Week 7 Discussion — Who Keeps the Rule? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

Think about the last time you followed someone's directions without being forced, and what made you go along. This week you met power, authority, and legitimacy, Service's band, tribe, chiefdom, and state as a model, Fried's egalitarian, rank, and stratified societies, social control, and three routes of dispute resolution.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: At the running fieldwork site, an illustrative weekly farmers' market of 24 stalls, a rule says no one sells before the manager rings the bell at 8:00 a.m. The manager holds authority, because the vendors' association votes on the market's rules. Yet a vendor in the illustrative interview says, "You sell before the bell, people talk." Some would say the manager's authority is what keeps the rule; others would say the vendors' gossip does more of the work, and the manager's bell only signals a rule the vendors already enforce on each other. Which reading do you find more convincing, and why? Use power, authority, and legitimacy and at least one means of social control, and say what you would need to observe or ask to settle it.

Option B: Service's band, tribe, chiefdom, and state model is a classroom tool. Some argue it is still worth using, because it names what to compare (who leads, whether a leader can force anyone, and how far leadership reaches) and it shows, for example, that a chiefdom is not a small state. Others argue it does more harm than good, because its four types lump very different communities together, its title uses the period's wording, and readers slip into treating it as a ladder. Using the model and one group you know (a club, a team, a workplace, a neighborhood association), where do you land? Use at least two of the model's types and power or authority, and say what each side gets right.

There is no single right answer. Both questions are open, because order usually rests on more than one thing at once and every model shows some features and hides others. Pick the option you actually care about, and tell us your reasoning.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Working on your own: this version of the discussion is written entirely from your own reasoning, in your own words.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say whether the manager's authority or the vendors' gossip does more to keep the bell rule; for Option B, say whether Service's model is worth using, testing it on one group you know.
• Use power, authority, and legitimacy, and at least one means of social control or two of the model's types, correctly.
• Give your judgment, with a reason, and give the other reading its strongest case.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: point out where a classmate treated power and authority as the same thing, offer the strongest case for the reading they did not take, or name the evidence that would settle their case. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. In my dorm, the resident assistant posts quiet hours, and we accept them because the hall council voted on them, so that is authority with a clear source of legitimacy. Still, most nights nobody calls the assistant; people knock on the loud room's door, and the next day everyone talks about who broke the rule. That sounds like the vendors' gossip doing the daily work. The other side has a point, though, because the gossip only bites since people already accept the rule as rightful. I would still want to ask vendors whether anyone has ever sold early and what happened next.

Notice how it names people by their roles, keeps power, authority, and legitimacy apart, gives the other reading its due, and says what it would still check. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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