Social And Personal Emancipations Analysis

Submitted By sanahimran
Words: 1504
Pages: 7
Open Document
Social and Personal Emancipations Gladwell was pointing out, in his well-researched and inquisitive style, that networks are systems of weak ties. Hierarchies are systems of strong ones. True revolution, true activism is life-or-death for all involved, not just one imprisoned Chinese writer or Wall Street financier’s girlfriend’s cell phone. Networks are phenomenal structures for disseminating information, but inefficient at calling people to true action. Gladwell’s point was that while networks are awesome at asking people to raise their hand to say they care, they don’t have the offline, reality check of asking people to take a bullet. Khaled Hosseini uses the system of strong ties and weak ties to demonstrate the relationships formed between Mariam and Laila, and Mariam and Rasheed. Social and personal emancipations can only happen when strong ties are present.
Malcolm Gladwell starts off by telling a story about the lunch counter sit-ins which happened in Greensboro, North Carolina. A small group of college students went to a diner where they sat at the bar, which was for white people only, rather than sitting at the snack bar. The waitress refused to serve them. So in order to make a point, they continued to sit at the bar. Within just a few days, the group which had originally started out with four members, amounted to a few hundred people and then swept the south with multiple sit-ins all around the surrounding area. Gladwell later talks about how the new generation uses social media to make these points. He states that by using social media, people are making points and using acquaintances rather than close friends and therefore are using weaker social ties. “ These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade- and it happened without email, texting, Facebook or Twitter.” Armchair activism is inefficient in regards to challenging the status quo. This is the core argument of Malcolm Gladwell’s essay on social media and its effects upon society. I say that Gladwell is correct. Hosseini places these ideas into context by setting Mariam and Laila’s story during Afghanistan’s tumultuous years he illustrates the effects of strong ties in relation to the women. Both Mariam and Laila develop strong ties with each other through mutual feelings, their fight for respect from Rasheed was only possible because of the bond the women shared.
Gladwell clearly makes his point by using the “revolution” in the sixties, pointing out that there was no twitter no facebook to bring people together for a common cause. He compares it to the Iranian Revolution. He claims people misgauged the extent of the role played by social media, “‘Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran’”(Gladwell). Gladwell brings up the influence that twitter played on the revolution in Iran, and clarified the common misconception that social media played a script-changing role in the way the revolution played out. Armchair activism is inefficient in regards to challenging the status quo. This is the core argument of Malcolm Gladwell’s essay on social media and its effects upon society. I say that Gladwell is correct.
In his essay, "Small Changes," published in the New Yorker in October, 2010, Gladwell pushes back on the notion that social media has opened doors to new kinds of protests, and the the Internet and tools of social media have helped us to become better organizers than we've been before. “Some of this grandiosity is to be expected. Innovators tend to be solipsists. They often want to cram every stray fact and experience into their new model. As the historian Robert Darnton has written, “The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the Internet.” But there is something else at work here, in the
Show More

Related Documents: Social And Personal Emancipations Analysis

Lincoln and Slavery Essay

Lincoln The generalization that ending slavery was a central northern aim for the civil war is flawed, not because it isn’t true but because it is a gross simplification of the complicated political, social, and economic web that unraveled resulting in the civil war. Similarly, the same is true for the claim that Abraham Lincoln fought the war under the cause of liberty and freedom for all Americans. Although Abraham Lincoln is hailed as “the great emancipator,” the purpose of the Civil War did…

Words 1210 - Pages 5

Explain Why Was Alexander II Called The Czar Liberator

history as the “era of great reforms.” Before he became czar, Alexander was not sympathetic to emancipation. Alexander Nicholayevich Romanov is largely remembered for emancipating the serfs, his assassination at the hands of revolutionaries, and he also is also famous for all of his important events. According to the act, the serfs were immediately granted personal liberties and promised land. The 1861 Emancipation of Russian Serfs was the single most important reform of the reign of Tsar Alexander II.…

Words 1168 - Pages 5

Karl Marx And Frederick Douglass Essay

Part I. Compare and contrast the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass on the following issues: How do they analyze sources of oppression? How do they view property relations? How do their theories formulate emancipation? Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) is seen as “the most important African American intellectual of the nineteenth century”. In the Narrative, Douglass acts as both the narrator and the protagonist, and he appears quite different in these two roles. Writing and oratory became…

Words 1608 - Pages 7

Emancipation: American Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation Essay

Emancipation Analysis The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, as a war measure during the American Civil War, to all segments of the Executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States. It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states that were still in rebellion, thus applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time. The Proclamation was based on the president's constitutional authority…

Words 1203 - Pages 5

Why Did William Lloyd Garrison Build Sectional Tension?

Civil War. Almost all abolitionists advocated legal, but not social equality for blacks. Many abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison were extremely vocal and helped to make slavery a national issue, creating sectional tension because most abolitionists were from the North. William Lloyd Garrison was a radical who founded The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper, in Boston in 1831. He advocated immediate, uncompensated emancipation and even civil equality for blacks. This made Garrison a famous…

Words 222 - Pages 1

Jonathan Kozol The Human Cost Of An Illiterate Society Essay

disastrous repercussions. He highlights real-life examples of how people suffer as a result of chronic illiteracy, and his entire essay is an advocacy for knowledge and literacy. Other authors such as Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright would use their personal experiences in completely different settings to highlight the power of knowledge. Douglass, a man born into slavery, and Wright, a man living through…

Words 923 - Pages 4

Abraham Lincoln's Criticism Of His Resolve

time can begin to comprehend--and his initiative to preserve the Union in spite of emancipation of slaves.…

Words 504 - Pages 3

Second Great Awakening Research Paper

revival, also known as the great interest they awake Protestant churches and pastors for the spiritual well-being of the church. Religious, social and political forces are surrounding the impact of political changes. To use the basics of religion Great Awakening: Restore the faith of the church members - hence the term 'revival' and the 'revival', Import for social reform, the purpose of the Awakening – Evangelism. One of the effects of the Great Awakening was a passionate argument between Protestants…

Words 614 - Pages 3

The Rise Of Anti-Semitism

nineteenth century anti-Semitism was largely religious, based on the belief that the Jews were responsible for Jesus' crucifixion. It was expressed later in the Middle Ages by persecutions and expulsions, economic restrictions and personal restrictions. After Jewish emancipation during the enlightenment, or later, religious anti-Semitism was slowly replaced in the nineteenth century by racial prejudice, stemming from the idea of Jews as a distinct race. In Germany theories of Aryan racial superiority…

Words 2227 - Pages 9

Chapter 6 Thesis and Response Essay

Church, neighbors, family, and school were at the heart of many African-Americans. These connections between people were places for personal fulfillment, mutual care, and community. The connections were also means of self-expression. Cherishing and strengthening these kinds of social networks and places of uplift, while making use of their voices to bring forward their own points of view, were crucial methods in which African Americans fought against the racial injustices of the 1880s and 1890s.…

Words 403 - Pages 2