Malcolm Gladwell The Power Of Context

Life is a sequence of experiences. A culture is a compilation of many different individual experiences combined to form one collective experience. Cultures form to match what people experience in their environment. This is why cultures differ between every segment of society. Cities have separate cultures, towns have separate cultures; even households have cultures that separate them from other households. When multiple people live together their collective experience defines who they are as a group. This means outside forces can change the experiences of individuals and therefore change the culture. Malcolm Gladwell in The Power of Context analyzes a collection of studies and events that illustrates changes in culture having to do with changes

Gladwell shows through his analysis that the interplay between cultural expectations and experiences is not just an interaction, but a cause and effect relationship; the context of a situation one is in, the environment around a person, is what determines their cultural expectations.

Gladwell starts off by reviewing how New York was able to reduce its crime rate so fast and effectively. Mayor Giuliani and his staff had a key understanding of the crime situation. The environment is what caused people to commit crime, not the people themselves. “Crime is contagious and can start with a broken window and spread to an entire community. The tipping point in this epidemic though is not a particular type of person…its something physical like graffiti. The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior is not coming from a certain kind of person but from a feature in the environment.” (Gladwell 152) This is the Broken Window Theory. When there is a broken window that no body fixes people think, “no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broke and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street, sending a signal that anything goes.”

Japanese people once did not believe depression was a disease, but a collection of emotions felt sometimes physically, through pain in the stomach, or emotionally through sadness. American pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline wanted to change that. “‘The focus was not on medication.’ Kirmayer remembers ‘they were not trying to sell there drugs to us. They were interested in what we knew about how cultures shape the illness experience’” (Watters 515) How does one go about changing a culture? Change the environment; change the behavior. Change the behavior; change the culture. “To get the messages out to the Japanese public, the SSRI makers employed a variety of techniques and avenues…widely disseminating articles in newspapers and magazines mentioning the rise of depression…sponsored the translation of several best-selling books first published in the United States on…the use of anti-depressants.” (Watters 525) The environment around people was suddenly filled with pro-SSRI propaganda. As time went on the culture of japan shifted to match what GlaxoSmithKline wanted it to be. Almost unconsciously the country began to adopt the western style of experiencing depression. No person in Japan ever had to say a word in support; the ability GlaxoSmithKline had to change the environment around the people was all that was needed to change