...The Psychological Impact of Endangerment in Institutions The feeling of insecurity due to perceptions of endangerment in establishments like the Citadel has a range of effects on social cohesion. In the Citadel, an all boys military college, a social hierarchy exists that places the students into a particular rank. During the late twentieth century, feminists, or those who advocate equal rights and opportunities for women, started to gain recognition; One of these activists is Susan Faludi, who wrote for prestigious newspapers such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, became a national spokesperson for women’s right after appearing on the cover of Time magazine alongside Gloria Steinem (Faludi 72). Faludi, author of “The Naked Citadel”, sought to change the old-fashioned, man dominated society through her writing on pressing issues of gender and equality by going straight into the action with a first-person account on the the culture of the Citadel. In her report, it can be seen that the fight is not simply between those who are for admitting women and those who are against it, it is also an internal battle between the boys. Perceptions of being endangered may have a positive effect on unity in such institutions by creating common goals for them to achieve, to keep girls out and to fight against the disturbance of well-established and cherished traditions, but some customs, such as hazing may make students uncomfortable and anxious, may create a barrier against...
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...Dance within these walls, little male puppets. Google “The Citadel” and the images we are graced with are of young men, sharply dressed in Confederate grey, marching a perfect march. The Cadets are running with looks of joy, as they have earned the privilege of happiness. Arising like a mighty fortress from a pristine landscape of lush green are the huge buildings that will be school, home, purgatory, and one day a place worshipped by those that survive their years studying as cadets. Within the text of “The Naked Citadel”, author Susan Faludi introduces us to the lives of The Citadel cadets, teachers and staff; as well as an institution created under the mask of leadership and built upon a foundation of abuse, training, and indoctrination for the sake of “making men” (74). A visit to The Citadel website shows us that the birth of this college began in 1842. The making of these men had been the goal for well over a century, a goal that was forced to shift in 1995 when...
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...Christina Paskow Brook S. Edwards Writing II 10 November 2014 Leadership in Society Steven Johnson’s “The Myth of the Ant Queen” is broken down into 3 categories: the city of Manchester, emergence of the complexity theory, and as the title states, the myth of the ant queen. It opens with Deborah Gordon showing the author, Steven Johnson, the ant colonies and how they develop. Gordon’s work, “Focuses on the connections between the micro behavior of individual ants and the overall behavior of the colonies themselves, and part of that research involves tracking the life cycles of the individual colonies, following them year after year as they scour the desert floor for food, competing with other colonies for territory, and once a year they mate with them” (Johnson 193). She is a student, in other words of a particular kind of emergent, self-organizing system The queen of the ants is not as the name suggests, the queen of an ant colony has no political or authoritative significance in the colony. The queen of the ant colony lays eggs and is cared for by other ants, not the dictator of what the other ants do. What Gordon’s work suggests and then supports is that ants do not have a set authoritative figure, they are a self-organizing society. The ants have three main parts to their way of living: the midden which is the town dump, the cemetery, and the main colony. “Look at what actually happened here: they’ve built the cemetery at exactly the point that’s furthest away from...
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...is relational and constructed based on one’s own personal beliefs and values, as opposed to one’s fixed identity, which is based on characteristics and culture. Unfortunately, individuals let the unchangeable aspects of their identity limit them from creating their own unique identity. This can be due to societal views that expect an individual conform to the public image associated with his or her gender, race, and sexuality. “Losing Matt Shepard” by Beth Loffreda explores what she calls “The Limits of Identification”, and how these limits may have impacted the anti-gay murder of Matt Shepard. Similarly, “The Naked Citadel” by Susan Faludi could also be described as a text centrally concerned with the limits of identification, by exposing a connection between the image that men are expected to maintain by the general public and the behavior of the cadets in the Citadel. A community has the power to define an individual’s role based on gender, sexuality, or race, ultimately limiting his or her identity. The structure of every community is different, meaning that an individual’s role will differ and he or she learns this through experiences or traditions. However, these limits can lead to identity crises once individuals realize that societal views had been shaping their identity rather than discovering their own beliefs and core values. This raises the question as to...
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...The Naked Citadel reveals a life, hidden behind the walls of a Men's world. This essay is a revelation of the relations between men as men, as humans and as fighters. These are the three major aspects of the life behind the walls of the Citadel, the manly world. Susan Faludi paints a beautiful picture of this world and the interrelations within its boundaries by putting a woman in the center of her story. Another major aspect of the essay is the tradition as a social value and as a limit. The essay gives an excellent example of how, sometimes, especially in the past centuries, traditions shaped people's life and narrowed the scope of people's dreams. It also shows how difficult it is to change traditions. The Citadel is a public military college established in 1822. It is a high-ranking institution with well-established traditions. All of the cadets are men, because army is, or used to be only men's universe, and not just men's universe, but the strongest and most brave men's universe. The academy is an institution in which men looking to serve their country and be given a top rate education seek interest. It is a place where young man are taught how to act and communicate like man, how to be prepared to the real world and face difficulties-"To bravely face difficulties, not to complain, and not to give up are some of the rules in Citadel's code. In the Citadel a boy is remolded "into the whole man with his identity "stripped . A place where young men go to grow and...
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...This theory similarly applies to societies or a group of people. In order to change an attitude of society, a new idea brought about from an individual is slowly established through degrees of acceptance. While the idea might not have been fully realized, society will slowly adapt and demonstrate mindsets that will ultimately lead to a complete change. In both Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel” and Gladwell’s “The Power of Context”, a certain change is shown both to be resisted and slowly accepted by two societies. In Faludi’s essay, while a woman was being opposed to join the conservative military school, at the same time females were already a huge part of the institution: “From the moment I stepped onto the school’s campus, I had been struck by an unexpected circumstance…the Citadel was by no means free of women” (Faludi 74). The school unknowingly was already reaching closer to adapting the change Shannon Faulkner, the woman who was uprooting the old foundations of the Citadel, was bringing to the military school. Even though the Citadel established that the school was meant for men and for men only, in reality the school did not completely follow its rules by ultimately mixing men and women. Likewise, a similar situation was occurring in the crime-filled city of New York as demonstrated in Gladwell’s essay, “The Power of Context”. In his essay, even though the criminals still demonstrated their corruption throughout the city, they were quickly...
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...Hefei Sun Professor Dawn Lilley 101: Expository Writing Paper2 1st draft Feb 23th 2015 Shaping and Adapting Certain environments have the capacity of impacting one’s behavior and shaping one’s characteristic and worldview. We unconsciously conclude the theory that one’s behavior is caused by the personal background, conviction or the inherited gene. However, the surrounding environment, which we always neglect, plays a significant part of causing and forming one’s behavior. Susan Faludi, the author of “The Naked Citadel”, introduces an all-male military college called “The Citadel”. This “big bad macho school” adores the masculinity and the fourth-class system which devotes to turn the knobs to the whole man by bearing the abuse and hazing. This school is strict and orderly but has serious sex and racial discrimination which is so spread that even the administration and committee condones it. The violence and hierarchy system can be partially explained by Gladwell theories. In “The Power of Context : Bermic Goets and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime”, Malcolm Gladwell examines the factors that shape people’s behavior and then comes up with his ideas. He argues the Power of Context Theory that context has much more impact on the behavior than we thought. According to the Broken Window Theory, people could solve the problems by changing little things in the environment. He also illustrates the “situational” view that in some specific situation, what matters more...
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