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 deve

Before deciding whether it is the major cities that should be studied or not, one must understand what all factors constitute the most important characteristics of a society which can be perhaps used to make distinctions between any two societies. By the characteristics of a society, we may incur what behavior, mentality and opinions the people of the society hold. Also, the way of living, religion, profession, business, gender equality and many more norms can help distinguish the characteristic behavior between two different societies. Now, it should be reasonable to believe that only studying the major cities of a society would give us the most distinct characteristics of its people, reasons being explained in the following paragraphs.

Firstly, as it turns out, if we look at the most prosperous and advanced cities around the world like Los Angeles, Shanghai, Singapore, etc., the lifestyle of the people is quite similar. Demographically, for example, Singapore also shelters a large amount of Indians, Koreans, Japanese, and Americans along with the native Singaporeans. Similar case is for Shanghai or Los Angeles. The people at these major cities enjoy the latest technology. People living there have eclectic tastes in food rather than provincial as the city provides a wide-ranging variety ranging from continental to Indian and Chinese. Moreover, the population in these major cities is described as cosmopolitan. Hence, the characteristics of people will prodigiously vary as we move from an Indian immigrant to a Japanese one. Further, it may not hold that an immigrant holds the traits that belonging to its nationality, the immigrants themselves might have been influenced by the lifestyle of the host country. Therefore, the observations from the study of a major city may largely contradict themselves and make the whole process of extracting inference byzantine.

Moving on, a society may better be understood when cities other than the major cities are taken into consideration. These cities may not be the most backward or remote areas. Here, we may assume without any significant loss in generality that any society would contain these three types of cities: the rural areas bearing villages, the highly advanced, industrialised and prime cities of the country and the cities which do not come into either of the two categories and which mainly bears the middle-class section of the society. The first and the third category mentioned here equally affects any study done on the society. While, the rural areas may provide one with the pure and untouched traditions that bring out the most distinctive characteristics of the society, the behavior, opinions and livelihood of the middle class section plays a prominent role in representing a society's inclinations.

Many factors like better services, education, commercial market, employment and better opportunities have persuaded large number of people from rural areas to migrate towards towns and cities, leaving their villages where they used to practise their own customs and rituals, worship their deities, wear their specific dresses and have their own norm pertaining marriages. After residing in cities, these people have to change their routine according to what can help them survive in cities. But with time, many of them start to develop their own thoughts and beliefs apparently influenced by the environment and exposure that they get from the surroundings and probably the foreign influence. In this way, the resulting set of characteristics of these people is just a reflection and amalgamation of what they get from cities.

Similarly, the wonderful change in technology and industrialization has provided us with numerous options that can ease the lifestyles of humankind. The globalization has made it possible to become aware of the most recent ideologies, technologies and gadgets that are being invented and improvised in foreign countries. It is always the most advanced cities of any country that get the first fresh demonstration and experience of these reforms taking place all over the world. In contrary, the under developed and rustic village areas become the last to get to know about those reforms. Consequently, they have very less options and exposure in order to rationalize their own culture. Hence, their culture remains unaltered for a longer time.

It can be witnessed in the present-day world, how people of different races, religions and communities appreciate each other’s work in cinema, music, art, sports, food habits etc. The more influenced ones even start practising them which bring a great change in their culture. However, if we move deeper into the indigenous rural part of a society, we can witness people enjoying regional cinema, sports, music, art and other things that belong to that particular society. Thus, the characteristics of a society are properly studied only when it considers its various different sections ranging from the major cities to the rural areas. A study confined only to the major cities is incomplete.