To understand the most important characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities.

The statement above asserts that to understand the top important characteristics of a society one must analyze its major cities. I generally disagree with such an assertion. To have a comprehensive understanding about characteristics of such a society, we must study samples from major cities, small cities, and rural parts and not to confine ourselves only to major cities.

To begin with, what characterizes a society as big as a nation, should be overarching enough to cover the whole society. In some respects major cities can be a representative of whole society. Major cities are consisted of people who either are local citizens or are immigrants from other parts. Such mixture in major cities can provide us a good sample of the whole society in certain respects. For example, regarding the deep rooted cultural characteristics, the study of major cities might suffice. In Iran, one can go to the Tehran and tell about the permanent cultural characteristics of Iranian society. The cultural theme is religious, although its intensity might be different throughout the nation, but Islam is the dominant religious characteristic among Iranians that with study of major cities, it could be understood.

However, when it comes to other respects such as welfare and economy, major cities can be misleading examples and we make mistake to extend them to a whole society. Major cities receive the big share from national budget while the other parts might suffer from low economy. Consider Pyongyang, the major city and the capital of the North Korea. In such a communist country, when a tourist goes to the capital might find there a decent ruling system that everything is provided for every one and people are content about their lives with the facilities provided there. But, beyond the boundaries of such a city, poverty exist and people are suffering so much from lack of facilities to save the day. Therefore Major cities alone can mislead the conclusion of a study and one should include samples from variety of cities and communities.

Finally, National characteristics of a society can better be understood in small cities because of lesser being exposed to globalization. Modernity and impacts of globalization made the people’s home to take distances form their national situation and become westernized. For example, kitchen in Iranian culture is regarded as a private place that should be out of seen of a guest. Now in major cities kitchens are open and there is no separate room any more to confine kitchens. Hence to perceive the national characteristics it might be misleading to only consider the major cities while national characteristics are more preserved in small cities and rural parts.

In sum, depending on which characteristics we are examining, whether they are cultural characteristic, national or economical characteristics, the primacy of the study of major cities is different. While in cultural characteristics major cities can represent a whole nation, it is in smaller parts that national characteristics of a nation is more observable. After all, to have a deep understanding of characteristics of a nation we should study and take samples from major cities, small cities and rural parts and not to confine ourselves only to major cities.