Malcolm Gladwell, "The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime"

How do cultures change? Is it possible to control and direct cultural change? These are the questions that most interest Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000). Gladwell first became interested in the notion that ideas might spread through culture like an epidemic while he was covering the AIDS epidemic for the Washington Post. In epidemiology the phrase "the tipping point" is used to describe that moment when a virus reaches critical mass, and, as Gladwell learned while doing his research, AIDS reached its tipping point in 1982, "when it went from a rare disease affecting a few gay men to a worldwide epidemic." Fascinated by this medical fact, Gladwell found himself wondering whether it also applied to the social world. That is, is there some specific point at which a fad becomes a fashion frenzy? When delinquency and mischief turn into a crime wave? When repetition leads to understanding?

The Tipping Point is the result of Gladwell's effort to understand why some ideas catch on and spread like wildfire, while others fail to attract widespread attention and wither on the vine. Drawing on work in psychology, sociology, and epidemiology, Gladwell examines events as diverse as Paul Revere's ride, the success of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, and the precipitous decline of the crime rate in New York City, which is discussed in "The Power of Context," the chapter included here. Working across these wide-ranging examples, Gladwell develops an all-encompassing model for how cultural change occurs, a model that highlights the influential role that context plays in shaping and guiding human acts and intentions.

Gladwell was born in 1963 in England and grew up in Canada. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in history in 1984. Currently the Critic at Large for the New Yorker, Gladwell sees himself as "a kind of translator between the academic and non-academic worlds. There's just all sorts of fantastic stuff out there, but there's not nearly enough time and attention paid to that act of translation. Most people leave college in their early twenties, and that ends their exposure to the academic world. To me that's a tragedy."

Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime," The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000) 133-168.
Digital image drawn from the PBS web site.
Quotations and biographical information drawn from the Author Q & A on gladwell.com and Malcolm Gladwell, interview by Toby Lester in the Atlantic Unbound (subscriber-only access).

Links to Explore:

Gladwell.com: Malcolm Gladwell's own web site, includes links to his other publications and to a Q and A session with the author.

"The Merchants of Cool:" A Frontline interview with Malcolm Gladwell: a discussion of efforts to define and market "coolness" to young people.

"When Clothes Make the Suspect: Portraits in Racial Profiling:" March 2000 article by Peter Noel discussing the connection between clothing and racial profiling in New York City.

"Academic Practices, School Culture, and Cheating Behavior:" research paper by Gary Neils exploring the reasons students cheat.

Questions for Learning:

• With Gladwell's arguments about "the tipping point" in mind, evaluate Gladwell.com. Obviously, any author wants his or her book to succeed and "spread like an epidemic." Does Gladwell's site do anything, big or small, to advance such a project?
  
  
• In "The Merchants of Cool," Gladwell discusses the rise of teen culture and subsequent efforts to market "cool" to these new consumers. If "social epidemics" of this sort are all but impossible to predict or create, what is gained from studying them? What's the difference between Gladwell's theory of "tipping points" and saying that things happen for no apparent reason?
  
  
• "When Clothes Make the Suspect: Portraits in Racial Profiling" provides an alternative explanation for the remarkable success the New York City police department has had in reducing crime over the past decade. Is racial profiling something that has a "tipping point"? Can Gladwell's theory of "the power of context" explain the emergence of racial profiling? Does his theory provide the basis for excusing such behavior? How do you distinguish between explaining and excusing?
  
  
• Gary Neils concludes his study of student cheating, "Academic Practices, School Culture, and Cheating Behavior," with the call for extended required course work in ethics. Given Gladwell's argument about the power of context, do you think it is likely that additional ethical training would reduce the amount of cheating that routinely goes on in school? Can ethics help one to redefine one's own context?

Questions for Connecting:

• "Down with Dualism" concludes with Frans de Waal's assertion "that distress at the sight of another's pain is an impulse over which we exert no control." Is compassion an intrinsic part of humans, or is it subject to the "power of context" that Gladwell has described? Does Gladwell's discussion of human character reinforce de Waal's argument about human evolution, or does it call that argument into question? Does sensitivity to context have any necessary selective value for the evolution of the species?

For additional connecting suggestions, please go to assignments and more assignments.

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