소셜네트워킹은 사회적 병폐를 치유할 수 있는가?

소셜네트워킹은 사회적 병폐를 치유할 수 있는가?(Can Social Networking Cure Social Ills?) 뉴욕타임스 2011년 5월 20일자 인터넷판, 제프리 삭스의 서평 기사 제목이다. 퓰리처 상을 수상한 바 있는 언론인 티나 로젠버그(Tina Rosenberg)의 새로운 저서 <모임에 참여하라(Join the Club)>에 대한 서평.

-Man, Aristotle said, is by nature a social animal.
-(This book) examines the idea that human behavior is defined by our relationships with our acquaintances.
-Human beings interact in several different ways — in the marketplace, in the struggle for political power and as peers in the community. Our market relations are dominated by the quest for profit and consumer satisfaction; our political relations are dominated by the competition for power; and our peer relations are dominated by the search for status, identity and acceptance by others. Rosenberg argues that the third kind of relationship, the search for status and peer approval, is the most powerful motivator of our personal behavior and that it can be employed to remedy social ills. She calls on us to “reimagine social change . . . based on the most powerful of human motivations: our longing for connection with one another.”
-Her examples are often impressive. In Jamkhed, an impoverished district in western India, the training of women to become community health workers broke down the normally high barriers between Indian castes. The low-caste women, Rosenberg notes, “acquire their new self-image in part through their new role in the village, the satisfaction of helping their neighbors and the respect they have earned from the villagers. As a result of the knowledge and skills of the Jamkhed women, the villages change.”