Purpose

This week we’re off to the sunny Caribbean, with the video, the text, and the news report. The Caribbean is a big area so choose your location for the video (there are three Episodes to choose from). You need to choose one, but you are welcome to watch all three if you wish (previews are available).

Dessert this week is chocolate, a delightful treat that was a favorite of the ancient peoples of Meso- and Central America bordering the Caribbean (the south of Mexico, and modern-day Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia). Archaeologists suggest that domesticated cacao, from which chocolate drinks and sweets are made, came from the upper Amazon region of northwest South America beginning about 5,300 years ago (Zarrillo et al. 2018).

More specifically, in Global Cultures we’re going to have a look at the European Union “Chocolate War” that lasted decades. It’s the most recent “Thirty-Years’ War” in Europe. The EU “Chocolate War” is a classic case study in business and marketing—with international regulations. And here, in Global Cultures, the slides also introduce “scaling” as a research technique in the social sciences. Pay close attention to “scaling,” it’s a useful technique for comparing things.

Check in on Tuesday’s Live Chat at 7:00 p.m. if you have last-minute questions on your Term Paper (which is due this week), or on the Final Exam. If that time is not convenient, e-mail. . . .

Speaking of the Final Exam, be sure to submit an interesting question by the end of this week. And, if you have not already done so, please fill out the Student Evaluation questionnaire that our friendly IT folks sent to you via e-mail.

Outcomes

- Both the text readings and the video feature this week present cultures from a varied and complex region of the world, the Caribbean. Gannon and Pillai feature it as PART XIV. OVERLAPPING CULTURAL METAPHORS FOR GEOGRAPHICALLY RELATED NATIONS. When you are finished with the materials of this week you should have an excellent understanding of "The Region" as a "Unit of Analysis".
  - You should understand regional features, and that regional features can be different from the countries/cultures that make up a region.
    - Pay attention that even on a single island there can be tremendous differences between countries on that island (for example Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola), even though those countries share characteristics of a single region.
    - Also pay attention that in a given region there can be significant outliers. In the case of the Caribbean, for example, Cuba is an outlier in many ways. You should understand why.

Begin Week 14

Now that you have a sense of the purpose and outcomes contained within this module, begin working through the activities:

by using the “Next” button below to advance through the activities in sequential order
or by going directly to the Week 14 Module for a listing of the activities.