Negative Exteranalities in Documentaries

 

The term “externality” comes from economics and refers to “an economic choice or action by one actor that affects the welfare of others who are not involved in that choice or action” (Goodwin, et al). Although externalities can be positive, as when “a landowner, by choosing not to develop her land might preserve a water recharge source for an aquifer shared by the entire local community” (Goodwin, et al), environmental externalities are most often negative. 

As Goodwin explains, “a negative externality… exists when an economic actor produces an economic cost but does not fully pay that cost. A well-known example is the manufacturing firm that dumps pollutants in a river, decreasing water quality downstream.” Environmental externalities resulting from everyday eco-disasters continue to have negative effects on water, air, and landscapes. 

For example, oil remains from the 1979 Ixtoc oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and cleanup continues after the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, ominous foreshadowing of the possible aftermath of the 2010 BP environmental catastrophe caused by the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. 

Negative externalities have a detrimental effect on workers in various industries, including fishing, drinking water, air quality, mountains, and forests. See, for example, the December 23, 2008, coal slurry dam breach caused by mountaintop removal mining in Tennessee or the April 10, 2010 West Virginia Massey mine explosion that left twenty-nine dead.

The Rhetoric of the Eco-Documentary

 

Although many would argue that all texts, including documentaries, are inherently rhetorical, since they address an audience from a particular standpoint, historically, the rhetorical documentary presents an argument and lays out evidence to support it. In The Rhetoric of the New Political Documentary, however, Thomas W. Benson and Brian J. Snee assert, “The rhetorical potential of documentary film… relies not on an audience who merely provides the rhetor with resources that might be exploited in persuasion but instead on an audience who is actively engaged in judgment and action” (137). 

Audiences do not merely mimic the action on the screen, according to Benson and Snee. They interpret the actions documented, and invent and engage in acts of their own that respond to the film’s rhetoric, but from the viewer’s perspective. Some of our work examines this rhetorical potential in relation to food industry documentaries. The best of these eco-documentaries fulfill Paula Willoquet-Maricondi’s definition, “to play an active role in fostering environmental awareness, conservation, and political action…, that is, to be a member of the planetary ecosystem or ‘ecosphere and, most important, to understand the value of this community in a systemic and nonhierarchical way (10).” 

When taking a rhetorical approach, documentation of actions also seems to adhere to the criteria Karl Heider outlines for ethnographic filmmaking, when explaining, “the most important attribute of ethnographic film is the degree to which it is informed by ethnographic understanding” (5). According to Heider, first of all, “ethnography is a way of making a detailed description and analysis of human behavior based on a long-term observational study on the spot,” (6). Secondly, Heider suggests that ethnography should “relate specific observed behavior to cultural norms” (6). The individual narratives these films provide also support Heider’s third criteria for an effective ethnography: “holism” (6). These interconnected stories are “truthfully represented” (Heider 7) according to Heider’s final criterion for an effective ethnographic film, all in service to the films’ rhetoric.

Human Ecology and Self-Sufficiency Standard

 

For a working adult in Illinois, an hourly wage of at least $8.57/hour was necessary in 2002 to earn the $1508 per month (with 176 hours per month of work) or $18,097 per year salary necessary to meet housing, food, transportation, miscellaneous, and tax expenses (Pearce and Brooks 8). For a family of four, with two working adults, a pre-school child, and a school-age child, an hourly wage of at least $10.07 per adult was necessary in 2002 to earn the $3543 per month (for 176 hours per month of work) or $42,519 per year required to meet these same basic needs, as well as child care expenses (Pearce and Brooks 8). 

This Self-Sufficiency Standard makes clear that at least some of our basic needs have become commodities, which consumers must purchase for survival, a dilemma chemist Ellen Swallow Richards examines in her multiple explorations of human ecology at the turn of the twentieth century. The Human Ecology movement grew out of the work of Richards, who translated Haeckel’s work from its original German and, according to Robert Clarke, introduced the concept of ecology in the United States. Richards defined human ecology as "the study of the surroundings of human beings in the effects they produce on the lives of men" (1910). 

Instead of “fair use” approaches to ecology, with an ultimate goal to maximize benefits of nature for humans, our research sometimes explores how Richards’ human approaches to ecology are manifested in documentary and feature films addressing air pollution, climate change, water rights, and the clothing industry. This approach also points to sustainable development as an alternative to resource exploitations and the everyday eco-disasters associated with them. Our exploration of everyday eco-disasters demonstrates some of the disastrous consequences of applying an economic approach that condones over-development and exploitative overuse and commodification of resources sustaining our basic needs.

Human Ecology and Basic Needs

 

Much of our research explores films associated with our basic needs (air, water, food, clothing, shelter, and energy), and the everyday eco-disasters associated with their exploitation. Such exploitation is typically associated with a “fair use” model of ecology, which grew out of economic approaches to the environment connected to Social Darwinism. 

Human approaches to ecology, however, maintain the worth of our basic needs, either as separate from or part of nonhuman nature. Whether defined by psychologist Abraham Maslow as physiological needs, by Reality therapist, William Glasser as survival needs, or self-determination theory as competence in dealing with the environment, our most basic needs all highlight our connection with our external ecology. 

The worth of our basic needs has been calculated in the U.S. and around the world in the last decade to determine the lowest income necessary for a family’s survival. This calculation resulted in the Self-Sufficiency Standard. According to Diana Pearce and Jennifer Brooks, “The Self-Sufficiency Standard measures how much income is needed for a family of a given composition in a given place to adequately meet its basic needs—without public or private assistance” (1). 

This Standard differs from the federal poverty measure in multiple ways: It takes into account regional differences, changing demographics, and new needs. As Pearce and Brooks explain, “there are many families with incomes above the federal poverty line who nonetheless lack sufficient resources to adequately meet their basic needs” (1-2).