Anthropology Exam Questions

An ethical approach to anthropological research emphasizes

responsibilities toward the host country and the people being studied

Until the early 1900s, anthropologists believed that their role was to observe indigenous ways of life, interview elders, and assemble indigenously-made objects because those lifeways would soon disappear-an approach referred to as the

salvage paradigm

Even though anthropologists use parts of the scientific method, some don't see what they do as science because

the complexity of social behavior prevents any completely objective analysis of human culture

An evolutionary perspective would be most likely to explain colonialism as

the natural abilities of more civilized people to control less civilized people

The primary ethical responsibility of anthropologists is to

the people or species they study

The comparative method refers to

the practice of comparing two or more cultures

A relativistic perspective on the meanings of Coca-Cola in Tzotzil Maya communities in

those meanings are only sensible within a culturally specific set of ideas about religion and spirituality

Which of the following is the most significant aspect of the salvage paradigm?

anthropologists need to collect information from societies before they die out

The subfield of anthropology that studies human evolution, including human genetics and human nutrition, is called

biological anthropology

When did anthropology emerge as an academic discipline

1800's

If _________ is food, then _______ is a meal.

Mary Douglass, language and sentence

A qualitative approach to studying social life in your university would emphasize all of the following except

A) prolonged and intensive participation and observation in the community B) the construction of statistical models to explain activities in the community* C) the use of field notes, recordings, images, and documents to understand life in the community D) your own subjective impressions

__________ is an approach in anthropology that directly addresses issues of social justice, such as poor health and political disempowerment

Action anthropology

The thinker who developed evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century was

Charles Darwin

Assuming your culture's way of doing things is the best is called

Ethnocentrism

________ refers to the adaptive changes that organisms make across generations

Evolution

Anthropologists have always approached a problem by specializing in one of the four subfields

False

Anthropologists like E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Renato Rosaldo do not see cultural anthropology as a science

False

Contemporary cultural anthropologists rank societies along an evolutionary scale from "primitive" to "advanced" to categorize human diversity

False

Historical archaeologists excavate sites where written historical documentation exists that provides an accurate description of the way the people actually lived

False

The scientific method is a research method in pursuit of ultimate truths

False

What prompted intellectuals to start systematically explaining the differences among people?

Industrial Revolution

A key concern in the 1850s that shaped the discipline of anthropology was the emergence of a new scientific theory called "evolution."

True

Diversity, defined anthropologically, refers to both multiplicity and variety, which is not the same thing as "difference."

True

There is rarely any guessing involved in the development of theories because they are tested repeatedly

True

When qualitative methods are employed, the researchers themselves are often used as the research instrument

True

A key principle of the holistic perspective developed by Franz Boas is

a goal of synthesizing the entire context of human experience 

The practical use of anthropological knowledge to address real-world problems, sometimes called anthropology's "fifth field," is

applied anthropology

The subfield of anthropology that studies the material remains of past cultures is called

archaeology

A quantitative approach to studying the archaeological past would be most interested in

building and testing hypotheses by collecting, classifying, and measuring the remains of past cultures

The practice of anthropologists explaining their research and being clear about the risks involved is

called informed consent

The historical practice of more powerful countries claiming possession of less powerful ones that was a driving force in anthropology

colonialism

The subfield of anthropology that studies human diversity, beliefs, and practices is called

cultural anthropology

The moral and intellectual principle that one should withhold judgment about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices is called

cultural relativism

A key feature of the ______ is that it refers to the taken-for-granted notions, rules, moralities, and behaviors within a social group that feel natural

culture concept

Some anthropologists believe that the ethical principle of ______ is not enough, and that anthropologists have a responsible to actively "do good" in a society

do not harm

When cultural anthropologists live in societies for extended periods of time observing social life, they are doing

fieldwork

Diversity defined anthropologically

focuses on multiplicity and variety

Linguistic anthropologists study

how our language evolved, how our mouths form words, and how indigenous people classify their social worlds

A key element of the scientific method, which both explains things and guides research, is

hypothesis

What process involves shifting from an agricultural economy to a factory-based one?

industrialization

Can anybody own culture?

involves the processes in which people comprehend, shape, and act in the world around them

During anthropological fieldwork, cultural anthropologists

learn the local language, record people's economic transactions, and study how environmental changes affect agriculture

The subfield of anthropology that studies language use is called

linguistic anthropology

Ethics, defined as ________, are important to anthropologists

moral questions of right and wrong

The process by which inheritable traits are passed along to offspring because they are better suited to the environment is referred to as

natural selection

During colonialism, the perception of non-Western peoples as primitive or savage is referred to as the process

othering

Western colonial powers understood the different customs and cultures of the people they colonized as

proof of their primitive nature

The application of the comparative method in his research in Papua New Guinea led coauthor Robert Welsch to focus on

published and unpublished accounts of mask collectors who visited different villages

Research that involves interviews, observations, images, objects, and words is a

qualitative study

Techniques that classify features of a phenomenon and count, measure, and construct statistical models are collecting and analyzing

quantitative data