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Overview:
Consumer products provide evidence of cultural diffusion in many households. Analyzing the items that are found in a home's cupboards and closets can tell us much about the residents' cultural heritage and what cultural influences affect their lives. This lesson will help your students to identify some of the cultures new to their part of the world and to understand more about cultural diffusion.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, math, language arts
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 10: "The characteristics, distribution, and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics"
Time:
Two to four hours
Materials Required:
Objectives:
Students will
- be able to locate on a world map the places of cultural origin of many of the items in their homes; and
- analyze the cultural diffusion that explains how those items got where they are today.
Geographic Skills:
Acquiring Geographic Information
Organizing Geographic Information
Analyzing Geographic Information
S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e
Opening:
Have your students bring from home ten things that they feel represent their culture. These items could include foods, apparel, music, religious items, decorative objects, and so on. If you know a student's cultural background, help him or her to select something especially significant to that culture. Each student should bring the items in an opaque bag. (You may want to discourage your students from bringing extremely valuable items to school for this exercise.)
Introduce the concept of cultural diffusion—the spread of elements from one culture to another. This was a slower process in previous eras when cultural groups typically had less frequent contact with each other than they do today. How have the increased speed of communications and easier international travel affected cultural diffusion?
Development:
Number each bag and then number and letter each of the items in the bag.
Divide the students into groups of four or five. Exchange bags among the groups so that every student has another student's bag.
Have the groups open the bags one at a time and examine the items they contain. Students should note their best educated guess at the place of cultural origin (which may not be the same as the site of manufacture!) for each of the items in the bag. The groups should map the location of origin for each item by sketching the items on blank outline maps of the world.
Closing:
Groups should discuss the movement of each item to their local communities and draw this diffusion with colored pencils. When did each item (and the culture with which it is associated) reach their community? Did the item come with a group of people that moved to the area? Did the product come by way of modern retailing, including advertising? Do the items typically reflect the cultural roots of the students who brought them in, or a smorgasboard of world cultures?
Suggested Student Assessment:
Each student should write a summary reflecting a personal understanding of cultural diffusion and how products in their own homes can enlighten them to different cultures in our society. Have students speculate about what students in other parts of the country and the world might have in their households.
Extending the Lesson:
Have students work through the Xpeditions activity, Lizzie's Morning.
Marc R. Dastous of Estrella Middle School in Phoenix, Arizona, contributed classroom ideas for Standard 10.
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