The Stone Soup Experiment: Why Cultural Boundaries Persist - Softcover

Downing Wilson, Deborah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022628980X ISBN 13: 9780226289809

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2015

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Downing Wilson is an instructor in the department of communication at the University of Nevada, Reno. 

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.” (Howard Gardner, author of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed)

“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.” (Kysa Nygreen, author of These Kids)

“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.”
(James Wertsch, author of Voices of Collective Remembering)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 022628980X
• ISBN 13: 9780226289809
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 176