Anthropology

Last semester, three of Alexis’s classes had group projects. In this assignment, you will read descriptions of her group projects and look for portions of the story that illustrate concepts related to Lesson 7. You should be able to identify at least 10 concepts related to groups illustrated in the text. For each concept you detect in the story, paraphrase or quote the part of the story that you believe reflects that concept.

Alexis and Group Work

In her Accounting class, Alexis’s group had to create a portfolio of a company’s quarterly records. Alexis liked the class, but working with the group was a nightmare. At first, everything was fine. They elected Todd as the group leader. He outlined each step of the project and made sure everyone was doing her or his job. Then, everything fell apart. Jennifer and a few others ignored Todd’s proposal and did their own thing. The rest of us thought Todd had a pretty good plan, so we stuck with his idea. Eventually, we compromised when everyone agreed that we should not let things get personal, but just focus on doing the portfolio.

In her Anthropology class, Alexis’s group had to study a subculture and present what they found to the class. They decided to learn about the local music scene. They elected Lori as the group leader. She assigned each person in the group a task. Lori thought the whole group could benefit from Alexis’s Film Production major, so the group decided to make a movie. Alexis was assigned to be the video editor. Lori knew Sam really liked photography, so she assigned him to be the camera operator. The only problem with that was that Sam wasn’t really qualified to do it. Sam only liked photography, he wasn’t a photographer, let alone a videographer. The only other problem the group had was with Brian, who just sat around and didn’t do any of the work.

Alexis’s Algebra class was her first online course. The class website had a quiz bowl function, and Alexis’s group had to compete against the other groups. Group members could not discuss answers before posting, so everyone needed to know how to do the assignments. While the group members were all concerned with doing well in the quiz bowl, they were also concerned about getting to know each other. Alexis created a special discussion board where students could post about themselves, just so everyone could get to know everyone else.

Hint: you should provide example excerpts from the story for 10 of the following 14 concepts:

* authorization
* conjunctive task
* diffuse status characteristics
* disjunctive task
* endorsement
* reactionary coalition
* revolutionary coalition
* role differentiation
* social cohesion
* social loafing
* social-emotional specialist
* specific status characteristics
* task cohesion
* task specialist