Anthropology

Today's global economy and communications link all contemporary people, directly or indirectly, in the modern world system. People must now cope with forces generated by progressively larger systems—the region, the nation, and the world. For anthropologists studying contemporary forms of adaptation, why might this be a challenge?

According to Marcus and Fischer (1986), "The cultures of world peoples need to be constantly rediscovered as these people reinvent them in changing historical circumstances."

The Human Terrain System has sought to embed anthropologists and other social scientists within military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which of the following is NOT a reason anthropologists and the AAA Executive Board object to the use of anthropologists in the military? Group of answer choices

Anthropologists, by the nature of their discipline, are not permitted to interact with any military personnel

How are cultural rights different from human rights?

Cultural rights are vested in groups, not in individuals

What do anthropologists mean when they say culture is shared?

Culture is an attribute of individuals as members of groups

Although rap music originated in the United States, it is now popular all over the world. Which of the following mechanisms of cultural change is responsible for this?

Diffusion

What did Bronislaw Malinowski mean when he referred to everyday cultural patterns as "the imponderabilia of native life and of typical behavior"?

Features of culture such as distinctive smells, noises people make, how they cover their mouths when they eat, and how they gaze at each other are so fundamental that natives take them for granted but are there for the ethnographer to describe and make sense of

Which is the key assumption in Claude Lévi-Strauss's structuralism?

Human minds have certain universal characteristics that originate in common features of the Homo sapiens brain and lead people everywhere to think similarly regardless of their society or cultural background

An agreement to take part in research after having the nature, procedures, and possible impacts of the research explained is known as

Informed consent

How did the assumptions of humankind's cultural past held by Karl Marx differ from those of theorists such as Herbert Spencer, E.B. Tylor, and Lewis Henry Morgan?

Marx was not a progressivist in the way that Spencer, Tylor, and Morgan were but, instead, he argued that humans evolved in societies characterized by primitive communism

Use culture instrumentally

People use culture to fulfill their basic biological needs for food, drink, shelter, comfort, and reproduction

Émile Durkheim's focus on social facts illustrates what assumption shared by many anthropologists?

Psychologists study individuals, but anthropologists study individuals as representative of something more: a collective phenomenon that is more than the sum of its parts

Émile Durkheim's focus on social facts illustrates what assumption shared by many anthropologists? Group of answer choices

Psychologists study individuals, but anthropologists study individuals as representative of something more: a collective phenomenon that is more than the sum of its parts

Agency

The actions individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural identities are referred to as

Which of the following statements about theories is the most accurate?

Theories provide explanations for association

Anthropology may improve psychological studies of human behavior by contributing

a cross-cultural perspective on models of human psychology

If an anthropologist proposes an explanation for something but it has yet to be verified, he or she has made

a hypothesis

Interpretive anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz approach the study of culture as

a system of meaning

The American Anthropological Association has formally acknowledged a public service role by recognizing that anthropology has which two dimensions?

academic and applied anthropology

What is the term for the kind of cultural change that results when two or more cultures have consistent firsthand contact?

acculturation

In the field, ethnographers strive to establish rapport: a good, friendly working relationship, based on personal contact,

achieved in large part by engaging in participant observation

Based on his observation that contact between neighboring tribes had existed since humanity's beginnings and covered enormous areas, Franz Boas argued

against treating cultures as isolated phenomena

Which of the following is an example of independent invention, the process by which people in different societies have innovated and changed in similar but independent ways?

agriculture

As we see in the film "Off the Verandah," Bronislaw Malinowski Group of answer choices

all are correct

Which of the following was true of evolutionism in nineteenth-century anthropology?

all are correct

Regarding human capacity for culture, anthropologists agree that

although individuals differ in their emotional and intellectual capacities, all human populations have equivalent capacities for culture

"What right do ethnographers have to represent a people or culture to which they don't belong?" This question illustrates

anthropology's crisis in representation—questions about the role of the ethnographer and the nature of ethnographic authority

Archaeologists studying sunken ships off the coast of Florida or analyzing the content of modern garbage are examples of how Group of answer choices

archaeologists study the culture of historical and even living people

In survey research, a sample should

be constituted so as to allow inferences about the larger population

Primatology is a specialty within

biological anthropology

What are the four subdisciplines of anthropology?

biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology

This chapter mentions the work of Wolf and Mintz, both students of Julian Steward, as illustrations of approaches that

consider the relevance of world-system theory and political economy to anthropology

What process is most responsible for the existence of international culture?

cultural diffusion

Marvin Harris's approach to anthropology was called

cultural materialism

During a massive construction project, a city came across a treasure trove of archaeological sites under its streets. It decided to call in an expert to help decide what needed to be saved and how to preserve information about what was not saved. This expert's role is best described as

cultural resource management

Culture can be adaptive or maladaptive. It is maladaptive when

cultural traits, patterns, and inventions threaten the group's continued survival and reproduction and thus its very existence

An anthropologist has just arrived at a new field site and feels overwhelmed with a creepy, profound feeling of alienation, of being without some of the most ordinary, trivial (and therefore basic) cues of his culture of origin. What term best describes what s/he is experiencing?

culture shock

People have to eat, but culture teaches us what, when, and how to do so. This is an example of how

culture takes the natural biological urges we share with other animals and teaches us how to express them in particular ways

Which of the following is a mechanism of cultural change?

diffusion

The human capacity for culture has an evolutionary basis that extends back perhaps 3 million years. This date corresponds to

early toolmakers, whose products survive in the archaeological record

Many human traits reflect the fact that our primate ancestors lived in trees. These traits include all of the following EXCEPT

echolocation

Applied anthropology

encompasses any use of the knowledge and/or techniques of its four subfields to identify, assess, and solve practical problems

What is the process by which children learn a particular cultural tradition?

enculturation

Despite the variety of research techniques the ethnographer may utilize in the field, in the best studies the hallmark of ethnography remains

entering community and getting to know its people

The tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to use one's own standards and values in judging others is called

ethnocentrisim

Which of the following research methods is a distinctive strategy within anthropology?

ethnography

The view that each element of culture, such as the culture trait or trait complex, has its own distinctive history, and that social forms (such as totemism in different societies) that might look similar are not comparable because of their different histories, is known as

historical functionalism

This chapter's description of how humans cope with low oxygen pressure in high altitudes illustrates

human capacities for cultural and biological adaptation, the latter involving both genetic and physiological adaptations

What is the difference between ideal culture and culture as practiced?

ideal culture refers to norms and expectations while culture as practiced is what actually happens

People in the United States sometimes have trouble understanding the power of culture because of the value that American culture places on the idea of the individual. Yet in American culture, Group of answer choices

individualism is a distinctive shared value, a feature of culture

Anthropologists' early interest in Native North Americans

is an important historical reason for the development of four-field anthropology in the United States

Reflecting today's world, in which people, images, and information move about as never before, fieldwork must be more flexible and done on a larger scale. The result of such fieldwork is often an ethnography that

is increasingly multisited and multitimed, integrating analyses of external organizations and forces to understand local phenomena

The work of which of the following anthropologists illustrated a renewed interest in cultural change and even evolution (although of a very different sort than Tylor and Morgan had in mind)? Group of answer choices

julian steward

More recent approaches in historical anthropology, while sharing an interest in power with world-system theorists, have focused more on

local agency, the transformative actions of individuals and groups within colonized societies

Ethnographers typically combine emic and etic research strategies in their fieldwork. This means they are interested in applying both

local- and scientist-oriented research approaches

All of the following are characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer EXCEPT

longitudinal

The presence of more efficient respiratory systems to extract oxygen from the air among human populations living at high elevations is an example of which form of adaptation?

longterm

A holistic and comparative perspective

most characterizes anthropology among the disciplines that study humans

Human rights are seen as inalienable. This means that Group of answer choices

nations cannot abridge or terminate them

Was Karl Marx a progressive?

no

relationship with informants - Franz Boas?

none are correct

Which of the following is a cultural generality?

nuclear family

Anthropology is a science, yet it has been suggested that anthropology is among the most humanistic of all academic fields. This is because

of its fundamental respect for human diversity

Radcliffe-Brown advocated social anthropology as a synchronic rather than a diachronic science—that is, a study

of societies as they exist today (synchronic, one at a time) rather than across time (diachronic)

Which of the following is NOT an example of participant observation?

over the phone planned

The relatively recent creation of virtual worlds has attracted contemporary ethnographers to venture into online communities. Of the various techniques used to study these virtual worlds, which has been most important?

participant observation

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic field technique of the ethnographer?

random sampling

As humans organize their lives and adapt to different environments, our abilities to learn, think symbolically, use language, and employ tools and other products

rest on certain features of human biology that make culture, which is not itself biological, possible

As humans organize their lives and adapt to different environments, our abilities to learn, think symbolically, use language, and employ tools and other products Group of answer choices

rest on certain features of human biology that make culture, which is not itself biological, possible

Franz Boas is the undisputed father of four-field US anthropology. One of his most important and enduring contributions to anthropology was Group of answer choices

showing that human biology is plastic, and that biology (including race) does not determine culture

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined culture as ideas based on cultural learning and symbols. For anthropologist Leslie White, culture originated when our ancestors acquired the ability to use symbols. What is a symbol? Group of answer choices

something verbal or nonverbal within a particular language or culture that comes to stand for something else, with no necessary or natural connection to the thing for which it stands

Which of the following terms refers to the theoretical paradigm that holds that customs (social practices) function to preserve the social structure?

structural functionalism, as illustrated in the work of Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard

Which of the following statements about subcultures is NOT true?

that its mutually exclusive

The research technique that uses diagrams and symbols to record kin connections is called

the genealogical method

There are two meanings of globalization: globalization as fact and process, and globalization as ideology and contested policy. What is the primary and neutral meaning of globalization as it is applicable to anthropology?

the spread and connectedness of production, communication, and technologies across the world

Which of the following best describes biological anthropology?

the study of biological and cultural approaches to a given problem

Which of the following best describes biological anthropology? Group of answer choices

the study of human biological diversity

Traditional ethnographic research focused on the single community or culture, which was treated as more or less isolated and unique in time and space; however,

there has been a shift within the discipline toward recognition of ongoing and inescapable flows of people, technology, images, and information

In anthropology, cultural relativism is not a moral position but a methodological one. It states that

to understand another culture fully, we must try to understand how the people in that culture see things

What are cultural particularities?

traits unique to a given culture, not shared with others

In survey research, what term is used to refer to the attributes that vary among the members of a population?

variables