .” Journal of Democracy 15, no. 2, (2004): 96-109.

McCulloch, A. “Seeking Stability Amid Deep Division: Consociationalism and Centripetalism in Comparative Perspective.” PhD diss., Queen’s University, 2009.

Melson, Robert, and Howard Wolpe. “The Modernization of Politics of Communalism: A Theoretical Perspective .” The American Political Science Review 64, no.

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Mungiu, Alina and Ivan Krastev, ed. Nationalism after Communism: Lessons Learned. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004.

Rielly, Benjamin. “Institutional Designs for Diverse Democracies: Consociationalism, Centripetalism, Communalism Compared .” European Consortium for Political Research 261, no. 11 (2012): 259-270.

Roeder , Philip G, and Donald Rothchild. Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy After Civil Wars. Ithica : Cornell University Press, 2005.

Russel, David, and Ian O’Flynn. Power Sharing: New Challenges for Divided Societies. London: Pluto, 2005.

Saleh, Mohsen, ed. The Palestinian National Authority: Studies of the Experience and Performance 1994-2013. Lebanon: Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, 2015.

Salamey, Imad. The Government and Politics of Lebanon. New York: Routledge, 2014.

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Sujit, Choudhry . Constitutional Design for Divided Societies: Integration or Accomodation? New York: Oxford Press, 2008.

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Emma Garfield, Rose, Oil on Canvas 36”x36”

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Katie McGarrity

Charlotte Bronte’s Villette: A Study of “Englishness” and its Effects ABSTRACT: Lucy Snowe, the main character of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Villette, has never quite belonged in the places she has lived, even within her home country, England. When tragedy befalls her and she is forced to move to the French country of Labassecour to become a teacher, Lucy strictly adheres to her Protestant English values in order to preserve her sense of self. While some critics of the novel argue that Lucy’s English values prevent her from reaching her full potential as a person, and as a typical woman of the era, I will argue in this paper that Lucy’s English values serve as a source of comfort and belonging as she navigates life in a foreign country. These values also help her differentiate herself from her French Catholic colleagues and students.

KEYWORDS: Labassecour: A fictional French speaking country located in Belgium.

Englishness: a set of values considered to be the essence of what it means to be English.

Victorian Period: began with the reign of Queen Victoria in 1837, ended around 1901.

Internal surveillance: being able to monitor oneself independently.

Catholic values vs. Protestant values “Englishness” Defined Many critics of Villette see Lucy’s almost obsessive adherence to As a leading imperial nation in the nineteenth century, the British “Englishness” as harmful to her development as a person. Julia Kent in had a reason to take pride in their collective identities; being English her article “Making the Prude” in Charlotte Bronte’s Villette” argues that came with the responsibility of maintaining certain values that were “Englishness” is a mere social construct in which Lucy feverishly attempts thought to be the reason for Britain’s success at home and abroad. The to categorize her experiences and actions into English versus French, Great Exhibition of 1851, a showcase of Britain’s technological accomwhich results in her becoming ill and disoriented (Kent 337). Other plishments, was English pride personified—this Exhibition was a “sign of critics, such as Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky, contend that the world peace and a celebration of free trade, the progress of all humans, very values that Lucy hopes to maintain are restricting her growth in a and international brotherhood” (Vranjes 329). A paradox is presented in country with an entirely different value system than her own; by allowing this Great Exhibition, however, in that it was also meant to exemplify the herself to go outside of these bonds, they argue, Lucy finds a new sense of superiority of Britain over any other nation under the guise of brotherindependence and happiness in the foreign country of Labassecour. What hood and progress. these critics seem to be missing is that these English values are a way for According to the Great Exhibition’s Official Descriptive and Lucy to differentiate herself from other people in Labassecour; rather Illustrated Catalogue, this event ‘“could not have taken place at any earlier than restrict her development, these values serve as a familiar comfort in period, and perhaps not among any other people’ because of ‘the friendly a foreign country, and also help her find a place in society. They provide confidence reposed by other nations in [their] institutions; the perfect se- her with plenty of freedom, respect, and capability in her new surroundcurity for property, the commercial freedom, and the facility of transport, ings. This being said, I will argue in this essay that Lucy’s Englishness which England pre-eminently possesses’” (Vranjes 329). Henry Cole, who is her only way of holding on to a sense of self in the foreign country of was one of the main planners of the Great Exhibition claimed that: Lebassecour.

The average Englishman is a born cosmopolite, and to that mixed One thing that many critics mention is that Lucy, who is ethnically composition he owes the universality of his moral affinities and mental English, feels alienated from England, and does not feel at home in her mixed powers. No country in Europe has harboured so many migrations, home country. This can be seen when Lucy goes to London, the capital whether as conquerors, as allies, as refugees, or simply as guests, and no of England, for the first time—she felt alien even here, claiming that people are so free as we are from the follies of nationality. (Vranjes 330) “The strange speech of the cabmen and others waiting round, seemed These lofty values that the “average Englishman” was said to to me odd as a foreign tongue” (Lawson 933/ Bronte 55). Lawson and possess could also be applied to the “average Englishwoman;” Charlotte Shakinovsky bring up the possibility that this alienation is the “result Bronte’s Villette is the story of Lucy Snowe, one such Englishwoman, who of her gender, her unstable class affiliation, or the devastating personal prides herself on her “Englishness.” losses to which she refers only obliquely in chapter 4 of the novel” (952).

Charlotte Bronte herself took great pride in being English, perhaps With this being said, Lucy finds it necessary to leave England and find a more out of insecurity in her own heritage than out of pride—her father place where she does belong. When she arrives in Labassecour and then was Irish, and her mother was from Cornwall, two countries that are Villette, she finds herself in an even more foreign environment with none more Celtic than British (Longmuir 165). This being said, Bronte did not of her personal belongings. It is from this point, then, that Lucy “begins seem to define Englishness along ethnic guidelines. According to Anne to fabricate, out of her utter estrangement, a new identification with EnLongmuir, “Bronte uses “English” to refer to a particular set of values that gland and Englishness” (Lawson 933). It is also from this point that Lucy she associates with the British Isles as a whole…Arthur Bell Nicholl’s [her finally finds a set of values to which she can cling, and from which she Irish husband] family was not “English” by virtue of their ethnicity, but can finally assemble an identity. by virtue of their gentility” (Longmuir 165). In the context of Villette, there are many facets of “Englishness” that are highlighted throughout Essential Aspects of “Englishness” concerning Lucy Snowe the novel to which Lucy Snowe adheres in order to maintain her identity The main tenet of Englishness is Protestantism. Not only is this in a foreign country. These values include not only “gentility,” but also a religious affiliation, but it also implies a certain set of values. In the Protestantism, the practice of interiority, and the adherence to Victorian context of Villette, Protestantism involves keeping ones sins and troubles gender norms. between oneself and God. What Lucy encounters in Catholic

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Labassecour is the exact opposite of this principle. In this arguably anti-Catholic novel, Lucy very clearly shows a great distaste for Catholic principles, associating them with “materialism, publicity, and compulsive disclosure” (Heady 358). She sees a latent hypocrisy in the girls she teaches and in other Catholic adults, as well as a laxity that is not permitted

by Protestantism. According to Heady, “Catholicism, as realism and the Gothic, is too concerned with externals” (358).

Mme. Beck’s very personality is dominated by materialism; according to Heady, Mme. Beck has lost all humanity in her search of financial gain, a quality labeled as “bourgeoise” that can be defined as “a willingness to suppress and finally eliminate all feelings not rooted in greed” (Heady 345). Instead of seeing Lucy as a woman, a good or a bad person, Mme. Beck sees her as an employee, a source of income (Heady 345). This greed causes a different problem, another source of disapproval from Lucy.

Mme. Beck has become so materialistic that “her identity circulates like cash, and its worth is only as great as the profit margin of the Beck household. Mme. Beck’s devotion to financial success thus works as realism does in that it translates what is invisible—emotion, belief, interiority— into a public form that is external and thus visible to all” (Heady 346). In other words, since her identity is based on something as superficial and external as cash, her very being becomes as impersonal as cash.

This being said, Catholic rituals that expose the internal, like confession, are entirely foreign and strange to Lucy; when she stumbles into a Catholic confession in a desperate attempt at emotional release, she commits the same error as Mme. Beck by making her emotions and her private thoughts, public. This, in itself, is very un-English. Lucy immediately realizes that confession is not for her when the Priest to whom she has spilled her thoughts tries to convert her to Catholicism, which, says Heady, was not her point in coming to confession (352). She went to confession to tell a story that needed to be told, but was instead inundated with entreaties to join the Catholic Church, which regularly practices the external exposure that Lucy is so adverse to. Not only does Catholicism not help her at this point, but it also makes her realize that she is altogether not cut out for it; she is entirely a Protestant. This brings up the fact that Lucy, at the end of the novel, has retained her Protestantism, which shows in one aspect how her Englishness has remained intact.

After witnessing the hypocrisy and materialism of her peers, and after a failed attempt at turning to confession for help, Lucy concludes “the more I saw of Popery…the closer I clung to my Protestantism” (Buzard/Bronte 516). In an even more definite statement, she says “God is not with Rome” (Bronte 515/Buzard 248). Because Protestantism and Englishness are one in the same in many ways, the fact that Lucy could not find absolution in Catholicism shows that her very nature turns towards Protestant values. If these values were what was harming her, then she would have stayed with Catholicism. Instead, these values offer her comfort and familiarity.

Related to religion is the concept of self-surveillance, or internal surveillance. The ability to watch over one’s own morals and actions is an essential part of Englishness, which Lucy has mastered. This tendency to monitor herself is innate in Lucy, as she has been doing it ever since she was staying at the Bretton’s, “as her stealthy observation of little Polly Home, one of her psychological doubles, illustrates” (Longmuir 7). The power in internal surveillance, according to Foucault, is in the fact that “its actual exercise is unnecessary,” (Longmuir 7) because it is exercised primarily by oneself. In coming from this British background of practicing internal surveillance, Lucy comes to Labassecour believing that this system is vastly superior. She becomes acquainted with this strange group of people who clearly don’t understand the sacred English concept of privacy; she is very much struck by the “external” surveillance that she sees here, such as when she catches Mme. Beck looking through her personal items when she thinks that Lucy is sleeping (Lomgmuir 6).

Not only are the Labassecourians watched by each other, but

they are also watched by the Catholic Church. By attending the usual Catholic ceremonies, like confession, the Catholics are watched and monitored by the clergy, who absolve them of their sins as needed.

The priest to whom Lucy confessed her feelings then secretly begins to conspire with Mme. Beck and others to prevent Lucy from marrying M. Paul (Longmuir 7). These people themselves are watching Lucy, the foreigner, closely. Despite their attempts to foil her relationship with M. Paul, however, Lucy becomes engaged to him—she learns after her failed confession that she had better keep her emotions to herself (in typical Protestant fashion) to avoid being surveyed by the Catholic forces surrounding her.

Englishness was also very much polarized by gender. Around the time that Villette was written, there was a major problem in England: there were too many single women, about 405,000 more than men. This was seen as a problem for the British nation, one that needed to be solved in order to restore the natural balance (Longmuir 1). There was, in fact, a kind of hostility towards single women who were of marrying age; they often worked as governesses or teachers, and their work outside of their perceived sphere of home and children made these women a threat to the natural order to be eradicated by male commentators like W.R. Greg, who believed that “the very presence of such ‘unhealthy’ single women was dangerous, contributing to the ‘unwholesome social state’ of England” (Longmuir 2). The solution? Emigration, preferably to a place where there weren’t enough women, like colonies. This way, the women who couldn’t be married in England could be married abroad, and fulfill their role of having a family. Many Victorians believed that “the perceived impact of celibacy on women was illness: if a woman’s “natural” role of wife and mother was not fulfilled, she was likely to waste away” (Longmuir 2). By being placed back within their safe feminine sphere in a different country, these women were no longer perceived as a threat to England, or to their own health. While these women had sacrificed their happiness in their home land, they had done it for the good of the nation, which always ranks higher than individual concern in the aspect of Englishness.

This being said, we must reconsider Lucy’s reason for her emigration, according to Anne Longmuir. While Lucy herself claims that it was her own “bold thought” that spurred her on, Longmuir argues that perhaps it was an outside force that had encouraged her to leave (3), and not her own choices. It could be argued that her individual circumstances and lack of belonging were the sole causes of her emigration, and perhaps those were part of it, but I would argue that perhaps this alienation was in part caused by her being a single, middle-aged woman in a nation where there were too many of her kind. I do, however, disagree with Longmuir’s argument that “Lucy’s decision to travel to a continental “Elsewhere” rather than a colonial “Elsewhere,” to use Rita Kranidis’s term, signals her ultimate rejection of the normalizing impulse embedded in contemporary British arguments in favour of the emigration of single women” (1). In other words, by not traveling to a colony that was in need of more women, and instead traveling to a small and thoroughly established town in Labassecour, Lucy defied the wishes of England. I would argue that where she emigrated to is arbitrary; she left England, just as she was encouraged to.

No matter where Lucy emigrated to, she responded to the push that she and other single women received from England for the good of the nation, and for the good of herself. In addition, she did, in fact, attempt to fulfill her “natural role” in English eyes as a woman—she became engaged, and if M. Paul had not been lost at sea (possibly), it can be assumed that she would have married him and perhaps even had a family. Regardless of her location, Lucy theoretically could have fulfilled the role that Englishness has assigned women—that of wife and mother.

Lucy’s Englishness helps her in her career as a teacher, as well.

When Lucy first arrived at Mme. Beck’s school with no other place to go, her ability to speak the English language was what recommended her

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to Mme. Beck. According to Lawson and Shakinovsky, “it is her command of English that provides her first possibility of carving out a place for herself, a position that she procures through her displacement of Mrs. Sweeny” (934). Mrs. Sweeny, who is Irish, attempts to speak in a cockney accent, but her brogue is too strong. Because of this, Lucy replaces her, making Mrs. Sweeny the new foreigner. There is a British colonial undertone to this exclusion, as Lawson and Shakinovsky claim that: The Irish Mrs. Sweeny is a figure ripe for such exclusion: English-speaking but not English, from the British Isles but not British, a product of London but not a Londoner…Mrs. Sweeny is always already placeless by virtue of a national identification with Ireland as the benighted backwater of an otherwise flourishing British national culture. (935) In a show of superiority over colonial Ireland, Lucy’s Englishness, in this case her ability to speak the English language, helps her secure a position when she needs one so desperately. In Lawson and Shakinovsky’s words, Lucy’s position as a teacher “facilitates [her] reconstruction of herself as English” (935).

Speaking English for Lucy is not only a qualifying skill, but it is something to be taught to the ill-behaved students of the pensionnat. By teaching these girls English, Lucy is also teaching them the ways of the English: “Indeed, English and French are more than different languages in Bronte’s work; they are different moral systems. French is coded as an inherently corrupt language, while English is associated with honesty, discipline, self-control” (Longmuir 181). In one scene, Mme. Beck challenges Lucy to teach a class of unruly French girls whom she has never taught before. Lucy takes this challenge, but is soon confronted with a disobedient student, Blanche Melcy, who she locks in a closet (Kent 334).

While Julia Kent argues that this disciplinary action is one of a “theatrical performance” that “draws upon ‘Continental’ teaching practices of stringent discipline and dramatic humiliations of students,” I would agree more with Longmuir, who posits that this act of physical restraint is English in practice. Restraint is very much an English value, and since Blanche cannot restrain her own behavior like a good English girl, Lucy must physically do it for her (Longmuir 181). By using her English language and her English values of discipline and self-restraint, Lucy is able to finally find her place in Labassecour. Rather than harming Lucy and restricting her development, her Englishness instead helps her gain the approval of Mme. Beck, enhance her skills as a teacher, and find a place to fit in that she never found in England.

England vs. the “Others” In writing Villette at the height of Victorian glory, Charlotte Bronte clearly makes a statement about the English character. I feel that by sending Lucy Snowe to a different country, Bronte is able to highlight the differences between the English and the “others”—the French of Labassecour. Though the English boasted of having within their reign a great variety of people, there was still a distinct sense of superiority over other nations. This sense of superiority is shown very clearly by Lucy Snowe in her adherence to English values while she is abroad and her clear distaste for the ways of the French Catholics. James Buzard makes an excellent argument that Lucy’s “growing understanding of [Catholics] tends to confirm and activate British Protestant values that were perhaps underdeveloped or dormant in her when she lived in Britain” (247). She realizes from living in Labassecour that her own core beliefs are Protestant values; her English identity is very much solidified as she observes the appalling behavior of her Catholic peers and students.

The marked difference between the attitudes of the French and the English towards their home countries is shown clearly in Lucy’s first interaction with Ginevra. Lucy and Ginevra had encountered each other on the ship to Labassecour, and Lucy had asked Ginevra where she was going. Ginevra replied, carelessly, “Oh! At—chose” (Heady 329). In

French, chose means “thing,” implying that Ginevra mindlessly forgot the name of the town to which she was traveling. This little turn of phrase, according to Kent, “might seem to associate France with more negative forms of French deracination, and characterological instability” (Kent 330). In other words, while Lucy, as an Englishwoman, shows a distinct care and respect for her home country, the French seem to disregard the concept of loyalty to any place at all; Ginevra’s overall careless and impulsive personality may serve as a foil to Lucy’s innate allegiance to England. Rather than Lucy’s character being unstable, as many critics claim, it is the French character who can be seen as rootless. Characters such as Mme. Beck and Ginevra, along with several of the students that Lucy encounters, show a remarkable selfishness and superficiality that Bronte associates with the Catholic French. In differentiating herself from them, Lucy is able to effectively set her character up against those of her French counterparts.

While she was never able to find a place for herself in England, she found her place in Labassecour, and differentiated herself by forming an identity based on her innate English Protestant values. Though many critics argue that these very values are what restricted Lucy’s growth, it is very clear in the novel that she owes almost all of her successes to remaining true to her English values. These values allow her to find a job that she excels at, a man who loves her, and a new confidence in her spiritual Protestant beliefs. I would argue from these results that Lucy’s life was positively molded from the formation of her English identity. This identity and the associated values were a guiding force when she had no other person to guide her in the foreign place that was Labassecour.

Works Cited Buzard, James. “Outlandish Nationalism: Villette.” Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-century British Novels. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005. N. pag. Print. (Buzard cites the 1979 Penguin edition of Villette.)

Heady, Emily W. “‘Must I Render an Account?’: Genre and Self-Narration in Charlotte Bronte’s Villette.” Journal of Narrative Theory 36.3 (2006): 341-364. JSTOR. Web. 17 April 2015. (Heady cites the 1985 Penguin edition of Villette edited by Mark Lilly.)

Kent, Julia D. “Making the Prude” In Charlotte Bronte’s Villette.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 8.2 (2010): 325-339. ProjectMUSE. Web. 17 April 2015.

Lawson, Kate and Lynn Shakinovsky. “Fantasies of National Identification in Villette.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 49.4 (2009): 925-944. ProjectMUSE. Web. 15 April 2015.

Longmuir, Anne. ‘“Reader, perhaps you were never in Belgium?” :Negotiating British Identity in Charlotte Bronte’s The Professor and Villette.”’ Nineteenth-Century Literature 64.2 (2009): 163-188. JSTOR. Web. 16 April 2015.

Longmuir, Anne. “Emigrant Spinsters and the Construction of Englishness in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette” Nineteenth-Century Literature 4.3 (2008): 1-13. Ncgsjournal.com. Web. 16 April 2015.

Vranjes, Vlasta.“English Cosmopolitanism and/as Nationalism: The Great Exhibition, the Mid-Victorian Divorce Law Reform, and Bronte’s Villette.” Journal of British Studies 47.2 (2008): 324-347. Encore. Web. 16 April 2015.

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Ellen Bischoff, Lone Road, Digital Photograph

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Olivia Tompkins

Depression: Fashionable or Debilitating or None of the Above?

A Textual Analysis of Depression in the Media ABSTRACT: In this paper, I look at media representations of mental illness—most specifically at three articles by Janet Street Porter, Benedict Carey, and Brendan O’Niell that deal with depression and its increasing diagnosis. This particular study contributes to the research topic of mental illness representation in the media not only because the scholarship on the topic is primarily on how psychotic disorders are portrayed, but also because it looks very particularly at the rhetorical strategies that represent underlying stigmas. Using the aforementioned articles as evidence, I show that the way media talks about depression is complex: steps are being taken to move us toward a more sympathetic view of the illness, but portrayals are still incredibly problematic and stigmatizing. I argue that, regardless of a piece’s overall message, the language used to talk about depression as a mental illness is inherently stigmatized.

KEYWORDS: Mental Illness, Depression, Media Representation Introduction In the past, when a person exhibited behavior associated with what we now know as mental illness, it was thought to be a result of selling one’s soul to the devil. While we may no longer think of the devil when we hear the term “mental illness,” it has not been all that long since the first association with the phrase was of the creepy, dungeon-esque insane asylums straight out of a horror movie. As the field of psychiatry has evolved, so has the understanding of how mental illnesses work and how those who live with mental illness can manage their disorders. What has not necessarily evolved, however, is the public’s view of mental illness or the stigmatization of people with mental illness. Stigmatization of mental illness has existed for almost as long as mental illness itself, and the reason for this is that so much of our society’s media has picked up and perpetuated the stigmas. Whether it is horror movies that center around the archaic insane asylums, or television shows that pin criminal acts on the mentally disturbed, or even general news coverage that highlights a person’s mental instability, the media we consume heavily contributes to negative images of what it means to suffer from mental illness.

We are moving toward a societal mentality that is more understanding of mental illness, but mental illness is often spoken of as an umbrella term, so when we look at media coverage of a specific illness, such as depression, we still see misunderstanding and misrepresentation. In this paper, I look at media representations of depression, and argue that the way depression is talked about in the media is incredibly complex.

Regardless of the overall messages in media about depression—negative, neutral, positive, or otherwise—the language used to speak about mental illness functions to further the negative stigmas about mental illness.

I will first provide a historical context for how the understanding of depression has evolved, as well as how mental illness has been portrayed in the media over time. I will then give a review of academic literature on the subject of mental illness representations in the media before explaining the critical importance of the subject and then going into my own analysis. Using textual analyses, I will show how several media pieces about depression with varying messages all use the same stigmatizing language about depression.

Historical Overview The original misconception of mental illness was that it came from sin or from the devil, and societal misconceptions that resulted from that belief continued well after psychiatry became a prominent, developing

field. Psychiatry has evolved in many ways over the years, and one of the biggest developments was the realization that mental illness is not merely limited to psychotic disorders. There was not a widespread understanding of depression as mental illness—one considered separate from the psychotic disorders—until well into the 1900s. In his book, The Weariness of Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in a Contemporary Age, Alain Ehrenberg details the evolution of how depression came to be defined as its own illness. As psychiatry was breaking into the medical field in the early to mid 1900s, depression was merely noted as a syndrome associated with most psychoses. Between the 1940s and 1970s, psychiatric studies showed that depression became one of the most widespread illnesses, to be aligned with the previous mass diagnoses of hysteria. And nowadays, it “captures the attention” of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, just like psychoses did previously (Ehrenberg 3).

Ehrenberg describes an “inhibition dominated mental illness” in the 1980s, which was a major change to the definition of depression (12).

Depression had previously been looked at as a “fashionable” illness where a person “yearned to find herself,” but by the 80s depression came to be seen as a personal “deepening crisis” in response to the patients’ failure to partake in everyday life (Ehrenberg 3, 12-13). The definition of depression as a chronic illness contributed to the confusion over what exactly mental illness was. This inability to properly define depression or other mental illnesses was problematic for the already-existing stigma against mental illness, as shown in a 1965 article, “Public and Psychiatric Conceptions of Mental Health,” which explained that the public did not know how to identify what a mentally ill person looked or behaved like (Phelan et al 189). Because the public was so unsure of what was supposed to clue them in to a person’s mental state, they looked for the overt symptoms associated with fearful stigmas.

People feared what they did not understand, and thus a generally fearful attitude was always given toward mental illness. As psychiatrists were working toward a better understanding of what caused mental illnesses, the public was merely operating under the false assumptions they had been given. The 2000 study “Public Conceptions of Mental Illness in 1950 and 1996: What is Mental Illness and Is It to be Feared?” interviewed members of the public on their interpretations of mental illness in 1950 and in 1996 to see if there were any significant changes as the field of psychiatry developed. The researchers found that while the public no longer defined mental illness in such narrow and extreme terms as they did in 1950, in 1996, the perception that mentally ill people were violent

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and frightening increased more than two-fold (Phelan et al 188). Even as certain dimensions of mental illness have changed and been redefined, the social climate around people with psychosis has not improved much at all. Phelan et al. concluded that the statistics from their study showed an increased understanding that while those “with less severe forms of mental disorder do increasingly belong to ‘us,’” there is still very much the idea that those with more overt forms of mental illness are “them” (202).

At the time when the “Public and Psychiatric Conceptions of Mental Health” article was written, the authors could confidently say that the misconception that mental illness results from the devil had virtually disappeared, but “public understanding of the nature of psychiatry” was very limited (Manis et al 49). The public, as they always had, still viewed mental illness with fear and distrust, and were “highly aware of overt, noticeable forms” of mental illness, which only fueled their misconceptions and misunderstandings (Manis et al 49). The statistics from Manis et al.’s study did not give any indications that “troublesome or disruptive behavior” would be considered an indication of mental illness by the public, which they had hypothesized, but this association between troublesome behavior and mental illness was still enough of an accepted mentality that they felt the need to quantify the assumptions.

Literature Review Much of the history regarding mental illness focuses on public conception of just what mental illness is; it is fairly obvious that the public conceptions were most often misconceptions. This absence of a clear understanding is still very prevalent today, and is usually shown most prominently in mass media depictions of mental health. The aim of my specific research project is to contribute to a narrower look at mental health in the media, and I will do so by looking at how solely depression is portrayed by the media. However, in doing research on the academic context of this topic, I mostly found information on how mental illnesses as a single entity are portrayed—which is one reason I hope to fill the narrower niche with my own research.

Nearly all of the academic literature relevant to this topic first makes note of how mass media is most often the primary source of knowledge about mental illness, and that depictions of people with mental illness are “unfavorable” (Wahl, Media Madness 11). Even in an article that provides guidelines for how researchers can effectively analyze media representations of mental illness, the authors mention how increasingly relevant this research is, because media “exerts a strong, often negative influence” when it comes to mental health (Whitley & Berry 1). All literature on the subject agrees that the media is often the public’s main source of information about mental illness and that the public often gains a negative, stigmatized view of mental illness as a result.

One of the major issues with how the media currently portrays those with mental illness is that it perpetuates the idea that the public needs to fear them by presenting them as dangerous and violent. People with mental illnesses are almost always depicted as violent or as violent criminals (Birch; Holland; Seale; Wahl). Wahl’s “Stop the Presses” notes that violence is the most common kind of news item that involves mental illness, and that stories about homicides committed by those who are mentally ill were more likely to receive front-page coverage (63). This particular kind of skewed coverage in mass media exaggerates the public fear of mental illness, which in turn contributes to the rejection of and discrimination against people with mental illness.

Another key part of academic research into the subject highlights the issue of people with mental illness being portrayed as the mental illness itself, not as individuals. Not only does most media coverage and depiction show just the dysfunctional and/or disabled side of mental illness, but it also refers to people with mental illness as their disorder, i.e. manic-depressives, schizophrenics, or mentally disturbed. By only

highlighting the negative aspects of mental illnesses, media is using the mental illness itself as the defining characteristic of the people with mental health issues. Most of these pieces of literature argue that these portrayals increase patients’ shame and embarrassment, and Birch makes the suggestion that it even discourages potential patients from making the effort to seek help in an attempt to avoid the negative stigma (253).

Most of the studies suggest that a crucial part of fixing this situation and stigmatization of mental illness is to stop referring to people by their illnesses; it is commonly advised to refer to patients as “people with mental illness” or some such similar term to avoid defining them by their condition. Birch, though, argues that “mental illness” is commonly identified as negative and that mental health “problems” is an even more problematic term, and suggests referring to conditions simply by the term “mental health” would be a helpful change (23). This idea is reinforced by Byrne’s “Psychiatric Stigma,” which points out that just the label of mental illness “changes the perceptions of observers” even if no overt abnormal behavior is observed (618). The term “mental illness” has an inherently negative connotation because it is almost exclusively linked to negative portrayals in mass media.

A third component often mentioned in academic pieces about mental illness in the media is the use of slang when discussing people with mental illness. Excessive use of slang terms like “crazies,” “lunatics,” “maniacs,” et cetera, only contributes to the negative portrayal of mental illness. The research notes that slang terms are not necessarily used when specifically speaking of people with mental illness, but more so when the media is attempting to create horrific stories. The use of slang creates an image of incompetence for people with mental illness that goes hand in hand with the way that people are often referred to by just their diagnosis. Seale points out that these terms can create the “villains and freaks” stigma that threatens people’s sense of normalcy. People in the public who have no experience with mental illness will take what the media tells them about it at face value. In his article, Bryne mentions the “Bedlam image,” that links the mentally ill with factual and fictional accounts of psychiatric facilities (618). Phrases in headlines that Bryne looked at include “psycho unit,” “maniac runs amok,” and “psycho murderer,” all of which contribute to negative stereotypes connected both to the old insane asylums and the current population of people mental illness (618).

Most studies suggest that making efforts to detach mental illness from these negative terms and aspects is the most critical step in removing the stigma attached to mental illness. Wahl argues that it is imperative to do so because “unattractive images of mental illnesses in the news media also contribute to damaged self esteem and internalized stigma, through which people with mental illnesses come to accept the negative images of themselves that they find displayed all around them” (“Stop the Presses” 67). While most of the research agrees with this notion, in her study on how anti-stigma campaigns may backfire, Kate Holland tries to show how, by trying to remove the negative associations, counter-campaigns actually perpetuate the negative stigmas of mental illness. Holland does not say that the effort to remove stigmas is the problem, merely the way in which some people are responding can be counterproductive.

By calling attention to certain stigmas and attempting to discount them, people can inadvertently reinforce the negative thoughts attached to mental illness (Holland 217). She uses a particular Australian anti-stigma campaign to back her point, but also points out the faulty rhetoric and logic in this defensive tactic; for example, she explains how arguing that not all mentally ill people are deeply disturbed and/or violent still links mental illness to violence.

The resources I have looked at to gain an understanding of how mental illness perceptions have (or have not, as most of these academic pieces have pointed out) evolved and how mental illness is portrayed look at mental illness as the whole, leaving a gap in how each specific illness is displayed by media. These studies also tend to focus on the violent and

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disturbed stigmas of mental illness, which are prominent stigmas, but do not cover the aspects of mental illness that have nothing to do with violence or overt abnormal behavior. The studies do not look at the more subtle mental illnesses that people struggle to cope with in everyday life because they are considered close enough to normal. A handful of the resources mentioned how mental illness was considered fashionable and popular, but did not go into great depths about that aspect of the stigmas and that particular gap in research is what I looked to fill with my research. My analysis considers the stigmas attached to depression, a mental illness considered to be “fashionable,” and identifies the complex ways in which the illness is talked about in media.

Methodology The subject for this research paper is the way that mental illness is portrayed and misrepresented in the media. There are few, if any, realistic representations of mental illness in the media, and social understanding is limited at best—mental illnesses are either demonized and blamed for various violent acts or glorified when eating disorders are encouraged or self-harm and depression are viewed as something trendy. For the purpose of this project, I will narrow the focus to look specifically at how depression is represented by media and what those incorrect representations do to disempower those who live with depression.

This subject is worth studying because as time has passed and the medical field’s understanding of mental illness has evolved and treatment for mental illness has evolved, social understanding of mental illness has not. For example, news coverage of mass shootings will almost exclusively focus on, and blame, the shooters’ mental instability or illness for the incidents. While those conclusions may not be inaccurate, it is interesting that we often see only the very negative instances of people with mental disorders, even though the majority of those living with mental illness are perfectly functional members of society. Ideally, a study like the one I am conducting will bring awareness to how inaccurate most media representations are. More often than not, people will not do anything to help themselves because of how “bad” mental illness looks; there are also those who will develop disorders like eating disorders because they are so often glorified, but then will not receive the help or support they need because of those original stigmas. Mentalities like this are extremely detrimental.

I particularly want to address the pattern of media coverage that denotes depression as “trendy” or made-up, because that not only negates the struggle that so many people go through, but also can make people believe what they are experiencing is insignificant and potentially not worthy of help. It is important that we understand how most portrayals of mental illness are affecting what people think of illness and how that can negatively impact many people suffering from those illnesses, so that we can begin to change that attitude and help those who may need it.

To guide my research, I asked the following questions: what ideologies are behind particular views of depression in opinion-based news articles and how are they fueling further misrepresentation? Additionally, how are these representations affecting or disempowering people who do live with depression?

I employed the cultural studies method to complete this study, as explained in Douglas Kellner’s “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture.” Kellner describes three main steps to constructing a cultural approach to media: a production and political economy background, the textual analysis itself, and a look at what the reception and use of those cultural texts is. Because I believe the reception of these portrayals of mental illness is crucial, I will forsake the first part of looking at production and political economy, and focus on several textual analyses and then the reception and uses of those cultural texts. The particular type of texts I am looking at for analysis is news op-ed pieces that focus on the trendiness of depression and/or the growing trend of diagnosing depression.

Analysis The three texts I will be looking at for this project are Janet Street Porter’s “Depression? It’s just the trendy new illness!” in The Daily Mail, Benedict Carey’s “Grief Could Join List of Disorders” in The New York Times, and Brendan O’Niell’s “It’s become fashionable to be depressed.

This is dangerous” in The Telegraph. The pieces were published in 2010, 2012, and 2014, respectively, and show a range in purpose and arguments pertaining to the subject of depression as an increasingly prominent illness. While all three pieces take root in the fact that the diagnosis of depression is rising, their purposes and arguments are all different.

My study is particularly concerned with how people look at and understand mental illnesses; for this reason, the purposes of, and strategies used, in each piece are the most significant pieces of analysis.

In order to gain an understanding of the stigmas against depression, it is especially important to look at the purpose behind pieces like these to see why the authors wanted to say what they did. Looking at the rhetorical strategies used is also key in understanding what effects the texts themselves cause, and how they impact social understanding of depression.

Janet Street Porter’s piece attempts to dissuade people from claiming depression; she argues that illnesses come in trends and that “the latest must-have accessory is a big dose of depression.” Porter believes that depression is a uniquely first-world problem—though she does contradict herself by so graciously admitting that chronic depression is “a real mental illness”—and insists that people go through hardships every day without getting depressed. Brendan O’Niell also argues that depression is over diagnosed, but his piece deals more with how, now that depression and mental illness is becoming an “attractive prospect,” the people who actually do suffer may be overlooked for treatment. Benedict Carey’s article has arguments that both align with O’Niell’s and argue against it, as he includes view points from doctors who believe that including grief in the definition of depression medicalizes normal behavior and others who believe viewing grief as depression has benefits. Carey does seem to argue more toward the negative aspects of broadening the definition of depression, which would result in over-diagnosing of mental illness. Already we can see here that talking about depression in the media is complex: one author is almost wholeheartedly against its existence as an illness, one is worried over-diagnosing depression puts sufferers at a disadvantage, and one explores the ramifications of expanding the illness’s definition.

All three authors take a skeptical tone with regard to the over-diagnoses of depression, with varying degrees of intensity over how much they each see the current situation as a problem. Porter is the most upset over the situation; though she agrees with Carey and O’Niell that the rampant diagnosing is glorifying depression and turning it into a “must-have accessory,” she is rather condescending about the whole thing and makes it clear she finds it comical that people are “claiming depression.” While Porter emphasizes her frustration over people whining and trying to get pity for their problems, O’Niell is concerned that people “defining themselves by their mental frailties” is becoming a trend that could overshadow those who really do suffer from mental illnesses like depression. Both O’Niell and Carey are more focused on how we are moving toward everyone redefining themselves as mentally ill and that can affect the people who do live with depression. Porter attacks the very notion of depression itself, and “refuses to accept this notion” of the “unexplained epidemic of depression.” In this instance, we see two authors who acknowledge depression as an illness, and one who does not, use the same kind of sarcasm and skepticism when talking about it, which makes for a complex range of discussion on the subject. O’Niell and Carey are examples of the strides that have been made to move us in a direction that is more sympathetic towards mental illness; the conversation about depression has greatly evolved past what Porter has to say about it. The complexity lies in the fact that O’Niell’s and Carey’s articles both show genuine concern for the well-being of people who suffer from depression,

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yet still incorporate language about mental illness that is problematic.

Carey and O’Niell use similar strategies by both using credible sources and subject experts as a basis for what they are saying and/or arguing. This use of credible evidence by Carey and O’Niell is crucial in how they each acknowledge the legitimacy of depression as a real illness and problem that people face; they use evidence and quotes from psychiatrists who have done research on depression, which allows for the two authors to have a more evolved conversation about the illness.

Porter’s piece, as strictly an opinion post, does not use any quoted sources (though she does reference her own work) and relies solely on her own rhetoric and language to get her point across. Both Porter and O’Niell, though, mention the prevalence of “misery memoirs” as a key supporting material in what they are saying. Porter says that public figures and celebrities “cash in on their personal demons” with these stories and she casually suggests “they take a reality check.” When O’Niell brings up the misery memoir, he does so as a backup for his claim that it is now “fashionable to be depressed” which, in turn, encourages people to follow in those fashionable footsteps.

Porter’s extreme lack of evidence is a strategy in and of itself because she uses a series of falsities to discredit depression as a whole.

While she ever so graciously accepts that “clinical depression is a real mental illness,” Porter does not once mention that any of the people she is critiquing could actually suffer from clinical depression. She tries to deny the fact that middle-class women could possibly ever have mental problems because depression is not common “among the poor or the working class” and even goes to say that anyone in the lower classes would not get depressed and is “more likely to be suffering [from] poverty” (Porter).

Instead of accepting depression as an illness, her strategy is to compare it to the “trend” of backaches: she alleges, without citation, that one in seven workers would claim backache for sick days in the nineties and now the new vague illness claim is stress and depression. She claims there are “dodgy statistics” about the number of women who experience depression, but also uses her own dodgy statistics when it suits her argument. Porter also tries to argue that her “mum’s generation didn’t suffer from stress or depression” and just got on with their lives, but she cannot claim that a widely-accepted mental illness simply did not affect an entire generation of people without proof.

While Porter spends most of her piece attacking the very existence of depression, she does raise the idea of “jumping on the depression bandwagon” that Carey and O’Niell speak of in their pieces as well. All three authors use a certain degree of casualness and slight (or not-soslight, if we are looking at Porter) mockery of how many people are being diagnosed with depression. Porter is much more outright—saying “get a grip, girls!” to the women who feel the need to “retreat under the duvet with a bottle of pills”—but Carey also opens his article with the line, “When does a broken heart become a diagnosis?” and O’Niell mentions how people who are “simply down in the dumps…are being put on antidepressants.” Again, these are three pieces with very different messages about depression all using the same kind of jokiness and mockery to talk about the illness.

This kind of cavalier language in regard to depression, even when talking about the people who may simply be following the trend, calls into question the legitimacy of what might be “real” depression or not. This is the issue covered in Carey’s article, which deals with the contention over adding grief to the definition of depression. Carey lists depression alongside other diagnoses that he pairs with quotes from experts who worry about “medicaliz[ing] normality.” The way this is paired implies that depression, with or without grief, could be viewed as normal behavior that may not need a diagnosis.

This questioning of depression as legitimate or not can be found in O’Niell’s piece as well. O’Niell often uses more casual language in reference to how unhelpful the depression trend is to those “who really do

suffer,” but phrases like this almost imply the majority of the diagnoses are false. This may very well be true, because mental illness does only affect a small percentage of the population, but phrasing it as he does— pointing out the problematic nature of people thinking depression is “normal, routine, … an affliction that marks one out as creative and sensitive”—, is problematic in itself. Not only does he call it an “affliction,” which only feeds the negative stigma, but by phrasing things that way, he also implies that those with depression are not normal. Here we see another complexity: the author who is in favor of people with depression getting their rightful treatment and being treated like anybody else is using the same kind of stigmatizing language as Porter, who does not believe depression even counts as an illness.

Using a diagnosis for supposedly normal behavior is a point all three authors bring up. Carey mentions that those in favor of expanding the depression definition argue that “if a person is in distress and seeking help, then treatment ought to be offered.” O’Niell and Porter both call diagnoses and treatments like this unnecessary, though. Porter obviously believes that people need not get overwhelmed or stressed, or hide out “with a bottle of pills” because they are simply whining over nonexistent hardships. She may be extreme, but O’Niell also says that he thinks a mental illness diagnosis can be a “doctor-approved catch-all explanation for one’s personal troubles.”

There is discrepancy in definitions of depression, which Carey brings up, and this grey area between what is “real” mental illness and what is not is something all three authors take advantage of to put their own ideas and beliefs out into the public—and, despite their vast difference in beliefs and messages, all authors use this grey area and use the same cavalier language to talk about it. This similar use in language and tone contributes to the complexity of how we as a society talk about depression: we have one article that uses an archaic and judgmental view of depression and two others that have moved leaps and bounds beyond the original, yet all three use language that contribute to outdated stigmas.

We may have reached a point in the evolution of this discussion where more conversations are positive than are negative, but the very language used in the discourse is still inherently problematic.

Conclusion The stigmas against mental illness are still incredibly prominent in today’s society—even if we have moved away from the almost paralyzing fear of the mid 1900s when the medical field was in the middle of figuring out just what the illnesses were. In this study, I have looked extensively into how mental illness has been portrayed in the media in the past and what has or has not changed over time. I noticed an absence in any literature on representations of non-psychotic disorders, so I looked into the media portrayals of depression. Using these three opinion-editorials, I demonstrate the complex nature of talking about depression in mainstream media. The three pieces give three very different messages and opinions on depression, yet all three pieces use the same skepticism and casualness in tone and language to talk about the illness. Using this as evidence, I show how, despite any overall positive or negative message about depression, similar kinds of skeptical rhetoric and disparaging language are used. The complexity of the conversation comes from the fact that we have made steps forward in how we talk about depression and other mental illnesses, as demonstrated particularly in O’Niell’s piece, but the problem is that new discussions still use variations on the old stigmas in their language.

Examining these pieces in the manner I did is significant for several reasons. For one, it fills an important gap in existing scholarship on mental illness representation because it looks at public conceptions of a disorder that is non-psychotic and can easily be put under a façade when among the public. The most important aspect of showing the complex nature of these conversations is to point out the stigmas that are inherent

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to and thoroughly engrained in the language we use (and think is neutral to use) every day when speaking about mental illness. Highlighting the strategies in these articles should hopefully alert us to the problematic nature of our discourse about mental illness and people who struggle every day with mental disorders, and allow us to find a productive and effective way to talk about depression without stigma. Doing analyses like these means that maybe one day a person who struggles to get out of bed and minimally contribute to their life because of an unbearable, indescribable weight will not be chastised or ridiculed for a battle they will try to fight every single morning they wake up.

Bibliography Birch, Michael. Mediating Mental Health. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2012.

Print.

Byrne, Michael. “Psychiatric Stigma: Past, Passing and to Come.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 90.11 (1997): 618-621. Print.

Carey, Benedict. “Grief Could Join List of Disorders.” The New York Times. 24 Jan 2012. Web. Ehrenberg, Alain. The Weariness of the Self. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010. Print.

Holland, Kate. “The Unintended Consequences of Campaigns Designed to Challenge Stigmatising Representations of Mental Illness in the Media.” Social Semiotics 22.3 (2012): 217-36. Print.

Manis, Jerome G., et al. “Public and Psychiatric Conceptions of Mental Illness.”

Journal of health and human behavior 6.1 (1965): 48-55. Print.

O’Niell, Brendan. “It’s become fashionable to be depressed. This is dangerous.” The Telegraph. 8 Jan 2014. Web. Phelan, Jo C., et al. “Public Conceptions of Mental Illness in 1950 and 1996: What is Mental Illness and is it to be Feared?” Journal of health and social behavior 41.2 (2000): 188-207. Print.

Seale, Clive. “Health and Media: An Overview.” Sociology of Health and Illness.

25.6. 2003. Print.

Street Porter, Janet. “Depression? It’s just the trendy new illness!” The Daily Mail. 5 Aug 2010. Web. Wahl, Otto F. Media Madness :Public Images of Mental Illness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Print.

Wahl, Otto F. “Stop the Presses.” Cultural Sutures: Medicine and Media. Ed. Lester Friedman. Durham, Duke University Press, 2004. Print.

Whitley, Rob, and Sarah Berry. “Analyzing Media Representations of Mental Illness: Lessons Learnt from a National Project.” Journal of Mental Health 22.3 (2013): 246-53. Print.

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India Harvey, In Touch, Video Stills

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India Harvey

In Touch ABSTRACT: Communication is everywhere. It is with each other, with oneself, and with the activities that surround us. Building these relationships is what brings happiness to our lives, which is why we, as humans, have a responsibility to ourselves to find what we love in order to reach a level of fulfillment. When the opportunity arose in my documentary film class to create a film about anything we wanted, it was this topic that interested me the most. My goal was to interview a vast amount of people to find what types of things people focused on to attain happiness. After conversing with over twenty individuals, I learned that happiness could come from almost anything we invest time in: athletics, music, academics, even each other!

The variety of fields that we have the opportunity to utilize in order to be happy is endless, which is exactly the point of this video. I hope that after watching this documentary, people use these lessons to improve their own lives, because for me, it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t film itself that brings me happiness, but the fact that through it I can get â&#x20AC;&#x153;in touchâ&#x20AC;? with others.

To view this video, visit our blog at http://blogs.stlawu.edu/theunderground/ or find us on Facebook at The Underground Journal, St. Lawrence University.

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