To understand the most important characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
Cities carry significant population density. Cities evolve faster than the rest of the society. While cities are typically vibrant and fast-changing, they may not reflect the true characteristics of a society. Most of the cities of current era are multicultural and the societal idiosyncrasies are blurring. While McDonalds and KFC were once marks of United States, they are easy to spot in all major cities. Cities have become busy abodes of wealth creation. Cities attract talent from all societies to immigrate and thus give a strong flavor of business attitude than a true reflection of societal values. Every city has similar setup and facilities such as malls, multiplex, universities, business centers, car dealers and so on.
Important characteristics of the society include cultural elements such as clothing, human values and language that do not exist in its original form in the cities. While saree remains to be associated with Indian women, its much more common to see american influence on Indian women's dressing preferences in major Indian cities. From a culture that advocates helping each other and staying in a joint family, present city life characterizes earning potential, cut-throat competition and business politics. Most cities now speak English. Given all these, its pretty evident that city may not be the best place to understand important characteristics of society.
True picture of a society lies in its core villages. Take Finland for example. Helsinki is far less an example of the beautiful snow-clad Lapland that we would associate Santa-Claus for. When we think about India and Gandhi, we associate Khadi, a variety of clothing spun from cotton. Present day Ahmedabad (the city close to where Gandhi lived) is now a business hub with huge entrepreneurial interest. Several miles away, deep inside the villages, we can see the unadulterated society.
However, if we are cognizant about the adulteration one could expect, study of cities could throw some light. For example, every school and university organizes cultural shows. Museums and art theaters exist only in cities. The snapshots from best of the society is captured and documented. The same knowledge that might take several months to gain, otherwise, could be easily obtained by visiting such heritage centers belonging to cities within few hours.
In essence, we may consider that the study of cities may give us the knowledge we are looking for. However, if one wants to truly experience the important characteristics of the society and see living examples, cities are not the best place.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
Cities carry significant population density. Cities evolve faster than the rest of the society. While cities are typically vibrant and fast-changing, they may not reflect the true characteristics of a society. Most of the cities of current era are multicultural and the societal idiosyncrasies are blurring. While McDonalds and KFC were once marks of United States, they are easy to spot in all major cities. Cities have become busy abodes of wealth creation. Cities attract talent from all societies to immigrate and thus give a strong flavor of business attitude than a true reflection of societal values. Every city has similar setup and facilities such as malls, multiplex, universities, business centers, car dealers and so on.
Important characteristics of the society include cultural elements such as clothing, human values and language that do not exist in its original form in the cities. While saree remains to be associated with Indian women, its much more common to see american influence on Indian women's dressing preferences in major Indian cities. From a culture that advocates helping each other and staying in a joint family, present city life characterizes earning potential, cut-throat competition and business politics. Most cities now speak English. Given all these, its pretty evident that city may not be the best place to understand important characteristics of society.
True picture of a society lies in its core villages. Take Finland for example. Helsinki is far less an example of the beautiful snow-clad Lapland that we would associate Santa-Claus for. When we think about India and Gandhi, we associate Khadi, a variety of clothing spun from cotton. Present day Ahmedabad (the city close to where Gandhi lived) is now a business hub with huge entrepreneurial interest. Several miles away, deep inside the villages, we can see the unadulterated society.
However, if we are cognizant about the adulteration one could expect, study of cities could throw some light. For example, every school and university organizes cultural shows. Museums and art theaters exist only in cities. The snapshots from best of the society is captured and documented. The same knowledge that might take several months to gain, otherwise, could be easily obtained by visiting such heritage centers belonging to cities within few hours.
In essence, we may consider that the study of cities may give us the knowledge we are looking for. However, if one wants to truly experience the important characteristics of the society and see living examples, cities are not the best place.
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