The Island Exercise: An Active and Collaborative Classroom Lesson for Status, Role, and hierarchy as Component of Social Structure

Learning Objectives:

Recognize the concepts of status, achieved status, ascribed status, master status, role, social hierarchy.

Apply these concepts to explain decisions made throughout the simulation.

Rationale:

This in-class simulation is an engaging way to turn students’ attention toward key components of social structure in everyday life. I conduct this simulation during week 5 of the Principles of Sociology course (S161). By now we have spent a good deal of time discussing the concept of culture as “a toolkit” that members draw on and modify as they navigate their social worlds. We have also spent time discussing socialization, the life-long process of learning and relearning to become competent members of a culture. During this week students are expected to be reading material on social interaction. This exercise ties culture, socialization, and an interactionist perspective together by dramatizing the performative aspects of roles, statuses, master statuses, and social hierarchies. Most importantly, students debate, sometimes passionately, about their choices as they articulate the relative hierarchy of statuses and role expectations that comprise the social structure of everyday life. This exercise transitions us into a discussion of power and inequality, topics we focus on in the coming weeks.

Scenario:

There’s been a horrific turn of events. Just moments before class started I got word that a small commercial airliner has crashed somewhere in the Northern Atlantic. Only 10 passengers have survived. By some fortune all 10 have made it to a tiny island where they are now stranded. To say “island” is even somewhat of an exaggeration, as their refuge is little more than a rocky outcrop in the frigid and turbulent waters. A rescue helicopter is inbound. Unfortunately, the helicopter will only hold 5 people in addition to the pilot. To make matters worse, the helicopter is just ahead of an enormous hurricane heading straight for the island. There will only be time to make one rescue trip before this storm wipes the island bare, killing everyone left behind. Congress has convened panel average citizens to make the tough decision concerning which crash survivors get a ride on the helicopter and which must stay. It is certain that whoever stays will be killed before another helicopter can be sent.

Below are 10 brief descriptions of people who have just survived the plane crash.

Method:

10 volunteers play the survivors. They pick the identity out of a hat and keep it to themselves. Once all identities have been chosen the group can leave the room for a few moments to create a backstory for themselves that they will use to convince the panel to save them. They may not add or change anything in the identities. And no, the child cannot “sit on someone’s lap.” 

I ask for volunteers for the group of survivors first and then tell the story above (in a very dramatic fashion).  I have the “survivors” stand at the front of the class. Each person on the island takes a turn making their case for a seat on the helicopter. The remainder of the class is put into groups of four and may ask questions of the survivors and other groups. There is always lots of boisterous debate. Eventually the five are chosen. Groups record their choices and their rationales for each. We debrief by returning to a discussion of roles, statuses, and social hierarchies.