It's a Puzzle

Dr Deane Fergie
Department of Anthropology

Introduction
For beginning students it can be hard to understand the process of analysis. In Anthropology, where I teach, the need to appreciate analysis and to extend on previous analyses is paramount. I have been using a simple child's puzzle as a teaching aid and found it to be very effective. Not any puzzle would make this possible. The Designer One, by Jigsaw Toy Factory, has the appropriate characteristics; it has defined structural features such that there is no single solution, but there are finite possibilities.

Description
Begin with small groups that describe the puzzle. This uncovers differences at the level of description, an important concept in Anthropology (and the Arts and Sciences generally). Some students may not even use the term puzzle in their description. They are bound by the nature of the task to begin with folk concepts.

Conceptualisation
Start an analysis, focussing initially on concepts and categories of description, such as shape and colour. We begin here to discuss the differences between folk and analytic concepts - `is that blue, green, or turquoise, or does it need a specific name?'; and cases where there is no folk concept, but where we need the analytic concept - `what is that unusual shape to be called?'. Comparisons between puzzles in terms of shape and colour reveal differences and similarities, constraints in size, types of triangles etc. in use and so on.

Analysis
Depending on earlier work we might take the direction of re-introducing colour and examine aesthetics. Then other possibilities can be pursued, such as; what purpose does the puzzle serve - what is the purpose economically for the manufacturer, pragmatically for different end users, - or - how does it fit in with the purposes of the economy it is situated in, what techniques of production and technology does it presuppose?

Critical analysis
We can start to critique our previous analysis to change the paradigm we are using. For instance, we may uncover that a focus on size and colour ignores depth or the frame may be seen as a different order of analysis, as it is static while the rest is in process.

Self-reflection or further analysis
Finally, we can examine our purpose and the purpose of analysis. It wasn't so much to understand the puzzle as to understand our perception and construction of the puzzle. We were learning about us.