Anthropological Nursery Rhymes

[JesusA (imported)]

While I have devoted most of my professional life to the intersection of anthropology as an academic discipline and children in school situations, I have never been adequately able to translate anthropological discourse for primary school children. Finally, Andrew and Susan Buckser of Purdue University may have found the solution – nursery rhymes. Their first series focus primariliy on evolutionary biology and economic anthropology:

Peter, Peter (On the selective disadvantages of vegetarianism)

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater

Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.

Lost her to a larger Pete

Who ate high-protein fish and meat.

Old Mother Hubbard, Or, A Meditation on the Utility of Pets in Times of Resource Scarcity

Old Mother Hubbard

Went to her cupboard

To fetch her poor doggie.

Mary’s Lamb

Mary had a little lamb

Whose care she never stinted

It followed everywhere she went

Because it had imprinted.

Little Miss Muffet

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet

Eating her curds and whey.

A passing male rhesus,

Mistaking her species,

Then put on a courtship display.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

His grisly demise prompted Darwin’s first theses

On the relative rareness of wall-nesting species.

Wee Willy Winkie

Wee Willy Winkie runs through the town

Up stairs, down stairs, in his night gown!

But don’t be too concerned

About this wacko on the loose;

It won’t last long – the odds are strong

He’ll never reproduce.

The r Strategist Who Lived in a Shoe

There was an r strategist who lived in a shoe

She had millions of children and knew what to do.

She just gave them some broth and she showed them the door,

Then she went back inside and she popped out some more.

Mistress Mary

Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

With flooded fields for higher yields and transplant crops to sow!

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

Baa, baa black sheep

Have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir,

Three bags full.

One for consumption, and one for exchange

And one just to signify my status on the range.

The Five Little Piggies

This little piggie went to market.

This little piggie also went to market.

This little piggie, too, went to market.

And this one.

Even this little piggie, despite going “wee, wee, wee,” went to market.

Moral: The logic of market expansion is inescapable.