anthro chpt 13

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

variables

Franz Boas's famous biological studies of European immigrants to the United States revealed and measured phenotypical plasticity, showing that the environment and cultural forces could change human biology.

True

Morgan and Tylor, both considered among the fathers of anthropology, worked within the paradigm of unilinear evolution.

True

Much of the history of anthropology has been about the roles and relative prominence of culture and the individual.

True

Survey research studies a small sample of a larger population.

True

Despite the differences among theoretical paradigms of practitioners as varied as Harris (cultural materialism), White (general evolution), Steward (cultural ecology), and Mead (configurationalism), all of them have what in common?

a strong sense of determinism, leaving very little (if any) room for the exercise of individual human agency

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

a system of meaning.

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

agency.

In survey research, a sample should

be constituted so as to allow inferences about the larger population.

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 he is experiencing?

culture shock

Practice theory

focuses on how individuals, through their actions and practices, influence and transform the world they live in.

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 particularism.

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 a characteristic field technique of the ethnographer?

random sampling

Franz Boas is the undisputed father of four-field U.S. anthropology. One of his most important and enduring contributions to anthropology was

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

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

In survey research, what is sampling?

the collection of a study group from a larger population

As investigators who illustrated the functionalist approach in anthropology, both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown performed ethnographic research focused on

the role of cultural traits and practices in contemporary society.

Lewis Henry Morgan is well known for his work League of the Iroquois, considered anthropology's earliest ethnography. This and others of his works illustrate his view of unilinear evolutionism, which is that

there is one line or path through which all societies have to evolve, and this path involves specific stages that cannot be skipped, ending at the final stage of civilization.

Beyond Morgan's and Tylor's early anthropological work, no major theoretical paradigm in anthropology has embraced the role of evolution in cultural change.

False

The American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics prohibits anthropologists from working with governments on matters of national security.

False

The overall trend in anthropological theory has been from theories that put human agency at the center of cultural dynamics to paradigms that see evolution as the main force behind cultural change.

False

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.

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)?

Julian Steward

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.