Synopses & Reviews
The Stone Soup Experiment is a remarkable story of cultural difference, of in-groups, out-groups, and how quickly and strongly the lines between them are drawn. It is also a story about simulation and reality, and how quickly the lines between them can be dismantled. In a compulsively readable account, Deborah Downing Wilson details a ten-week project in which forty university students were split into two different simulated cultures: the carefree Stoners, and the market-driven Traders. Through their eyes we are granted intimate access to the very foundations of human society: how group identities are formed and what happens when opposing ones come into contact.
The experience of the Stoners and Traders is a profound testament to human sociality. Even in the form of simulation, even as a game, the participants found themselves quickly—and with real conviction—bound to the ideologies and practices of their in-group. The Stoners enjoyed their days lounging, chatting, and making crafts, while the Traders—through a complex market of playing cards—competed for the highest bankrolls. When they came into contact, misunderstanding, competition, and even manipulation prevailed, to the point that each group became so convinced of its own superiority that even after the simulation’s end the students could not reconcile.
Throughout her riveting narrative, Downing Wilson interweaves fascinating discussions on the importance of play, emotions, and intergroup interaction in the formation and maintenance of group identities, as well as on the dynamic social processes at work when different cultural groups interact. A fascinating account of social experimentation, the book paints a vivid portrait of our deepest social tendencies and the powers they have over how we make friends and enemies alike.
Review
“Alas, we cannot re-create the original state of nature as envisioned by Rousseau or Hobbes. But in this fascinating and surprising book, Downing Wilson provides vital clues about the evolution of different human cultures.”
Review
“The Stone Soup Experiment is a highly engaging, theoretically sound, and original book that reads as swiftly and seamlessly as a novel. This narrative quality does not subtract from its scholarly merit, however. It weaves cultural theory and scholarly literature to offer new insights about cultural formation in small groups and, importantly, new insights about teaching about culture, which opens its audience up to anyone who teaches about cultural diversity, multiculturalism, cultural communication, or any related subjects.”
Review
“This is the most important controlled study of how groups construct themselves through confrontation since Sherif and Sherif wrote about the Robbers Cave experiment a half century ago. It is beautifully documented and written, a fast-paced ethnographic account with lessons for everyone from cognitive scientists to international relations scholars.”
Synopsis
Wholly revised to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Barnga is the classic simulation game for exploring communication challenges across cultures. While playing Barnga, participants experience the shock of realizing that despite their good intentions and the many similarities amongst themselves, people interpret things differently from in profoundly important ways, especially people from differing cultures. Players learn that they must understand and reconcile these differences if they want to function effectively in a cross-cultural group.
The -game- is deceptively simple: participants, broken up into several small groups, play a simple card, never knowing that each group has been given a subtly different set of rules to play by, nor that those rules will change yet again as the game develops and groups of players are reconfigured. Conflicts quickly begin to occur as players move from group to group, simulating real cross-cultural encounters, where people initially believe they share the same understanding of the basic rules and learn to their dismay and confusion that they do not.
In discovering that the rules are different, players undergo a mini culture shock similar to actual experience when entering a different culture. They then must struggle to understand and reconcile these differences to play the game effectively in their -cross-cultural- groups. Difficulties are magnified by the fact that players may not speak to each other but can communicate only through gestures or pictures. In struggling to understand why other players don't seem to be playing correctly, and with the aid of the facilitator, participants gain insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural encounters.
Synopsis
"Quite simply, Thiagi is the most prolific and creative designer of games and simulations in the world." - Glenn Parker, author of Cross-Functional Teams and Team Players and TeamworkWholly revised to celebrate its 25th anniversary,
Barnga is the classic simulation game for exploring communication challenges across cultures. While playing
Barnga, participants experience the shock of realizing that despite their good intentions and the many similarities amongst themselves, people interpret things differently, one from the other, in profoundly important ways, especially people from differing cultures. Players learn that they must understand and reconcile these differences if they want to function effectively in a cross-cultural group.
The "game" is deceptively simple: participants, broken up into several small groups, play a simple card, never knowing that each group has been given a subtly different set of rules to play by, nor that those rules will change yet again as the game develops and groups of players are reconfigured. Conflicts quickly begin to occur as players move from group to group, simulating real cross-cultural encounters, where people initially believe they share the same understanding of the basic rules and learn to their dismay and confusion that they do not.
In discovering that the rules are different, players undergo a mini culture shock similar to actual experience when entering a different culture. They then must struggle to understand and reconcile these differences to play the game effectively in their "cross-cultural" groups. Difficulties are magnified by the fact that players may not speak to each other but can communicate only through gestures or pictures. In struggling to understand why other players don't seem to be playing correctly, and with the aid of the facilitator, participants gain insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural encounters.
Participant instructions are provided in French, German, and Spanish as well as English.
The 25th anniversary edition of Barnga introduces new features:
- Now, as few as 2 and as many as 40 people can play
- Revised, play-tested rules provide optimal jolt to players.
- Improved game design helps those with limited experience playing card games.
- Partnership play enables players to comprehend the impact of peer support.
- Different tournament formats raise new types of communication challenges.
- For trainers - an expanded debriefing section that takes less than an hour.
Synopsis
Help your employees understand what unites them together.and what makes them unique BARNGA is the classic simulation game on cultural clashes. Participants experience the shock of realizing that despite their good intentions and the many similarities among them, people interpret things differently from one another in profound ways, especially people from differing cultures. Players learn that they must understand and reconcile these differences if they want to function effectively in a cross-cultural group.Revised and expanded for its 25th anniversary, BARNGA's new features and enhancements include: * New rules allow for games with as few as two players. * Partnership play permitted, enabling reflection on the impact of moral support from others. * Redesigned handouts reinforce the idea that everyone is playing by the same rules. * Different tournament formats raise new types of communication problems. * Expanded debriefing section.BARNGA is an ingenious way for people to learn more about the cultures of those with whom they work-and maybe even a little about their own.
Synopsis
BARNGA is an ingenious way for people to learn about the cultures of those with whom they work and play.
Synopsis
Barnga is a classic simulation game that focuses on cultural clashes. Players learn how to reconcile differences and become more self-aware in order to avoid miscommunications. This updated anniversary edition features new rules to allow for as few as two players, redesigned handouts, new tournament formats, and an expanded debriefing section.
Synopsis
The Stone Soup Experiment tells the often surprising story of a cultural simulation game the author entered into with a class of undergraduate psychology students in the spring of 2008. It was part of a participatory science investigation designed to shed light on the ways culture emerges in newly-forming groups and the ways common understandings are developed among potential group members. As a researcher, Downing Wilson hoped to see evidence of the students identification with their groups, the invention and elaboration of cultural conventions and materials, as well as the borrowing and adaptation of cultural products from other groups when they came into contact with each other. Despite her knowledge from the relevant literature, the author was surprised by the strong emotional investments demonstrated by all of those involved, by the almost immediate formation of well-defined in-group vs. out-group boundaries, by the complexity and intensity of the negotiations that took place when these boundaries were breached, and by the sustained identification with the natal” group long after the simulation phase of the investigation was over. As she says in her introduction, I was completely unprepared for the stealing, cheating, lying, conspiracy, and betrayal that sent the project careening in entirely unexpected ways, and I certainly did not expect to be consumed by the group competition in a way that distorted my perspective and made impartial analyses impossible.” Even at the end of the class when the simulation was finished, the authors efforts at reconciliation further polarized the groups and the group leaders alike. If they learned nothing else, they are all now certain that they did indeed create two distinct cultural groups, and that cultural boundaries are far easier to construct and fortify than they are to negotiate or tear down.
About the Author
Deborah Downing Wilson is an instructor in the department of communication at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Romantic Classroom
1. The Inception
2. First Encounters, First Crimes
3. The Justification
4. The Unreconciliation
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index