Like his previous efforts, Blink and The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, is an entertaining read, with a serious point. It’s a straightforward one too – when you see something that looks like an outlier, such as extraordinary individual success (Bill Gates), or catastrophic and inexplicable disaster (various air crashes), if you look hard enough, you will see that it is the outcome of a particular pattern of events. In particular, individuals may seem to have achieved success and fortune through their own singular and astonishing efforts, but in reality, their success is enabled by the circumstances they encounter as much as by their own hard work. Check out the New York Times review if you want more detail on the book and its message. It’s a fair review, and for my own part, should you happen to come across a copy of the book, and you’re looking for some engaging, enjoyable, non-fiction holiday reading, then you could do worse than spending a few hours on it.
But it’s not perfect, and I don’t think it’s even all that original. Gladwell’s message – “Background matters, background matters, background matters” – sounds awfully like privilege to me, a topic well rehearsed in feminist and anti-racist and GLBTI and PWD circles. (I’m white, able-bodied and straight, so my apologies – up-front – if I’m not getting some of those terms right. Add a comment or send me a message to let me know.) There’s a whole great mass of material on privilege, and analytic discussion of it and the way it is constructed. It’s a shame that Gladwell didn’t even acknowledge the idea of privilege, or use it to unpack some of the empirical data he deploys.
And then there’s the surprising gap in his analysis. In one section, Gladwell gives a list of the 75 richest people ever, calculated in current USD. From that list, he draws out what is to him the most astounding sub-group: of the 75, 14 are Americans born within 9 years of each other in the 19th century.
Well, yes, that is amazing. But in a book that is focused on how background really makes a difference, and arguing that circumstances can make all the difference, no matter how much hard work an individual puts in, to me it’s astonishing that Gladwell didn’t notice the other critical criterion for being wealthy. Of the 75 people on his list, 72 are male. Just three are female, and of those three, two inherited their wealth through position (Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I). In other words, if you want to be wealthy, it would be best if you could arrange to be born male. It’s almost certainly better if you are white, too, but the list of names isn’t race-marked (c/f gender marked).
In fact, women barely feature in Gladwell’s book at all, except as wives and mothers who provide suitable conditions for youthful achievement. He doesn’t stop to consider the extra barriers that might be placed in a girl’s way; as a teenage boy, Bill Gates was able to hang around the university and stay out late nights, programming, using public transport to get there and back. Do you think a teenage girl would have been allowed to do that?
Gladwell does have the great good grace to write about his family history, and in particular, about the grandmother who created the conditions to allow his mother to leave Jamaica and get a superb education at a top flight school and then at University College, London, creating the conditions for his own success. But it would be nice if he could have at least recognised the story that his own statistics tell him – if you want to succeed, outrageously, then your chances are much, much better if you are male.
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Many thanks to Mark et al for inviting me to continue posting at Larvatus Prodeo, following my brief stint of NZ election blogging earlier in 2008. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a Kiwi, currently living in Australia, for the second time. I hold citizenship in both countries. I also blog at The Hand Mirror, an NZ feminist team blog, and at my own place, In a strange land, which may or may not refer to Australia, or New Zealand, or contemporary society.
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race [is] not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men [sic] of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” Ecc 9.11
Does that fit, partly?
Its nice to have you back Deborah.
Good post Deborah, and to think I was all ready to nail my Gladwell-cynicism to the wall, when you did such a good job!
My problem with Gladwell – I don’t loathe him with the feverish intensity of some, but I do think he’s kind of the dumb person’s smart person – is that, essentially, he’s a marketer, and for all his cutesy, New Yorker weird, he belongs in marketing school, writing books for marketing people, the flaws of which he replicates in nearly every book he writes.
I also feel he represents an intellectual trend – I don’t know what you’d call it – typified by current mania for evolutionary psychology in all its guises that I find personally a little quaint, and a little tulip feverish.
Busting out the hermeneutical stylings; he’s a positivist, posing to be negativist. He’s work purports to ask questions, to deconstruct etc. etc. but really just confirms many of the cliches we like to think about. And as you’ve highlighted, his data is almost always ludicrously self-selecting, and he has a gift for papering over the complexities in the academic work he writes about for the sake of simplicity. No dice Malcolm.
As I say, I don’t think this is a cardinal sin, for marketing people (ha! Almost like saying ‘I don’t think it’s depraved, for necrophiliacs’!). And I don’t think he has really misrepresented himself; there are many others willing to do the job for him. But as some kind of perspicacious social seer, puh-lease. He’s like a hipster Bernard Salt. Or the people inventing words like Generation Y, or Metrosexual, and subsequent press releases, and people thinking they’re social scientists.
PS I love it: The ad that the keywords on this page make served up? An MBA. I rest my case!
That’s just coincidence, patrickg!
But yep, welcome back and neat post, Deborah!
Deborah, rather than reifying, and thus privileging, “wealth” as a social marker, how about ‘being a good mother’?
Do you think Gladwell’s reason for writing this book might be the almost maniacal devotion to the American dream of individual greatness can overcome adversity. Isn’t there a social movement in the United States to introduce universal health care. The New York school system under Joel Klein has become ghettos of streamed privilege. If you follow what Gladwell is saying you would want to build a school system that gives all schools equal opportunity
“He’s like a hipster Bernard Salt”
Ouch.
ooops I hadn’t read the whole post. Yes, background matters. Nothing like the catholic school educated equal opportunity officer exclaiming “You are the new computing lecturer!” Well pet, possession of a p#nis, has never been a prerequisite for programming proficiently. The girls at the local high school were also precluded from a computing future by the school’s insistence that boys had first choice of physics and girls could take the remaining places.
Individuals who are offered opportunities may be dragged back by familial expectations and strictures, for example girls from Italian and Greek backgrounds didn’t study nursing in the 1970s.
Women are often denied professional positions because the employer believes they should be mothers, or fears they will become mothers.
“He doesn’t stop to consider the extra barriers that might be placed in a girl’s way; as a teenage boy, Bill Gates was able to hang around the university and stay out late nights, programming, using public transport to get there and back. Do you think a teenage girl would have been allowed to do that?”
Well, this teenage girl used to certainly stay out late and use public transport to get home. Sadly, I didn’t put my time to such good use as Bill Gates, though.
More to the point, the hypothetical teenage girl probably wouldn’t have been able to get near the computer and would have been sent out to buy the beer. If Gladwell doesn’t include gender, then he’s missing a hell of a lot.
I was listening to Gladwell talk on Radio National this morning, and he discussed the Gates example. The “late at night” he referred to was more “early in the morning”. The teenage gates learned that the University of Washington had free computer time between 2 and 6 each morning, so he would set his alarm for 1:30, sneak out through his bedroom window, walk two miles to the University computer lab, and sit programming until 6 am.
Of course the hypothetical teenage girl would face a whole extra set of dangers alone on campus in the small hours of the morning – if she hadn’t already been discouraged from an interest in computers at an earlier stage in high school. I’m thinking as much of peer pressure as teacher discouragement here. (Gates got his first taste of computing at his high school, which was one of the few in the 60s to actually have computer access.)
More to the point, the hypothetical teenage girl probably wouldn’t have been able to get near the computer and would have been sent out to buy the beer.
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Well being one of the few people who saw a computer in his generation I don’t recall many girls being the least bit interested. I also don’t recall the boys who were being the type to give a girl commands; ones that’d be taken seriously anyway. Until recently nerds were not cool.
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But the point’s a fair one. Gladwell doesn’t include women in his book much, ‘cept his mother.
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It’s a shame that Gladwell didn’t even acknowledge the idea of privilege, or use it to unpack some of the empirical data he deploys.
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What makes this book interesting. as I commented yesterday elsewhere, is that it’s kind of a left-wing book written by a right-winger. Right-wingers usually concern themselves with individuals, left-wingers with the collective (that’s a generalization of course). Left-wing polemics on society, therefore, are more likely to focus on context, background, privileges or the lack thereof, then right-wingers.
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In my opinion the intellectual Left and Right suffer from a sort of tunnel vision that comes of doctrines determining their world-view. For example, ‘right-wing’ economists will probably be so focussed on government intervention as an explanation for economic snafus that it never occurs to ‘em that regulations might be the answer.
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I’ve often wondered if the right and left intelligentsia switched over and started considering matters traditionally ‘monopolized’ by the other side would they be able to break thru doctrinaire myopias and generate something new.
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Gladwell’s approach, regardless or maybe because of the usual left-wing consideration that attend the consideration of social contexts, I think, does so. Would a left-wing thinker have even considered the possibility of ethno-cultural habitus as Gladwell does in his consideration of ‘cultures of honour’. (As a Celt it makes an awful lot of sense). Anyway, the reforms implied by his work have the advantages of not being too much of a hassle to implement and very probably making some profound changes.
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Gladwell doesn’t go into gender bias. This is a fault I think. After all the sort of class-based impediments to success he considers are in abundance when it comes to girls being discouraged from fulfilling ambition.
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But I’m not entirely certain this is necessary to glean value from the work. After all a feminist researcher could very well use it as springboard to look into the dynamics of gender as applied to achievement. Given that a lot of barriers to women becoming wealthy are not structural as they were in the days when the ‘richest generation’ made their dosh the impediments to success for girls will probably be just the kind of casual, unconscious practices that Gladwell speaks of.
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Like for example, the girls I knew at school who were not into computers because the boys involved were skinny, pimply dorks.
In some ways he almost gets to a critique of privilege when he compares Oppenheimer as a the nice middle-class boy genius who knew how to negotiate his way to the top of the Manhattan Project, with the other bloke, whose name I forget, the guy from the broken home who never had the social tools to even negotiate undergraduate academia.
On the other hand he does offer a few counter-examples of bias against people turning to their advantage, e.g. the New York Jewish lawyers.
He does seem however to rather laterally ignore the true effects of privilege while obliquely mentioning it.
But he is after all, just a repackager of other people’s ideas.
T Rex – On the other hand he does offer a few counter-examples of bias against people turning to their advantage, e.g. the New York Jewish lawyers.
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Exactly.
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The normal heirarchies of privelege would blind a left wing scholar to the fact that often ‘privilege’ can be a disadvantage. In Tales From The Boom-Boom Room which goes into the troubles of women first entering the financial industry in NYC during the 80s, the disgusting obstacles they encountered and the fight they mounted against them, one thing is interesting. The male stockbrokers are hot shots concerned with setting records and competition. Frequently the highest earners on any given team are also those n the most trouble. Not just for sexual harrassment (altho’ there is that) but also for unethical behaviour viz their clients. These guys simply don’t care if they’re making bad investments as long as the firm and they get their commission. In fact in one firm this guy keeps a gun in his office in case of upset clients!
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In contrast many of the female stockbrokers were not as concerned at getting hotshot status. They wanted to build solid portfolios for their clients increasing their wealth. Now as an investor who would you rather go with? I wonder if the male domination of this industry might change because of this.
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He does seem however to rather laterally ignore the true effects of privilege while obliquely mentioning it.
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I don’t think that’s apt. All this discussion of his faults in not making constant reference to the inevitable hierarchies misses the point. He’s not looking to explicate the class sytem or the patriarchy or white hegemony. That’s been done. He’s looking at social relations and contexts for individuals. And he does it from a right wong perspective. Because of this he’s able to generate a fresh perspective. This ideologically motivated critique is trite.
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Reforms are implied by this work. For example let’s look at brainy kids from working class backgrounds and provide them the capacities to negotiate that Oppenheimer took for granted. Or let’s have three intakes per year instead of one thus no longer arbitrarily elinating athletic talent that had the bad fortune to be born at the wrong time. The reforms are simple, not hard nor expensive to implement and they could be profound.
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But he is after all, just a repackager of other people’s ideas.
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He’s a generalist. One who enages with specialist work and assembles the data therein to mount a polemic. I do this myself. It’s no mean skill to be able to access esoteric work and thinking and make them accesible and relavent to the generality.
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And it’s worth mentioning that he describes himself as a parasite. He also gives credit and, in his work, is humble. Oh that other writers would be as ethical. Or as useful.
No Adrien, he repackages other people’s ideas, and admits as much in interviews.
Oh … the NY Jewish lawyers where just lucky. On the other hand, Chris Langan, the disavantaged genius, was disadvantaged.
Well, yes, maybe that’s what he does. There’s a place for people who can communicate complex ideas to large audiences, and if he has the grace to admit that he’s just repackaging, then what’s the big deal?
The normal heirarchies of privilege would blind a left wing scholar to the fact that often ‘privilege’ can be a disadvantage.
I’m not at all comfortable with that sort of analysis – it’s too close to ‘but what about teh menz?’ It’s the word ‘often’ that’s doing me in. I’m happy to agree that privilege can sometimes mislead people, but really, do you think it would be called ‘privilege’ if most of the time, it didn’t work to the possessors’ advantage?
the NY Jewish lawyers where just lucky.
No… he makes it very clear that they also worked very, very hard indeed. That’s quite a strong theme in his book. It’s not that their achievements were due to luck, alone. Their hard work, in the right time and place, made for extraordinary achievements. Both circumstances and hard work created the outcome, not hard work alone.
T Rex – That’s what I said. Jay-sus what happened to literacy on this site?
And what Deborah said about luck. The Jewish lawyers from the sticks were willing and able to do things the Park Ave stiffos wouldn’t or couldn’t.
A lot of Oz soldiers survived WWI because they didn;t die of disease as much. Why? ‘Cause they could still squat whereas the Euroweenies had been drilled out of that. Sometimes it’s an advantage to be Convict Scum!
Deborah .. but what’s the difference between those Jewish lawyers and plenty of other hard-working stiffs – maybe other Jewish professionals from the same background? Luck. Right place right time. So they were lucky, compared to a million other people who “very very hard indeed”.
Adrien. Let us be specific and use an example from Gladwell. In western cultures, if you try to communicate and your meaning is misunderstood, it’s the fault of the speaker not the listener.
And your analysis of the situation of the lawyers is completely off the mark. They did their line of work because the prestigious lines of legal work (at the time they graduated) were denied them because of their Jewishness. Then they worked hard at alternative lines of work, like commercial litigate. Finally they were very lucky that commercial litigation suddenly became the hot item in legal work. They were already doing that work because they had little choice but to do it. This is deliberately contrasted by Gladwell with an earlier generation of failed Jewish lawyers, who didn’t get the right-time-right-place effect. If all it took was hard work and the willingness to do work no-one else would do, the earlier generation would have been successful too. But they were not. Difference? luck.
T Rex – it’s the fault of the speaker not the listener.
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Um not necessarily old bean. This rule of Western cultures of which you speak does not exist. You ‘disagreed’ with me by ‘rebutting’ what I said by saying the same thing. And you’ve just about done it again. Please explain how this:
Is substantially incompatible with this:
The WASPs wouldn’t do litigation, it was beneath them. They wouldn’t do aggressive mergers. And they wouldn’t hire Jews. So the Jews had to a. Start their own firms, that b. Did what the stiffos did not and c. When that became where the money was, they got rich.
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My ‘analysis’ is nothing of the kind. It’s a glib and simplified description.
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Yeah and right place, right time. Sure is important. Just ask the Rolling Stones.
Deborah – it’s too close to ‘but what about teh menz?’
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This is what I mean about ideological tunnel vision. I’m not arguing or even thinking that. But automatically it raises suspicion because of the mere possibility. Please understand I’m not having a go at you. It’s just that the usual groove of Left-Right debate has a tendency to place people in a box they might not belong in. As in Tim Blair and co’s little exercise in branding me a terrorist-sympathizing champion of moral relativism recently.
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The value of Gladwell’s book has (imho) nothing to do with its comprehensive overview of oppression or otherwise but that that it looks at sociological context as a significant factor in individual progress in a way that sidesteps the grand narratives of oppression and simply says well if you look at patterns you can see what the specific problems actually are. And even fix ‘em. Maybe.
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That said you’re right: ‘often’ doesn’t work. Privilege usually wins. I withdraw ‘often’.
It’s orthogonal, Adrien. Just because they were denied access to existing WASP firms doesn’t mean they had to be willing to do the things the other firms wouldn’t do. Also, they could have done other things the old firms wouldn’t do, as if there’s only two things a lawyer might do!
doesn’t mean they had to be willing to do the things the other firms wouldn’t do
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Except if they wanted to get paid, yeah?
Deborah
I’m happy to agree that privilege can sometimes mislead people,
Misled from what/whom towards what/whom?