Essay on Urban Experience in Chicago: Jane Addams

Most people possess good intention and are equipped with a particular understanding of the city life which could be made a most treasured social instrument. Most people are left to seek out in the bewilderment of the streets so that they can have their means of self-expression. In many attempts, people have believed that the cities are a place where different people of different ethnic, political, religion and social background meet to better their lives and that of others. Jane Addams, however, paints out a different picture with her understanding and experience of life.

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Jane Addams was a known activist and also a prolific writer in the American Pragmatist tradition. As much as she was an activist, she was also a keen attuned social theorist who was more acquitted to city lives like Chicago and was a respondent to a variety of community needs (Addams, 2011). Addams saw the value of diversity and suggested that when cultural heritage is brought into the United States, Immigrants will keep America from becoming static. Her understanding was that the immigrants benefitted from the engagement in the cultural heritage that occurred in America.

She believed in the power of cooperative intelligence so as to find the common cause of the diversity. She contended that cosmopolitan cities are a model for the international peace. She was not romanticizing the conflicts between groups that occurs in the city, but she was instead drawing diverse experiences of people from the different cultural diversity (Addams, 2011). Her experience in the towns made her view it as a place where working relationships helped each other to survive the challenges that urban life had to offer.

Her experience to city life and immigrants can be seen in action as she helped a community to set up an immigrant neighborhood. She believed that cities were a site of cultural exchange and enrichment. The people who settled in that neighborhood were from the middle and upper classes families who wanted to do more and improve the lives of those who were underneath them (Addams, 2011). By establishing a Hull House, her actions stipulated that she believed in cultural diversity and the city of Chicago to her was that place to offer the immigrant an opportunity to grow and enrich themselves.

The Hull House she established became successful to the point that it attracted a lot of wealthy families regardless their ethnicity and religion (Addams, 2011). They were able to donate money for new buildings and also programs that enabled different activities to take place. The area around Hull House has many different ethnic groups who needed to adjust and improve their lives.

Jane Addams ideas and view are more clear and worth to be supported. She not only believed in the minority but also acted out to extend her help since she was aware that in the city, no matter the religion or ethnicity, one would find enrichment given the necessary help (Addams, 2011). She was able to inspire people from the diverse community about pluralism and multiculturalism whereby she used her experience in the city of Chicago and her wealthy status to prove how she felt. She was able to ameliorate the sharp division in the industrial cities and allow people to coexist with one another by helping each other.

References

Addams, J. (2011). Urban Experience In Chicago: Jane Addams: The Woman Question and Feminism. Hullhouse.uic.edu. Retrieved 1 March 2017, from http://hullhouse.uic.edu/hull/urbanexp/main.cgi?file=new/show_doc.ptt&doc=636&chap=87