Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
in Teaching
Anthropology
SIXTH EDITION
edited by
Patricia C. Rice
West Virginia University
David W. McCurdy
Macalester College
Scott A. Lukas
Lake Tahoe Community College
ISBN
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contributors
vi
Editors Preface
vii
ix
xv
xvii
Part 1: General
Listening to Each Other: Quote Cards (Peter Wogan)
14
58
9 11
12 13
The use of Essays: Developing Critical Thinking Skills Outside of the Classroom to
Promote a Long-Term Understanding of Anthropological Terminology
(Jessica Einhorn)
14 18
Part II: Archaeology
The Artifact Game: A Warm-Up Exercise For Archaeology (Lynne Miller)
19 20
21 26
27 34
35 39
40 42
43 51
52 55
iii
Using Star Trek to Explore Human Origin Models and Human Variation
(Daryl G. Frazetti)
57 60
61 67
68 71
Slurpee , Silly Putty , and the Lego Killer: The Anatomy of a Crime Scene
(Keith P. Jacobi)
TM
TM
TM
72 76
77 81
82 86
87 90
91 95
Opening Up Mic Night: Using Karaoke to Teach Gender (Andrea Freidus and
Linda Whiteford)
96 99
100 103
104 109
110 113
Tracking Scripts: Mothers Little Helper and the Value of Old Anthropology
(Michael Oldani)
114 118
Demonstrating Balanced Reciprocity and Fairness (Alexander H. Bolyanatz)
119 123
124 129
130 133
134 136
iv
Stratified Monopoly and Social Inequality (Deb Rotman and Mona Danner)
Teaching Authenticity (Scott A. Lukas)
137 144
145 148
Like a Fish in Water: Helping Students Identify the Role of Culture in Their Lives
(Amy Hirshman)
149 152
Dobe Ju/Hoansi Kinship and Marriage Game (Eric Thompson)
153 164
165 169
170 178
CONTRIBUTORS
Lori Barkley (Selkirk College) LBarkley@selkirk.ca
Jane Eva Baxter (De Paul U) JBAXTER@depaul.edu
Keith V. Bletzer (Arizona State U) keith.bletzer@asu.edu
Alexander H. Bolyanatz (College of DuPage) bolyanat@cod.edu
Pete Brown (U Wisconsin Oshkosh) brownp@uwosh.edu
Mark Cohen (SUNY Plattsburgh) cohenmn@plattsburgh.edu
Lorenzo Covarrubias (St. Louis University) covarrl@hotmail.com
Karen Dalke (U Wisconsin Green Bay) dalkek@uwgb.edu
Mona Danner (Old Dominion U) mdanner@odu.edu
Jessica Einhorn (Caada College) einhornj@smccd.edu
James L. Fitzsimmons (Middlebury College) jfitzsim@middlebury.edu
Robert Fletcher (University For Peace) rfletcher@upeace.org
Daryl G. Frazetti (Lake Tahoe CC) Frazetti@ltcc.edu
Andrea Freidus (Michigan State U) andreafreidus@hotmail.com
Robert Bates Graber (Truman State U) rgraber@truman.edu
Joyce D. Hammond (Western Washington U) Joyce.Hammond@wwu.edu
Amy J. Hirshman (West Virginia University) Amy.Hirshman@mail.wvu.edu
Keith P. Jacobi (U Alabama) kjacobi@as.ua.edu
Margaret A. Karnyski (U South Florida) mkarnyski@mail.usf.edu
Barbara J. King (William and Mary College) bjking@wm.edu
Scott A. Lukas (Lake Tahoe CC) Lukas@ltcc.edu
David W. McCurdy (Macalester College) dcmccurdy@comcast.net
Lynne Miller (MiraCosta College) Lmiller@miracosta.edu
Mark Moritz (Ohio State U) mark.moritz@gmail.com
Michael Oldani (U Wisconsin Whitewater) oldani@uww.edu
Anastasia Panagakos (Cosumnes River College) panagaa@crc.losrios.edu
Amanda Paskey (Cosumnes River College) wolcota@crc.losrios.edu
Patricia C. Rice (West Virginia University) pat.rice@mail.wvu.edu
Richard Robbins (SUNY Plattsburgh) robbinsr@westelcom.com
Deb Rotman (Notre Dame) drotman@nd.edu
Bruce M. Rowe (Los Angeles Pierce College) Anthrowe@aol.com
Goran trkalj (Macquarie U NSW) gstrkalj@els.mq.au
Eric Thompson (National U of Singapore) socect@nus.edu.sg
Louise Tokarsky-Unda (Somerset Academy For Health and Medical Sciences and
Raritan Valley Community College) ltokarsky-unda@scettc.org
Ismael Vaccaro (McGill U) ismael.vaccaro@mcgill.ca
Linda Whiteford (U of South Florida) lindaw@cas.usf.edu
Peter Wogan (Williamette) pwogan@williamette.edu
Laura C. Zanotti (Purdue) lzanotti@purdue.edu
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EDITORS PREFACE
Strategies for Teaching Anthropology is now in its 6th edition/volume with a total of 210
strategies for teaching our discipline, 35 new ones in this volume alone. We purposely do not
focus on pedagogy about teaching anthropology, as the 1997 The Teaching of Anthropology:
Problems, Issues, and Decisions, edited by C.P. Kottak, J.J. White, R.H. Furlow, and P.C. Rice
and published by Mayfield, covered pedagogy and specifically what to teach. It had little to say
about how to teach, an equally important topic. The six Strategies books focus on how to teach
anthropology.
If you look at the previous five volumes and compare them with this current volume, there
appear to be several trends. There are similar numbers of cultural anthropology strategies as
opposed to linguistic, archaeological, and biological anthropology strategies at least until this
volume, where there are no strategies specially focusing on linguistics. In all six volumes, the
major trend seems to focus on how to get students involved in classroom activities. Confucius
said it several thousand years ago: Hear and I forget; see and I remember; do and I understand.
Translated into the classroom, it strongly suggests that if all we do is lecture, students will forget
it all as soon as they take that final exam. If we lecture and show some sort of visuals or write on
the front board, they will remember at least part of what we tried to teach them after that last
exam, but if we engage them in activities in the classroom to bring home important concepts,
they will remember the activity as well as the concept far into the future. In this volume alone,
there are 24 strategies that focus on in-class activities.
We know there are times when we must lecture particularly in large classes, but we can
augment lectures with appropriate activities. Some of us are devotees of PowerPoint and some of
us have not had very good experiences with it, but we would probably all agree that at least some
amount of visuals in some form or another is important at certain times. So, too, are activities.
A second, though less obvious trend is the one toward playing games with anthropological
overtones. In this volume alone, there are two quite different games based on Monopoly, and one
based on SMUG. Although not based on organized games, in addition, we introduce you to the
Artifact Game, The End Game, and the Dobe Ju/Hoansi Kinship and Marriage Game.
A third trend sees more and more high technology in the classroom with strategies based on
using Wikis, Ted Talks, and PowerPoint in this volume.
Again, we present these strategies in a how to do it format, in the hope that interested readers
can either duplicate or modify the strategies that successful teachers have found work well in
their classroom. The annotated section before the strategies articles tells you the subject of each
strategy, followed by the expected learning outcomes, and what students actually do in the
classroom. If something catches your fancy, you can read the entire strategy.
Conrad Kottak, former chairperson of anthropology at the University of Michigan and author of
a number of introductory anthropology textbooks, has again written a foreword to the new
edition; he feels strongly that good teachers can be helped by learning how to teach using good
strategies. The same is true of Yolanda Moses, a former President of the American
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Anthropological Association and the past President of the American Association of Higher
Education, who has again written our introduction. She obviously values the importance of
teaching and learning our discipline.
We want to thank Nancy Roberts who serves as our editor as well as being a Vice President and
Publisher at Pearson for again agreeing to publish these strategies. As a publisher, she knows that
excellence in teaching means that more and more students will flock to our anthropology
classrooms. And since Nancy has told us on numerous occasions, Keep them coming every two
years until I say stop, if you have a successful strategy to share with fellow teaching
anthropologists, dont wait for two years send an idea for the strategy to one of the editors and
we will go from there. If all three editors agree it is a good idea, it will be accepted for the 7 th
volume/edition immediately and we will work together to get it into our format. That next
volume will be out in 2011 in time for AAA meetings, but with a 2012 copyright. Hope to hear
from some of you.
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Opening Up Mic Night: Using Karaoke to Teach Gender (Freidus and Whiteford)
using karaoke to understand gender
how to do participant observation; the difference between sex and gender; and how it
feels to deviate
using karaoke, students can embody their own gender or deviate into another.
Is Cultural Evolutionism Ethnocentric? Hands-On Introduction to Guttman Scaling
(Graber)
using Guttman Scaling to evaluate cultural evolution
how to use facts about different cultures to construct a Guttman Scalogram
students work individually or in groups to construct a scalogram and use it to discuss
ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and cultural evolution.
Worth a Thousand Words? Studying Images on the Covers of Introductory Cultural
Anthropology Texts (Hammond)
analysis of cultural anthropology text covers
how to do discourse, content, and semiotic analysis
students analyze 6 cultural anthropology text covers and discuss findings in class.
Like a Fish in Water: Helping Students Identify the Role of Culture in Their Lives
(Hirshman)
culture in everyday life
that students are greatly affected by their own culture
on the first day of class, students fill out a card asking what they do in the morning;
the collective results are discussed later.
SlurpeeTM, Silly PuttyTM, and the LegoTM Killer: The Anatomy of a Crime Scene (Jacobi)
anthropological analysis of a crime scene
the role of anthropologists in real crime scene investigation using their expertise
students actually do a crime scene investigation, gathering evidence and being
involved in discussing its implications.
Myth or Legend: You Decide (Karnyski)
assessing the difference between myths and legends
how to apply criteria to stories to decide if they are myths or legends
in groups, students read 4 stories and conclude whether they are myths or legends.
Zoo Teaching Strategy (King)
primate observation in zoos
xi
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xiv
1Foreword
Conrad P. Kottak
University of Michigan
We all have our teaching tricks, which we sometimes share, too rarely and usually only
anecdotally, with our colleagues. We may do this at meetings, conferences, or over lunch.
Usually, however, our focus at national meetings and professional conferences is the more
exalted realm of research. As anthropologists, we dont talk about how to teach as much as we
should. The Strategies series, of which this is the sixth independent volume, provides a welcome
forum for seasoned teaching anthropologists (some are repeat authors, but with new tips) to share
pedagogical techniques, knowledge, and observations with their fellows. In a sense, these
Strategies volumes are sequels to the 1997 The Teaching of Anthropology: Problems, Issues,
and Decisions, which I co-edited with Jane White, Richard Furlow, and Patricia Rice. The six
Strategies, how to volumes address the practical side of teaching anthropology.
Anthropologys breadth supports an array of teaching styles, approaches, and techniques,
and it is useful to have several more concrete strategies assembled here. This volume offers
numerous tricks for teaching in three of anthropologys subfields. (Teachers of linguistic
anthropology will have to consult earlier volumes.) As experienced teachers, we know that some
things work while others dont, and that we must tailor our teaching to fit particular audiences.
The strategies we use with undergraduates may or may not be effective with graduate students.
One strategy that can work at both levels, when used properly, is the team project. In a large
class, such projects have the added advantage of reducing our workload, permitting us, say, to
read fifteen papers instead of thirty. Teamwork is a tradition in archaeology and biological
anthropology, but such joint work poses a challenge to the lone ethnographer model that has
long, and probably unfortunately, dominated cultural anthropology. I have found, however, that
joint writing projects, especially involving teams of two students who are allowed to choose their
own partner, enhance the quality of presentation. Students have to get their points across to each
other before trying to explain them to me. Better, clearer writing and higher grades result, along
with the realization that even cultural anthropologists can work effectively in teams.
Among the many useful teaching tips included in this and previous volumes are strategies
that can help us with parts of the introductory course that our students may find particularly
challenging, such as genetics, comparative kinship, or zoological taxonomy. Papers in this
volume offer tricks for making comprehensible several of anthropologys more unfamiliar or
esoteric topics. Examples include archaeological sampling, Guttman scaling, ethics, history of
science, and the kula.
The teaching tricks offered here range from specific to very general applicability. Some
strategies have particular goals, e.g., devising zoo projects, or teaching about Homo erectus,
human variation, or the fall of complex societies. Other strategies can be applied to a variety of
courses. Examples of these more general tips apply to essay writing and critical thinking, using
movies as instructional aids, listening to each other, and using Nacireman examples. Almost
everyone who teaches introductory anthropology has learned the utility of invoking the familiar
to illustrate the novel. Students appreciate American (and Nacireman) culture examples, whether
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we are teaching about kinship, genetics, race, gender, rituals, or values. The popular culture
examples here range from karaoke (used to teach about gender), to Star Trek (human origins and
variation), to Monopoly (economic anthropology and stratification), to Slurpee, Silly Putty, and
Lego (forensic anthropology).
This volume enhances anthropological pedagogy by assembling tricks of the trade from
anthropologists working in a wide range of teaching settings. For those of us who value teaching,
which, after all, is what most of us are paid to do for a living, this book, once read, should be
placed on an easily reachable shelf right next to the first five Strategies for Teaching
Anthropology. This sixth edition brings the total number of strategies to around 200. You need
all six volumes.
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Introduction
Yolanda T. Moses
University of California Riverside
The successful sixth edition of Strategies in Teaching Anthropology presents 35 new articles that
explore the teaching of anthropology across three of the four traditional sub-fields of
anthropology. With the four sub-fields, Cultural-Social, Biological, Archaeology, and
Linguistics, there are also two dimensions within anthropology: research and applied studies.
Anthropology in the United States is not usually taught in high schools, so the first time most
students are exposed to the subject is at the college or university level. Consequently, the first
exposure to anthropology and how it is taught is critical.
Anthropology professors of a certain generation, like most classically trained academicians, do
not learn how to teach as part of their training. Teaching assistants also get uneven training in
how to teach anthropology. In graduate school, we learned our subject matter, often in great
detail, but there is a huge gap between the student who is taking an anthropology class for the
first time and faculty members who know their own dense subject matter, but do not know
how to pitch it to their audience, to engage them in anthropological subject matter and its
processes. I have found in my many years of teaching undergraduate students (mostly nonanthropology majors), that they learn anthropology best by doing it. A great many of the
articles in this newest edition are in-class activities in which students are actively engaged in
learning and implementing anthropological concepts.
This sixth edition continues the tradition of focusing on the how of teaching anthropology
across all of its sub-fields, with a wide array of learning outcomes and student activities. For
example, in Part I, the general section, the authors recommend tried and true strategies to engage
students in all sub-disciplines in learning about anthropology. These strategies are particularly
appropriate for students first exposure to anthropology and college classrooms in general. For
example, one exercise finely tunes students ability to observe, hear, smell, touch, and taste a
particular object, a skill that will carry on throughout the term. In addition, there are a lot of tips
about how to teach any anthropology course on-line, as well as how to use all or parts of
commercial films in class to promote in-depth discussion.
In Part II, Archaeology , we are shown how students can play the role of archaeologists when
they have to understand formation processes; how to evaluate and describe the functions of
artifacts; as well as understanding how complex societies have collapsed in the past.
In Part III, Bioanthropology, students learn both macro evolutionary and micro evolutionary
principles by playing genetic games in the classroom with M&Ms and coins; focusing on
human variation data collection and analysis; using Star Trek to explore human origin models
and human variation; using a zoo to observe primates quantitatively and qualitatively and
compare the two methods; and finally equipping students with the tools to do an anthropological
analysis of a crime scene.
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Part IV on Cultural Anthropology, continues to have the largest number of teaching strategies,
ranging from students actively discovering what it is like to live in a stratified society, to
promoting the long term use of anthropological terms through essays to once again
understanding who the Nacirema are and how they live; to using Karaoke to teach and learn
about gender analysis, to using the TV show Friends to discuss incest and kinship categories and
to analyze different theoretical paradigms around the notions of relatives. The authors engage
students by recreating real life situations in the classroom based on popular culture as well as
traditional materials.
Several articles focus on research and methods of inquiry and discovery: one has students
looking at cultural evolution through an introduction to Guttmann Scaling; another uses statistics
to show how anthropologists can test certain hypotheses and even attempt to explain causations.
Technology plays a role when one exercise brings the use of Wikis into the classroom as a tool
for students to create their own new knowledge and catalog it. Several articles explore the realm
of symbolic culture: one through looking at the American immigrant experience and redesigning
the Statute of Liberty, and one shows students how to distinguish between myth and legend.
Once again, I wish to thank the editors, Patricia Rice, David McCurdy, and Scott Lukas for
bringing together still another talented group of colleagues to share their best practices with other
teachers, anthropologists, and non-anthropologists. It is dedicated authors like these that make it
possible for all of us to continue to provide our undergraduate students with the best experiences
possible in their discovery of the wonder of anthropology, the most multi-faceted discipline of
the 21st century.
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