Learning Culture: The Education of American Students in Caribbean Villages

Abstract

It is often said that you have to live in another culture before you can understand your own. But what is it that we learn and how do we learn it? To answer this question this paper examines the experiences of American students living and doing field research in villages on the eastern Caribbean island of Barbados. The students field experiences in a social and cultural world very different from the one they come from shape their attitudes and understanding of race, social class, rural-urban differences, materialism, tourism, and the image and role of America in a developing society. The role of field research as a transformative experience in the students' education is also treated. The educational attainments of an anthropology field program are contrasted with the conventional term abroad in which students are enrolled at a foreign university.