Please rate my Issue Essay--Any criticism welcome!

[vader0809]

Please help grade my essay! This is an untimed essay. I'm trying to gauge generally whether I am on the right track as far as content goes. I will begin timing myself once I perfect the technique. All criticisms, insights, suggestions, and encouragements are welcome.

Question:

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.

 

Response:

Yes of course, what else is he going to study? Yes, a person must study the major cities and the countryside too, or perhaps a strategic mix of both depending on what types or groups of characteristics he is looking for and expecting, if he is to come to a clear understanding of a society’s forms and features.

 

If one is interested in breaking down contributors to a nation’s GDP, he would want to study technological and industrial institutions in the city, and agricultural ones in the countryside. Ukraine, for example, accrues about an equal portion of its GDP from the industrial sector as from the agricultural sector, so one cannot afford to ignore one for the other if he wants a clear understanding of the correlation of Ukraine’s GDP with its societal values. More generally, as it is today, technology is at the heart of industry, and both tend to be set in the city; Industrial processes due to affordable transportation, availability and proximity of semi-finished materials, and other logistical considerations integrate better in the city. Food and raw materials needed to power the human capital running said industries, however, originate primarily from the rural areas. As such, neither the urban nor the rural can exist without the other. Therefore, a careful analysis of each is important for a clear understanding of the characteristics of a society.  

 

Moreover, as the industrial revolution intertwined with the proliferation of cities, and farms and small vegetable gardens in the countryside spearheaded the cultural transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a stationary, domesticated existence, we cannot study a society’s historical character without evaluating both the cities and the villages. Since the discoveries of the Americas, countries in South America have existed primarily on agriculture, whereas countries in North America and Western Europe developed from an agricultural existence to an industrial one. In fact, the agricultural characteristic of South American countries, and even in southern United States, played a major role in the proliferation and persistence of slavery in the Americas, whereas slavery came to a quicker end in northern United States and Western Europe. As a result, we cannot ignore the agricultural characteristic of the some states in favor of the industrial characteristic of others when studying a society’s overall historical trajectory.

 

As far as politics go, taking the United States as an example, one cannot study and predict how the country will vote in a national presidential election without evaluating geography against a political candidate’s appeal. States in the South, Southeast, and the Midwest tend to favor Republican candidates while those on the coasts generally favor Democratic ones. States in the former category have more isolated rural areas in their topography while states in the latter have population more concentrated in the cities. Furthermore, electoral votes accrued by a candidate towards the presidential election by victory in a state differ on a state-by-state basis. As a result, in gauging the characteristics of U.S. democracy, the countryside cannot be ignored in favor of the urban areas: both must be evaluated. In fact, built into the very constitution of the United States of America are the principles of federalism and states-rights; both of these are geographical and topographical entities.   

 

Finally, for a nation’s artistic culture, one would study terracotta in the countryside and graffiti art in the cities. Terracotta originates from an earlier historical period than does graffiti mural, just as agricultural domestication prefigured urban settlement. If one wanted to understand public perception of art in a society—whether positively or negatively—he would study art schools in the city and in the countryside for their goals and curriculum, street artists in the inner cities for their technique, a mother and daughter knitting fabric in the countryside for their patience, and mischievous urban youth with graffiti for their persistence. Studying one but ignoring the others would create a misrepresentation of that society’s artistic ideals.

 

A society is a complicated entity: it is always evolving and always adapting, so to dissect it, a person must be skilled, precise, patient, and be ready to change with it. Studying the cities is already a commendable step in understanding its forms; however, this is too rigid an approach. It is better to incorporate elements of both the cities and the countryside for a more fluid representation.