A Train of Thought: The Depiction of Self-Reflection and Change Author: Mya Smith Abstract This article examines themes in the third season of the animated show Infinity Train. Using of qualitative content analysis approach, the series was coded, and four themes emerged based on the research. The themes were fear, trust, power, and truth. The findings show how the season is an allegory of self-reflection and change. This anthological series presents themes and messages that animated shows for children usually stray away from. Overall, the success of the show is built from the complex and relatable characters that the audience can learn from.
Scorched Earth: How Chiles Shaped a Continent Author: Robert Soucy
“On the black table, the pursuit of flavor is like a religion. From the days of slavery, when we made magic out of nothing, to the Jim Crow era, when food became a statement of dignity and self, to today, when food speaks to one’s place in the world, tastiness has always been the number one goal.” -Therese Nelson, Hot Sauce in My Veins
En Vogue: Fast Fashion as an Example of Economic Globalization Author: Gwen Knott Abstract Fast fashion is a retail outlet wherein Western retail corporations produce garments for very low cost by using cheap materials and outsourcing labor to developing, economically liberal countries; this low cost translates to high profits in the sense that the retailers are able to put a small mark-up on the goods and still market and sell them for prices that are very low relative to the Western world, and make high profits off of the sheer volume of product sold. This business model has been widely regarded as wasteful and unethical, from the high amount of textile waste and pollution that it generates as well as the various ways that it exploits laborers. The fast fashion industry was at its heyday in the late 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s, profiting off of Generation X and an international labor market ripe for the outsourcing of labor; however, in recent years, fast fashion retailers have been struggling with the new style of “ethical consumerism” now practiced by a growing number Millennials and Generation Z, which takes issue with the ethical and environmental concerns surrounding fast fashion. Some fast fashion retailers are attempting to account for this new wave of ethical consumerism by improving transparency in manufacturing, becoming more environmentally conscious, and generating less waste. This paper seeks to analyze the fast fashion industry and its numerous ethical concerns, summarize the ethical consumerism movement and explain its issues with the fast fashion industry, and address how some fast fashion retailers have attempted to improve their ethics to account for this shift; the aim is to connect this analysis to globalization, and more specifically the economic dimension of globalization.
How Economic Globalization Is Modifying Access to Resources Author: Tori Hanks “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” – Thomas Sowell.