Anth 103 Final Review
Which of the following are least affected by seasonal variation in the environment?
Chicagoans: Cultures and populations in industrialized cities are least affected by variation in the environment.
Why did Somalis settle in Lewiston, Maine?
Civil war in Somalia forced many of them from their home country. The Somali refugees were seeking a place safer than Atlanta. Somalis wanted to go to a place with good welfare benefit and education. Somalis found out about Lewiston in an Internet search. (*All of the above*)
True or False: Alternative or multiple sexes and genders are found only in Native North America.
False (Alternative or multiple sexes and genders are found throughout the world)
True or False: Anthropology from its beginnings in the 19th century, has always treated gender as a cultural construction, not a biological one.
False (For the most part, before the 1970s, anthropology considered gender roles to be universal and they were viewed as a function of biological differences. One anthropologist who questioned this in the 1930s was Margaret Mead.)
True or False: The most important male in Hopi society is the father.
False (Hopi are matrilineal thus the primary male figure of authority is the mother's brother)
True or False: The principal distribution mechanism in most of the world's societies today is redistribution.
False (Market exchange - a system in which goods and services are bought and sold - is the principal distribution mechanism in the most of the world today.)
True or False: With the introduction of wage labor into the horticultural Nukumanu society, women's status has increased socially and economically.
False (Nukumanu women lost social and economic status when the economic repercussions of wage labor (changes in the previously taro-based food economy) reduced women's sphere of influence)
True or False: Women have no role in multinational factory production throughout the world.
False (Since the rise of multinational industrial production in the late 20th century, young women have been, problematically, a preferred source of cheap labor)
True or False: Male dominance in foraging societies can be explained because only men hunt.
False (Women hunt as well so this can not account for male dominance)
True or False: Women and men do perform the jobs that they do based solely upon innate physical abilities.
False (Work is culturally constructed along gender lines and this is variable across cultures)
True or False: Anthropologist James Hamilton's US-style house in a Pwo Karen village in Thailand was so sturdy and comfortable that the Karen began building their homes in the same style.
False (his house was an utter failure because while it was well-adapted to a US environment, it was not well-designed for the climate and environment of Eastern Thailand)
Why was the system of agriculture developed by the ancient culture of Tiwanaku at around 1500 BCE especially successful?
A layer of clay prevented salty lake water from seeping into the top soil. A layer of sand and gravel promoted drainage of the field. Canals surrounding the field became an environment for soil-enriching organisms. *All of the above*
True or False: Gene flow is the mixing of genetic material that results from the movement of individuals and groups from place to place.
True
True or False: In the US, divorce has had the effect of enmeshing nuclear families in larger systems of kinship, complicating definitions of the "independent nuclear family."
True
True or False: Monogamy often coexists with polygamy in the same society.
True
True or False: One Universal aspect to the gendered division of labor in societies is that women are culturally expected to carry the major responsibility for childcare.
True
True or False: The idea that gender is "culturally constructed" means that masculine and feminine have different meanings in different cultures and gender roles are learned through enculturation.
True
True or False: Transhumant pastoralism is a form of pastoralism in which herd animals are moved regularly throughout the year to different areas as pasture becomes available.
True
Cross-cultural research indicates that sexual practices:
are basic human drives that are nonetheless highly patterned by culture. (basic human drive, but the ways in which it is performed and socially accepted - varieties of acceptable sexual activities - is culturally constructed)
The Human Terrain Systems (HTS) program involves anthropologists collecting data in zones of active conflict. Most anthropologists:
are concerned about the program because it challenges ethical commitments to people being studied.
In a society with matrilineal descent, the person with the most authority and responsibility for a woman and her child is her:
brother
The three characteristics that make human language different from any other form of animal communication are:
conventionality, productivity, and displacement. (non-human primates communicate through non-verbal means, and vocally through call systems.)
An important job for anthropologists beginning fieldwork is to:
establish a sense of trust between them and their informants.
Ethnocentrism is the tendency for:
every society to view and promote itself as superior to others.
One of the defining characteristics of horticulture is that:
fields are not used continuously but remain fallow for a time after being cultivated. (allows soil to regain its fertility.)
The way in which gendered activities and attributes are differently valued and related to the unequal distribution of resources, prestige, and power in a society is called:
gender hierarchy (gender hierarchy is the different valuation of gendered activities and attributes)
Culture is not:
homogenous. (cultures can be diverse, with numerous subcultures and are thus heterogenous and multiple even when there exists a dominant culture)
Conflict is likely to be found:
in a wide range of more or less stratified societies across the globe.
To many in the US, an arranged marriage would be untenable because it violates their cultural value of
individual choice
The nuclear family is an adaptation to
industrialization (the industrial society of the US depends on mobility for career success. The nuclear form of family is the most independent and flexible and is thus well-suited for both foraging and Western industrial societies)
Increasing amounts of melanin in skin:
inhibits the body's production of vitamin D.
Modification of an existing design, idea, or cultural practice to produce something new is called:
innovation.
A central function of kinship in most societies is that it:
is central in determining people's rights and responsibilities.
The obligatory homosexual period for adolescent Sambian males is practiced because:
it is believed that only men can make men and it is thus necessary to a proper masculine identity.
The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure distinguished between langue and parole. Langue refers to:
language as an abstract system. (pg. 105, Langue (language)- is the arbitrary and abstract system of signs that existed independently of any speaker. Parole (speech) - actual performance of language by an individual speaker.)
The main function of bridewealth is to:
legitimate the reproductive unit created by the marriage.
If you live in a society that practices exogamy, you are expected to
marry someone of a different social group
As a result of the high degree of mobility required of an industrial society and the cultural emphases on romantic love and individual independence, the US family type is largely:
neolocal and nuclear
The earliest anthropologists, such as Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan, were often called Armchair Anthropologists. This is likely so because:
often did not perform fieldwork and based findings on non-anthropologists perspectives. (relied on amateurs, travelers, explorers, missionaries and colonial officers, who recorded their experiences in remote areas of the world)
The smallest unit of sound that can make a difference in meaning is a:
phoneme
In modern, industrialized societies, kinship
plays an important, but not central, role in establishing rights and relationships.
In the United States, resistance to capitalism is probably most common among:
rural people who don't want full-time employment.
One of the purposes of forensic anthropology is:
settling humanitarian issues following political violence. (ex. in Guatemala, forensic anthropologists have helped identify victims of the 36-year civil war, providing data for humanitarian, social justice, and human rights organizations) (ex. Rwanda and Bosnia)
The strongest and most permanent bond in the matrilineal society of the Hopi is between
sisters (The Hopi household and society centers on a core of related women, primarily sisters and secondly mothers and daughters)
Leveling mechanisms are:
social practices that result in evening out the distribution of wealth.
One of the world's most sexually repressed communities is:
the Irish of Inis Beag
The difference between unlineal descent and bilateral descent is that bilateral descent systems:
use both maternal and paternal lines to reckon a person's descent.
The relationship between language and culture is best illustrated by the fact that:
vocabularies emphasize culturally significant environmental features.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin:
when he accidentally contaminated his samples after 10 years of research.
Anthropologists working for corporations:
work as members of teams to analyze the organization itself and/or the market.
Traditionally in Korean villages, the eldest son inherited most of his parents' property. In return for this, he was required to
worship his parents and ancestors after their death.
True of False: Most contemporary foragers are found in marginal areas of the world.
True
True or False: African American Vernacular English is as logical, abstract, and complicated as Standard Spoken American English.
True
True or False: An accurate term to describe divorce and remarriage in the US and elsewhere is serial monogamy.
True
About how long ago did the earliest modern humans (homo sapiens) live?
500,000 years ago (Around 500,000 years ago, some Homo erectus groups became more like what we now identify as Homo sapiens. By 35,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had spread throughout the range of all other Homo and became the only form present. (pg. 38)
When Western Apaches tell each other stories by imitating white men, they are acting out what they see as:
Anglo ethnocentrism and cultural insensitivity. (portray Anglos as incompetent and insensitive due to ethnocentrism.)
What is commonly part of anthropological field work?
Archival research, mapping space, participant observation, culture shock (e. all of the above)
What is a reason why cultivation did not arise everywhere in the world?
Because in some environments foraging strategies are more dependable.
Which of the following is an example of code-switching?
Conversations in which people incorporate multiple languages seamlessly.
Anthropology is considered a holistic academic discipline because it studies:
Culture, history, language, and biology. (all essential for a complete understanding of human society)
The major areas of pastoralism are found in:
East Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Subarctic.
True or False: All societies have the same rules for sexual access, marriage, infant care, post-marital residence, kinship, labor, and rights and obligations between generations.
False
True or False: In economies where households are the units of production, there can be substantial economic growth.
False
True or False: What is considered "masculine" and "feminine" behavior is the same across cultures.
False
True or False: The main point of the "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" essay is to show how foolish, illogical, and simplistic people's rituals and cultures are.
False (it is to show how all peoples and cultures have rituals that may seem extraordinary to others. It also asks us to consider the lens through which we see and judge other cultures and examine our own through the same critical lens. *The essay was about Americans*)
True or False: The study of the social use of space is called kinesics.
False (it's called proxemics. Kinesics is the study of body language as a form of non-verbal communication.)
True or False: Children in different societies learn to speak their native languages at different times because some languages are harder to learn than others.
False (learn how to speak at the same time in all cultures but differ in how much they actually speak. Nothing to do with complexity of the language)
True or False: The potlatches of Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest function solely to bring prestige to the chief and validate his inherited rank.
False (not only have to do with maintaining prestige but more importantly, with the redistribution of goods to those who live in the village and invited guests from other villages)
True or False:Anthropologists working for government and industry often conduct secret research and this poses no ethical challenge to the discipline.
False (pg 63)
True or False: In the US, there is no gender inequality.
False (there still exists a significant gender hierarchy in the US)
True or False: Anthropologists who study indigenous people do not care about the political and social impacts of their work.
False (they care about the political and social impacts of their work and work actively to ensure that the rights and safety of indigenous people are not endangered.
True or False: Humans evolved from chimpanzees.
False (they share an ancestor that split from around 8 million years ago)
True or False: The earliest anthropologists were culturally relativistic.
False: The earliest anthropologists compared cultures and put them on a scale from savage to civilized, while cultural relativists, following Franz Boas, maintained that anthropologists must suspend judgement in order to understand the logic and dynamics of cultures. (pg.51)
The primary influence in American anthropology was:
Franz Boas (Columbia University, profound impact on the development of anthropology in the United States.)
What is one interpretation of the girl's initiation rites? They are more likely to occur:
In societies where the girl will live in her mother's home after marriage. (According to Judith Brown, such rites are more likely to occur when a girl will live with her mother after marriage because the rites are a way of publicly announcing a change in status which is more important because she will spend her adult life in the same place she spent her childhood)
What is the main problem with the "caveman diet" according to Peter Ungar, anthropologist at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville?
It is very difficult to reconstruct the diet of early humans and prehumans.
Cell phones are very popular in Jamaica, but researchers found that the average length of a cell-phone conversation there is 19 seconds. This is because:
Jamaicans call often in part to create webs of resources for times of need. (they do keep close contact with kin, but most names on people's cell-phone lists were not relatives.)
The most critical productive resources for horticulturalists are:
Land, tools, knowledge, and storage facilities.
Which of the following problems would an applied anthropologist be most likely to study?
Methods for improving healthcare delivery to American minority communities. (This would be "applied anthropology" because the outcome of the research can then be adopted and applied by a healthcare provision system such as a clinic or hospital)
Which best describes the multiregional model for human evolution?
Modern humans developed in many different places simultaneously. (multiregional model posits that modern humans evolved simultaneously in Asia, Africa, and Australia)
Historically, some of the most egalitarian societies can be found it:
Native North America (Among the most egalitarian of societies were (and in some cases are) Native North American groups)
Which of the following is an example of control over women's sexuality?
Sati Rape State control over abortion Honor killings *all of the above*
The dominant kinship system of the US is most similar to that of:
The Eskimo (Inuit)
Which of the following human groups are pastoralists?
The Yarahmadzai of Iran.
What is a critical way in which the Maasai of East Africa have adapted to fluctuations in climate?
They set aside large areas of water, such as swamps or lakes, which they only visit in times of drought.
True or False: One of the most fundamental attributes of capitalism is that people in capitalist societies sell their labor for wages in order to survive.
True (A key attribute of capitalism is that individuals' primary resource is their labor)
True or False: Sociolinguists study speech performance along with the structure and content of a particular language.
True (Sociolinguistics is the study of language in its social use - the performance of speaking - in the everyday)
True or False: Tylor's 19th century notion of culture was that all human societies had culture but in varying and hierarchical degrees.
True (Tylor proposed that cultures were hierarchical, from the savage to the civilized. No longer acceptable.)
Contemporary anthropological interest in regarding gender is best illustrated by which of the following questions:
What role does gender play in different sociocultural institutions in society? (The contemporary intrest in gender focuses on the role of gender as a basic building block of society, impacting various institutions including power relationships, economics, identities, and kinship)
Nanda and Warms criticize development projects which, based on male-biased beliefs:
Worsen women's position in their societies. Marginalize women's abilities and economic contributions. Disallow women to work with new technologies. Treat women's resistance to change as "irrational." *all of the above*
Polyandry is an adaptation to a number of economic and demographic circumstances. Among the Toda of South India, polyandry is an adaptation to
a shortage of females due to infanticide
A group of people who share a set of norms and rules for the usage of language is also called:
a speech community. (pg. 99)
The hijras of India are most accurately regarded as:
a third gender (Hijras are most accurately categorized as a third gender that it neither masculine nor feminine.)
As a result of the emergence of industrialized agriculture,
about 1% of people are directly involved in food production in the United States today. (In a nonindustrial society, more than 80% of people are directly involved in food production. In the United States, only 1% claim farming as their occupation and 2% of the population live on farms.)
Parallel cousin marriage is found:
among Arab Muslims of North Africa
The system used for classifying kin in the United States includes distinctions based on
consanguineal versus affinal kin, sex, and generation.
Marvin Harris' argument that the Hindu taboo on eating beef is logical because it is integrated with the entire Indian subsistence system is from the theoretical perspective of:
cultural materialism. (A theoretical perspective that holds that the primary task of anthropology is to account for the similarities and differences among cultures and that this can best be done by studying the material constraints to which human existence is subject.)
Descriptive (or structural) linguistics studies:
the structure and content of a language outside of the social context in which speaking takes place.
"Culture" in anthropology refers to:
the totality of learned and shared behavior patterns of a group of people.
When we compare genetic variation among humans between "races" we find that:
there is more variation between members of a given "race" than between "races."