CHAPTER 2: CULTURE World Wide Web Activity Palestinian Links: Your Links to Palestine and the Holy Land Annotation: This web site contains links to interesting and useful information about the heritage and history of Palestine and Arabic culture.. Learning Objective: To increase the understanding of cultural differences and to appreciate the cultural heritage of a less understood group. Faculty Note: Students of Islamic, Middle Eastern, and Palestinian history and culture will want to look at this home site that serves as a center for understanding Palestinian history, culture, and current ideology. This is especially important in view of the tension in the Middle East and the differences in American-Iraqi relations. This web site will enrich any student s understanding and appreciation of Palestinian and Arabic culture. There is also much to learn about the difficulties all immigrants of Middle Eastern heritage experience in A merica as well as community outreach programs and advocacy groups available to assist them. Activity: Have students click on Web Links and go to Palestinian Links: Your Links to Palestine and the Holy Land http://www.palguide.com/links/culture/ Cruise through the web site to uncover an understanding and appreciation for the Palestinian and Arab people. Construct a list of cultural similarities and differences between Americans and Palestinians. Identify common aspects of our material and non-material cultures. Discuss why it may be difficult to separate the image Americans have for people of Middle Eastern descent from what is shown through the media. Additional Resources: Using a search engine of your choice, type in the key words Arab Americans and Islam to discover a number of web sites dedicated to this topic. Among the sites to be discovered are 100 Questions and Answers About Arab Americans at http://www.freep.com/jobspage/arabs/ and a piece on Islamic Studies at http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/ In addition to these sites, there are many others. It is noteworthy that some of these sites are militant in nature. Care should be exercised in suggesting specific sites and in preventing stereotypes to develop based on biased material. Web Link Chinese Historical and Cultural Project Annotation: This web site contains links to interesting and useful information about the heritage and history of Chinese-Americans. Learning Objective: To increase the understanding of cultural differences and to appreciate the cultural heritage of a less understood minority group. Faculty Note: Students of Chinese and Chinese American history and cultural traditions will want to look at this home site of the California based Chinese Historical and Cultural Project. While much of its focus is on California history, there are links that will enrich any student s appreciation of Chinese and Chinese-American culture. There is also much to learn here about the immigrant experience in America as well as community outreach and advocacy. Activity: Have students click on Web Links and go to Chinese Historical and Cultural Project http://www.chcp.org/ Cruise through the web site to uncover the rich and proud tradition of Chinese-Americans. Have the students write a short essay on how the plight of the Chinese who immigrated to America in the late 1800s corresponds to the reasons Europeans immigrated to America. Construct a list of cultural similarities and differences. If the Kung Fu series starring David Carradine is carried by a cable television station in your area, suggest the students watch an episode. If they can do this, assign as essay on how the series either helps or hurts the image and status of Chinese Americans today. 7
Teaching Tool Essentials of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach Additional Resources: Using the MSN Search Engine or another search engine, type in the key words Chinese Americans to discover a number of web sites dedicated to this topic. Among the sites to be discovered are The Chinese American Museum http://www.camla.org/history.htm and the Organization of Chinese Americans http://www.ocanatl.org/ You may also wish to suggest the students watch an episode of the Kung Fu series as a reference point of how Americans perceive Chinese immigrants. World Wide Web Activity See How Gestures Vary With Culture Annotation: This exercise expands on the discussion in the text about the use of language and gestures in communication. The exercise offers links to descriptions of norms that govern behavior on many dimensions in about 55 countries and asks students to answer a question about the difficulties of cross-cultural communication. Learning Objective: To develop appreciation for the varied norms that govern behavior in different cultures. Faculty Note: Through the web links in this exercise, students are provided a rich source of norms governing a wide range of behavior in many countries. The activity below involves reading about and listing norms that govern behavior in other cultures. The folkways that govern behavior vary widely among cultures. This exercise exposes students to these folkways, encouraging appreciation of the absence of universals governing behavior that we take for granted. Activity: Have students click on the web site Non Verbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs, and Body Language Cues http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/diction1.htm and peruse the links associate with the site. Break the class into small groups to discuss if the definitions in the web site are consistent with the meaning associated with them for students. Also have each group make a list of the gestures students use and the meaning associated with them. Additional Resources: Refer to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis for additional information on how language is affected by culture. You can direct students to http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/documents/short/whorf.html and http://www.usingenglish.com/speaking-out/linguistic-whorfare.html Video Activity (Premium Resource CD Rom) Clothes and School Annotation: This video describes students' current clothing fashions. Learning Objective: To distinguish between material and nonmaterial cultural elements. Faculty Note: Material and nonmaterial culture take many forms. The exercise below gives students experience identifying examples of material culture and distinguishing material from nonmaterial culture. Video clips are provided on the Premium Resource CD Rom. Activity: Have students view the video clip, Clothes and School. Ask them to make a list of every example of material culture depicted in the video. Additional Resources: The webzine (magazine published on the World Wide Web) "Ironminds" http://www.ironminds.com/index.shtml provides many examples of college student culture that could be used to vary or expand the assignment from material to nonmaterial cultural elements that would be interesting to college students. 8
Chapter Two Culture Video Activity (Premium Resource CD Rom) Ebonics Controversy Annotation: This video shows a member of the Los Angeles school board speaking against a motion to have "Ebonics," a blend of Standard English and African languages, taught in public schools. The video clip asks students several questions about the Ebonics controversy. Learning Objective: To identify the importance of language as a unifying or divisive cultural element. Faculty Note: The text describes the importance of language within a culture. Among the functions of language is providing shared perspectives and understandings. The assignment below encourages students to explore the consequences of having several languages spoken by people within one society. Video clips are provided on the Premium Resource C D Rom. Activity: Have students watch the video, Ebonics Controversy. Offer them a justification for adopting Ebonics in schools with a large African American enrollment (e.g., it would build the self-esteem of students who are fluent in Ebonics but deficient in Standard English). Ask students to take a position in favor or opposing the adoption of Ebonics, and to justify their position. Additional Resources: Find additional information on Ebonics at http://www.linguistlist.org/topics/ebonics/ The Linguist List Ebonics and http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/ The Ebonics Controversy in My Backyard: A Sociolinguist s Experiences and Reflections. Test Question: (Essay) State one function of language in society that argues against teaching Ebonics in public schools with large numbers of African American students. Answers might include: Sharing a common language makes it possible for people to understand one another better and share a common perspective. Teaching Ebonics would promote greater division between speakers of Ebonics and Standard English. Video Activity (Premium Resource CD ROM) Survivalists: A Counterculture Annotation: In this video survivalist Carrie Noble responds to questions about why members of his group armed themselves and why Timothy McVeigh selected Oklahoma City as the target for his bomb. The video clip is followed by two critical thinking questions. Learning Objective: To appreciate the value differences between the dominant culture and a particular counterculture. Faculty Note: Generally, our attention is drawn to the outrageous, destructive behavior of members of countercultures. In this video, a leader of the survivalist counterculture talks about the beliefs and strategies behind their destructive behavior. The activity below focuses students' attention on countercultural beliefs, to encourage them to understand the logic behind the seemingly irrational behavior of members of counterculture. Activity: Have students watch the video. Assign them to work in groups to answer the following questions: How did Noble justify bombing a public building and killing people? What countercultural values did Carrie Noble express in his justification? Additional Resources: "The Survivalist" http://www.frugalsquirrels.com offers discussion of a wide range of issues of concern to survivalists. Caution: Some survivalist web pages advocate violence and provide instructions on manufacturing and using weapons. Although students could find such web pages on their own, instructors need not send them there. Carefully screen survivalist web pages before you send students to view them. At the time "The Survivalist" web page was reviewed by the author, it contained no information (or direct links to information) about making weapons. Such material could have been added to this web page by the time your students view it. 9
Teaching Tool Essentials of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach You may want to use a different web page or avoid directing your students to web pages on survivalism. An additional site you may wish to direct students to is the John Birch Society http://www.jbs.org Test Question: (Essay) Based on Carrie Noble's explanation of the violence of survivalists, how would you describe the reasoning behind this behavior? Answers might include: Violence was part of a strategy that was logically derived from countercultural beliefs about the need of survivalists to defend themselves from "bad guys" and the federal government, who were out to "get them." The Video Professor Mr. Baseball Annotation: Mr. Baseball is a movie produced in 1992 featuring Tom Selleck as an aging baseball star traded from the New York Yankees to the Chunichi Dragons in Nagoya, Japan. Learning Objective: To recognize cultural differences that are a part of a major international sports interest shared by two countries; to illustrate the concepts of cultural evolution, cultural borrowing, and reformulation. Faculty Note: Americans often take credit for being the best at what they do (which isn t meant as necessarily a bad thing). We also often fall into the pitfall that the only way is the American way. Although baseball may have been created in America and called our national past time, other cultures have adopted it and modified it to fit their own respective needs. This film illustrates the innovative and successful changes the Japanese have made to what was originally an exclusive American institution. Activity: Students will be assigned either activity under Suggested Essays and Discussions in The Video Professor that addresses this film. This exercise can be assigned as a short paper, a class discussion, or a set of small group discussions. Small group discussions can be set up in class or they may be an interactive out of class assignment the students of each small group conduct via e-mail. Consider baseball in countries other than America and Japan (ex: Mexico and Panama). What would be some of the cultural adaptations made to the game if Mr. Baseball featured a team from the other country you chose. Census 2000 Comparing State Population Annotation: By clicking on Census 2000, the student will find a number of exercises related to the 2000 Census. Learning Objective: To discover the changing composition of the American population and to forecast the impact it will have on American culture and its social institutions. Faculty Note: The change in the composition of America s population has a different degree of impact on the average American, depending on where they live. The instructor may wish to discuss some of the ramifications of the population changes in Texas and California compared to how it impacts Maine and Wisconsin. Activity: Complete the questions in Exercise #2: Comparing States. Additional Resources: Explore the steps that have been taken in states with rising Latin -American populations to resist the development of a duel-culture in these states. You may also wish to explore the GeoLytics web site at http://www.uscensus.info for products available from GeoLytic that summarize the Census results. The price of these may be prohibitive for a departmental budget, but they may be resources that can be ordered by the University library if it does not already receive them. GeoLytics also provides a considerable amount of information and ideas on the Census, its analysis, and comparative suggestions. 10
Chapter Two Culture Video Activity (VHS Interactive Video for Introductory Sociology) The Meaning of Kwaanza Annotation: The video clip on the Allyn and Bacon VHS Interactive Video for Introductory Sociology is only a few minutes in length. The questions that follow this clip should be viewed and discussed as a part of the exercise. Learning Objective: To provide further understanding of an important holiday for African Americans that is rising in popularity and to expand one s appreciation for multicultural activities. Faculty Note : The video clip provides symbols associated with Kwaanza as well as a brief description of what it is and its importance to those who are observing it. The web sites identified under Additional Resources provide additional information on Kwaanza and its history. Activity: Before showing the video clip or suggesting the web sites addressing Kwaanza, distribute a short quiz or survey to the students that measures their knowledge of the event. The survey can be a short multiple choice instrument of five or ten questions or short answer essay that measures the student s basic knowledge of Kwaanza, whether they have observed it, and their view of it as a method of uniting African Americans. After the students have viewed the video and have read additional information on the event, have them discuss Kwaanza, its importance to African Americans, and how it is similar as well as different from other holidays celebrated in the United States. If there are students in the class who regularly celebrate Kwaanza, ask them to consider sharing their experience in celebrating Kwaanza with the rest of the class. Additional Resources: A brief explanation of Kwaanza is provided at the web site http://www.richmond.edu/~ kkasongo/kwaanza.htm Other information can be found on the history of Kwaanza in The Dartmouth Review at http://www.dartreview.com/archives/000076.php It is noted The Dartmouth Review is a conservative independent newspaper which may include features that are considered as offensive to some individuals. By using any search engine, additional information on Kwaanza can be found by using Kwaanza as the key word. 11