Hello Luschen, thank you for all the work you ve done. I am new to GRE, and I have just started practicing, I hope you can help me with this.
To understand the 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.
The argument that to understand the most important characteristics of a country, one must studs its major cities sounds very reasonable. Society throughout history of human being have been analyzed by the artifacts the society left behind including art, writing, household items, and clothing. Archaeologists have been able to extrapolate information about culture’s government, scientific knowledge, diet, and living conditions. When history began to be recorded in a systematic way, writers started record about the major cities in the world, and how those cities have influenced on the formation of a society.
For most nations around the world, a well-developed city is the one that attracts most of people and mainstream culture is mostly presented there. Throughout history, there have been evidences that all great civilizations have had a flourishing city; the government also wants to set up there to dictate the central power. In order to understand most of people in a society, to comprehend the way it is ruled, we must understand the major cities in that society.
The most important characteristics of a society include the most distinguishing feature or quality that can give outsiders the strongest impression about the society. Given such definition, major cities are the ones that carry the most visible feature of any society. Most important characteristics means that life in rural areas can help illuminate at some point about the society, but not as much as the city since the city is where people tend to gather most for some reasons such as higher employment, better social welfare, more access to education. Japan could be one of the convincing examples. When people think of Japan, they usually come up with the image of arduous office workers, of the cute characters in anime. Obviously, one does not go to any rural areas to get such image, but rather encounter those images in Tokyo Station or somewhere in Osaka city.
While Japan or many other Asia nations have the strongest representation for the society in big cities, many nations may simply have such a huge composition of their civilians that sometimes it is hard to summarize all characteristics by looking at huge cities. The opponent side might cite one particular example is the United States which is composed of fifty states and the civilians mostly are migrants from other continents. Therefore, to fully understand the characteristics of the American society, one should be ready to be overwhelmed by the various culture components of the fifty states. However, under the position of the United States, there are metropolises such as New York, Los Angeles, all in which have different African-American, Hispanics, and Asian-American at the same time. It is so apropos that we can see one of the most important of American features as being a melting pot for different culture; which is just an example of the help of studying major cities when trying to understand a society.
Of course, one shall not overlook the factor of culture root of any society if such factor is not so apparent in the major cities anymore. As we probably know, many societies had agricultural background and sustain based on such background. It is likely that the society’s custom, and rituals can only be understood in the context of rural areas. For example, wedding ceremony is well-known as such distinguishing feature that every nation has its own image. One foreigner might attend a wedding in China and think it is no difference from Western weddings, however, there might still existing some traditional wedding in China in which participants are required to wear specific clothes. Such custom is still a representative for China’s wedding traditions, and it is still prominent in small provinces of China. Nevertheless, even small cities can help us understand a society, especially if the custom tends to be different than that in the urban areas.
All cities around the world represent a part of the country that they belong to. Major cities tend to carry the most obvious feature of the society exists in them. Besides, major cities studying is a stretch, in order to understand thoroughly different facets of any society, one should not overlook the possibility that part of the society’s characteristics are reflected in the rural areas.