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
Exploring Culture brings Geert Hofstede's five dimensions of national culture to life. Gert Jan Hofstede and his co-authors Paul Pedersen and Geert Hofstede introduce synthetic cultures, the ten -pure- cultural types derived from the extremes of the five dimensions. The result is a playful book of practice that is firmly rooted in theory.
Part light, part serious, but always thought-provoking, this unique book approaches training through the three-part process of building awareness, knowledge, and skills. It leads the reader through the first two components with more than 75 activities, dialogues, stories, and incidents. The Synthetic Culture Laboratory and two full simulations fulfill the skill-building component.
Exploring Culture is suitable for students, trainers, coaches and educators. It can be used for individual study or as a text, and it serves as an excellent partner to Geert Hofstede's popular Cultures and Organizations.
Synopsis
A masterpiece in intercultural training Exploring Culture brings Geert Hofstede's five dimensions of national culture to life. Gert Jan Hofstede and his co-authors Paul Pedersen and Geert Hofstede introduce synthetic cultures, the ten "pure" cultural types derived from the extremes of the five dimensions. The result is a playful book of practice that is firmly rooted in theory.
Part light, part serious, but always thought-provoking, this unique book approaches training through the three-part process of building awareness, knowledge, and skills. It leads the reader through the first two components with more than 75 activities, dialogues, stories, and incidents. The Synthetic Culture Laboratory and two full simulations fulfill the skill-building component.
Exploring Culture is suitable for students, trainers, coaches and educators. It can be used for individual study or as a text, and it serves as an excellent partner to Geert Hofstede's popular Cultures and Organizations.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-231) and index.
Synopsis
Exploring Culture: Exercises, Stories and Synthetic Cultures truly brings Geert Hofstede's five dimensions of national culture to life.This unique training book contains an abundance of exercises, dialogues, stories and simulations that put the five dimensions of culture (power distance, collectivism versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long term versus short term orientation) into action. Derived from these five dimensions are what Hofstede calls synthetic cultures: ten pure cultural types.Exploring Culture is arranged to follow the classic culture learning sequence of gaining awareness, knowledge and skills. Part light, part serious, but always thought-provoking, the book provides more than seventy-five activities, dialogues and stories for readers to explore and discuss. Exploring Culture is an outstanding resource for trainers and educators and the perfect complement to Hofstede's popular Cultures and Organizations.ContentsForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPar I: Stories and Exercises1 Worlds Apart in One Village2 Culture: The Rules of the Social GamePart II: Synthetic Cultures3 The Ten Synthetic Culture Profiles4 Getting to Know the Synthetic Cultures5 Dialogues in Synthetic Culture Role6 Summing UpPart III: Group Work and Similuations7 Group Work for Cross-Cultural Learning8 Using Synthetic Cultures in Simulations9 The Trade Mission10 Follow-the-Sun Global Technology TeamReferencesIndex
Synopsis
Provides more than seventy-five activities, dialogues and stories. An outstanding resource for trainers and educators.
Synopsis
A guidebook book to Hofstede's five dimensions of culture (power distance, collectivism versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long term versus short term orientation) and derivative synthetic cultures. It provides more than 75 exercises, dialogues, stories and simulations for trainers, educators, and students.
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