Exam 7: Synthesizing Sources

Write a statement that effectively synthesizes the information in each set of three excerpts.You can create a persuasive synthesis statement if you wish, but it is probably easier to come up with an informative one. a.Scientists seem to think that simply telling people about various threats to the environment will induce people to change their behavior .But so far at least, that hasn't been the case.Real change hasn't occurred because people generally have one or all three of these reasons for thinking that future threats to the environment are over-rated.It's all so far away .Many people believe that the environment may be in danger, but they are convinced that the threat is a distant one.The danger will confront their great grandchildren, not by their immediate family.One person can't do anything. Faced with the enormity of problems like pollution and global warming, many people feel that one person's refusing to use plastic bottles is just a drop in the bucket that accomplishes nothing. Technology is going to solve the problem soon.There isn't much evidence for this belief.But it's comforting.Thus, people repeat it without doing any research to see if it's true. b.In the United States and other industrialized countries, many consumers are making "green" choices in their behavior and purchases that reflect concern for the environment. In some cases, these choices carry a price tag, such as paying more for organically grown food or for clothing made from organic cotton. Consumers are also motivated to make green purchases that save money.For example , after gas prices topped 4$ a gallon in 2008, sales of gas guzzling SUVs dropped, and sales of more fuel-efficient cars, such as hybrids, increased.Consumers often consider their utility bill when they choose energy-efficient appliances and electrical equipment. (Linda Mooney et al.Understanding Social Problems , 8 e © Cengage Learning All Rights Reserved, p.428.) c. Students in New York City high schools can now apply for the Dr.Wangari Maathai Award for Civic Participation in Sustainability, established in honor of Dr.Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize (2004). Dr.Maatha, who died in 2011, was also the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which raised funds to plant trees throughout Kenya, thereby preventing soil erosion and improving the lives of poor communities. The award, sponsored by the Bette Midler Family Trust, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, is awarded to two students who show the greatest commitment to preserving and caring for the environment, both through their work in school and through volunteer  activities.The prize money, which is $10,000, is to be used by the students to support them in their first year of college.Through the award, those institutions financing it mean to commemorate the life of Dr.Maathai, who dedicated herself to preserving both the environment and the poorest people in it.Dr.Maathai was particularly focused on improving the lives of women, whose agricultural efforts she wished to support and strengthen by making the soil less susceptible to erosion,  while paying them to plant more than 30 million trees.

Write a statement that effectively synthesizes the information in each set of three excerpts.You can create a persuasive synthesis statement if you wish, but it is probably easier to come up with an informative one. a .In 1994, South African photographer Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.The photograph was taken in the Sudan and showed a little boy kneeling on the ground with his head bowed in his hands.He is wearing a bracelet that says "T3," meaning he has been identified as in need of treatment for severe malnutrition.A vulture stands not three feet away from the boy, whose severe malnutrition is revealed in the line of ribs that show through his skin.It's a powerful and disturbing picture, and one can see why it got a Pulitzer.But Carter got more than admiration for his prize.He got attacked from all sides for exploiting the suffering and misery of the little boy he photographed.As one man wrote in a letter to the editor of the St.Petersburg Times , "The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene." b .Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother As iconic photographs go, Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" may be the most famous photograph to come out of the Great Depression.For many, Florence Owens Thompson, the woman in the photo, is the face of the Great Depression, thanks to legendary photojournalist Dorothea Lange, who captured the image while visiting a dusty California pea-pickers' camp in February 1936.Although the story goes that Lange just snapped the photo without much forethought, most photo historians suggest that a certain amount of planning went into posing the work-worn woman with her two children hanging on her, face turned away from the camera.In the photo, the woman is the antithesis of more familiar pictures of maternity, showing a happy mother with two plump children unafraid to look at the artist.Just 32 years old when Lange photographed her, Thompson looked to be in her mid-forties and was a mother of seven.Stranded at a migratory labor farm in Nipomo, California after her husband died of tuberculosis, Thompson and her family avoided starvation by trapping wild birds and eating rotting vegetables taken from a nearby field.As it was meant to, the photo caught every line of Thompson's thin, drawn face.It suggested all the misery associated with life in America's migrant labor camps. Reproduced in newspapers across the country, Thompson's haunted face caused a huge and sympathetic public cry of public outrage, which had the desired effect: The Federal Resettlement Administration sent food and supplies to the camp where Thompson had been living. Unfortunately, mother and family had  already moved on.They did not get a mouthful of the food that was delivered to the camp.In fact, no one knew the identity of the photographed woman until Thompson revealed herself years later in a 1976 newspaper article. c.Photographs of a Tragedy: Compassion or Exploitation? When an earthquake crumbled Haiti in 2010, photographs of the destruction and death were front-page news. The New York Times , in particular, displayed photos that were both heartbreaking and harrowing.*  One such photo showed a woman walking along a street, her eyes glazed with shock. Clearly visible in the background,  corpses  lay sprawled in the street. Other pictures were even more distressing, so much so that the Times received numerous letters calling the photos a gross exploitation * of human suffering.Some readers were so offended that Clark Hoyt, the Times public editor, acting as the liaison * between the paper and the public, ran a column titled "Face to Face with Tragedy." In it, he expressed the sentiments of people like Chicago's Christa Robbins who said, "I feel that the people who have suffered the most are being spectacularized by your blood-and-gore photographs…." Hoyt's response was to publish the statements of others who supported the paper's publication of the photos.In a letter to the Times defending the photos, Mary Claire Carroll asked, "How else can you motivate or inspire someone like me to donate money?" Hoyt also quoted several photographers who insisted that victims of the quake had implored them to come into their homes to photograph what the quake had done to their lives. * harrowing:  painful to experience. * exploitation:  using others to benefit one's self. * liaison: contact who  maintains communication between two different groups, also a close relationship.