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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 evolutionof 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

The Stone Soup Experiment is the story of an ambitious classroom simulation. In her course on cross-cultural communication, Wilson began by randomly assigning each of her students to one of two cultures: Traders or Stoners. In the ten weeks that followed, she and the students became participant-observers. They reported on allegiances and prejudices, commitment and conflicts, as the Trader and Stoner cultures were shaped by their members, and vice versa. Heavily seasoned with excerpts from student ethnographies, the book reads like a novel. There are plenty of plot twists (theft, betrayal, refusal to reconcile) as the students, and at times their instructor, experience a full range of preconceptions and partialities, including ethnocentrism, hindsight bias, and confirmation bias. Through it all, Wilson's voice is deeply reflective and honest. Integrating perspectives on groups, culture, and communication from a broad swath of the social sciences (e.g., psychology, communication studies, sociology, anthropology), the book's theoretical perspective is fresh. Warning: faculty readers may be inspired to new levels of daring in the classroom. . . . Highly recommended. --Choice

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

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

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

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

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