Malcolm Gladwell Small Change

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Relationships between people affect and complicate everything in the world, from the most trivial to the most important things. In his essay “Small Change, Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” Malcolm Gladwell discusses relationships between people and how it affects activism, and particularly how it has changed over the past 50 years. Human relationships complicate the outcomes of activist initiatives in many different kinds of ways. Strong relationships between fellow activists indicates a strong activist movement. The relationship between activists and their opponents is also important and can make, or break, an initiative. A system of organization and hierarchy among a group is crucial to a successful operation.

Every successful activist …show more content…

One of the biggest distinctions between successful activism and unsuccessful activism is how the movement is organized. If the movement is just a group of interconnected people with no system of authority, otherwise known as a network, it is more likely to fail. However an activist initiative that has a system or organization in which some people are ranked above others, also known as a hierarchy, is much more likely to succeed.“Networks are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren’t controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and the ties that bind people to the group are loose.” (Gladwell 139) The reason networks do not work is because it is very hard to organize anything meaningful without a central authority to oversee it Sure a network can organize a small, low risk event that people can easily participate in, but when it comes to organizing high risk, well thought out protests, networks are almost completely worthless. That’s because high risk events need plenty of planning to carry out, something that a network is unable to do. In order to organize a high risk event, there needs to be someone of authority in charge, who will make the tough calls required to plan something of that magnitude. Networks don’t have this person. There is no person of authority in a network, everyone is virtually an equal. Since there is no person above everyone else, there is also no person who has the responsibility of someone in charge. Meaning that there is no person who will make the difficult decisions needed to successfully organize anything of note. Networks aren’t good at getting important things done. And important things need to get done for any movement to be successful.

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