Cultural Anthropology Questions

The thinker who developed evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century was

Charles Darwin

_____ variation means that change is gradual across groups and that traits shade and blend into each other.

Clinal

What is the main implication of Don Kulick's story about "coming out in the field" for other anthropologists who do not necessarily study in a gay community?

Developing rapport sometimes relies on sharing a lot in common with your subjects.

________ anthropology is the study of how different societies change, engage with, and preserve the natural world.

Environmental

______ are people who are expelled by the authorities of their home countries.

Exiles

One of the reasons intersex individuals interest anthropologists is how unusual and strange it is in a sexually dimorphic species.

Fa;se

Anthropologists do not consider unstructured, casual conversations data.

False

Anthropologists generally believe in one unified theory of culture

False

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

False

Because of the widespread use of mass media today, sociolinguists have found increasing homogeneity in the use of language in the United States.

False

Countries will find it relatively easy to decide what language its citizens will speak

False

Cultural anthropology is one of the most quantitative of the social sciences.

False

Cultural models and personal cognitive models are the same thing.

False

Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg conducted fieldwork among homeless San Francisco heroin injectors for

11 years

The BaMbuti are a tribe

False

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

False

The two-spirit people represent a third-gender role in India, translated as "neither man nor woman."

False

There are more undernourished people than obese and overweight people in the world.

False

There is a biological connection between the trait of skin tone and other "racial" traits, such as certain facial features and bodily shapes.

False

When people around the world have disputes, they are most concerned with winning and losing

False

When people consume the same clothes, food, and goods they eventually think and behave the same.

False

If you wanted to study patterns of kin relations in a community, which method would you use?

Genealogical method

What ethical dilemmas did Claire Sterk face in her research with prostitutes?

How to respond when her informants were abused or otherwise threatened.

One of Hortense Powdermaker's key insights about prejudice is that

It is based on flawed logic

Why do environmental anthropologists study formal nature protection?

It often generates social conflicts

Why is Karl Polanyi's distinction between formal and substantive economics important?

It recognizes that economies involve both how people think and the actual transactions they engage in.

_____ laws in the US South after the Civil War are a good illustration of explicit discrimination.

Jim Crow

_______ refers to the widespread assumptions that people make about the relative sophistication and status of particular dialects and languages.

Language ideology

_________ is the idea that people speaking different languages perceive the world differently.

Linguistic relativity

Why were American birth rates low from 1942 to 1946?

Most young married men were serving in the military

_____ are words or objects that stand for something else.

Signs

If you wanted to have consistent responses, what kind of interview would you use?

Survey interview

Which of the following was a negative result of the creation of cash economies in colonies?

The social cohesiveness of local communities was disturbed due to migration for work

Culture can be transmitted virtually through the Internet in addition to face-to-face interaction.

True

Culture is uniquely human.

True

Exchange is a human universal

True

Famines are often caused by not environmental factors but social factors like inequality.

True

Foragers tend work less to survive than agriculturalists or pastoralists.

True

Genetically speaking, humans are a remarkably homogeneous species: there is far greater variation within human groups than there is between them.

True

Globalization and localization are complementary dynamics.

True

In every society there is a gap between that society's ideal family and the real families that exist.

True

The dichotomy between males and females is not two distinct categories but a continuum of sexual possibilities in the human species.

True

The incest taboo, or the prohibition against marrying within the nuclear family, is a human universal.

True

The notion of "ritualized homosexuality" developed by Gilbert Herdt was problematic because Western notions of homosexuality do not easily apply cross-culturally.

True

The processes of capital accumulation and the expansion of European colonialism disrupted many societies

True

The prophet Mohammad had a Christian wife.

True

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

True

To follow political action one must be familiar with society's rules and codes about who gets to exercise power and under what conditions.

True

What do environmental anthropologists study?

All of the options

Why is the description of conflict as "ethnic violence" misleading? You Answered It suggests that violence is biological and certain "ethnic" groups are more violent than others. It ignores the peaceful interactions of groups over time. Correct Answer All of the options. It implies age-old conflicts that are not affected by historical or political events

All of the options

Koko and Washoe are two primates who learned

American Sign Language

_______ landscapes are important because they demonstrate that many landscapes that seem wild are actually the product of human shaping.

Artifactual

An anthropologist who studies unearned privilege would be most interested in which of the following? You Answered All of the options. A fieldwork situation like the one involving Tamie Tsuchiyama, in which she clearly got privileges other internees did not get because of her involvement with the government. Racial profiling of blacks by a security officer. Correct Answer A situation in which an upper-class man gets accepted at an Ivy League university because his father and grandfather went there.

A situation in which an upper-class man gets accepted by an Ivy League university because his father and grandfather went there.

The !Kung people of southern Africa are an example what kind of society?

Acephalous

To understand aggression in society, we have to understand which of the following factor(s)? The role of the state in promoting conflicts. The availability of weapons. All of the options Cultural attitudes toward violence.

All of the options

Which of the following are areas of social activity that globalization affects?

All of the options

Which of the following is a feature of language?

All of the options

Which of the following is an element of violence? All of the options The use of force to cause harm to someone or something. It is an efficient way to transform a social environment. A highly visible assertion of power.

All of the options

Which of the following methods allowed Fairhead and Leach to make their conclusions about landscape change in Guinea?

All of the options

________ is the economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, in which prices are set and goods distributed through a market.

Capitalism

A key feature of the theory of primordialism is that ethnic groups are created by powerful interest groups in a society.

False

Although Rambo was a popular American film, it has appealed to audiences in remote corners of the world, including small villages in New Guinea, whose residents unexpectedly give the same meaning to all the characters as American audiences do.

False

Environmental anthropologists accept the idea that all indigenous people are environmentalists.

False

Ethnobiologists are primarily interested in the conservation traditions of non-Western peoples.

False

Foodways rarely change because people are conservative.

False

For antidiscrimination activists and educators, it is usually enough to simply demonstrate the existence of prejudice and discrimination.

False

Genes often work in isolation.

False

In the economic view of class, each class is a fully achieved position, with no influence of family history

False

It has been proven that overpopulation will inevitably lead to global famine.

False

Languages change very slowly, taking generations or even centuries

False

Most anthropologists see the consumption of an object or commodity as an antisocial act.

False

People living in noncentralized political systems have generally welcomed their integration into centralized political systems because it provides greater security and prosperity for them.

False

Shamans usually act simultaneously as political leaders and healers in their communities.

False

Since the early nineteenth century, the traditional American family has consisted of a husband, a wife, a few children, and perhaps a pet

False

Which English philosophers were concerned with the problem of disorder and argued that chaos is avoidable by creating strong government?

Hobbes and Locke

When language speakers use slang or metaphor, they are engaging in which concept suggested by French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure?

Parole

_______ development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Sustainable

_____ is the pattern of word order used to form sentences and longer utterances in a language.

Syntax

Which of the following statements about the concept of race in the United States is true?

The American concept of race is inconsistent, categorizing by phenotype, culture, and nationality.

A commodity chain analysis applied to motorcars would be interested in all of the following except

The layout of the factory in which they are built

In a kinship system with matrilineal descent, who does a man inherit his rights to land and clan wealth from?

The mother's brother

A biocultural analysis of carpal tunnel syndrome would emphasize the complex intersection of environmental, biological, and social causes of it.

True

A correlation exists between female status and the importance placed on child rearing in a society

True

A critical reason for taking field notes is that there may be a long lag time between field work and writing and publishing about it.

True

A key feature of political anthropologist Maxwell Owusu's perspective on democracy in Ghana is that the state will work better if village chiefs play a role in decision-making.

True

According to Edward Sapir, language is the symbolic guide to culture.

True

All knowledge systems about nature, including science, are culturally based.

True

All societies have some sort of taboo against incest.

True

Although Russians do use money to buy things, they also rely on bartering when money is scarce.

True

Anthropologists agree that, in addition to prejudice and discrimination, unearned privilege upholds social inequality.

True

Anthropologists are deeply skeptical of grandiose claims about biological destiny and the belief that nature explains all of our behavior.

True

Anthropologists of the 1880s are referred to as "armchair anthropologists" because they never traveled abroad and they gathered data from other people's reports.

True

Anthropologists often take on the role of "student" treating their informants as their "teachers."

True

Anthropology is different from journalism because journalists' data are protected by law.

True

As children get older, cultural influences on behavior become much stronger; and as a result, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to isolate biological influences on what it means to be male or female.

True

Bourgois and Schonberg advocate a heroin prescription program for addicts who have failed methadone treatment

True

Buddhism is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic.

True

In many societies, some people live their lives as neither male nor female.

True

In some cultures people are not born as full persons but gain that as they fulfill social obligations.

True

In some hunter-gatherer groups relations are egalitarian and women can become leaders of a band.

True

Language can be used to exclude or marginalize some people.

True

Localization is the flip side of globalization.

True

Malinowski's analysis of the Kula cycle is important because it helps explain how Trobriand men get social status.

True

Many societies do not have a distinctive category of "art."

True

Most people are unaware of the structure of a language until someone speaking it makes a mistake.

True

Nuclear family units occur in and are important to nearly every society around the world.

True

One of the key functions of family is controlling and managing its members' wealth.

True

Poverty increases the risks of HIV infection

True

Professor Price will be annoyed with me if I use the term "Caucasian" to describe white people in my essays.

True

The processes of capital accumulation and the expansion of European colonialism disrupted many societies.

True

While there are poor and marginalized white groups, their status is based on class, not race.

True

A language of mixed origin that developed from a complex blending of two parent languages is called

a creole

.Fundamentalism is on the rise in Christian and Muslim groups. This can be attributed to __________.

a response to perceived social crises.

A society with no governmental head or hierarchical structure is an ______ society.

acephalous

A cultural constructionist who studies class would be interested in the cultural practices of an emerging middle class in a place like Nepal. the ways intelligence tests are designed in ways that demonstrate that poor people are less intelligent than rich people. all of the options. the new ways in which class identities are combined with racial and ethnic identities, such as the idea that WASP signifies white or Jew signifies middle class.

all of the options

A multisited ethnographer studying Mexican migrants in the United States would be most likely to conduct fieldwork by interviewing border officials. You Answered by traveling with migrants as they cross borders in the Southwest. in a government hearing on immigration policy. all of the options.

all of the options

Anthropologists today recognize that artists can reflect traditions specific to their societies challenge people's thinking reinforce cultural patterns all of the options

all of the options

The enhanced cognition of early modern humans allowed for

all of the options

When anthropologists go into the field they go with a set of questions they want to ask and have answered. all of the options. they often change the focus of their question to fit what they are seeing. they often go with the flow of everyday life, even if it seems off-topic at the time.

all of the options

During fieldwork cultural anthropologists learn the local language. study how environmental changes affect agriculture. record people's economic transactions. all of those listed.

all of those listed

A central technique involved in an informal, open-ended interview is to

allow questions to emerge in the course of the interview.

In northern Sudan, cultural ideology holds that uncircumcised women

are not respectable and will have difficulty finding a marriage partner.

Globalization is a process that includes all of the following EXCEPT __________.

benefits for most cultural minorities

The enhanced cognition of early modern humans allowed for

better defense against predators. all of the options. organizing social groups. increased sophistication in toolmaking.

Which technology led to what is referred to as the "sexual revolution" in the 1960s?

birth control pill

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.

Animal call systems

can only communicate in response to real-world stimuli

All societies differentiate between male and female, but one way Americans are unique in how we do it is that we link gender to

colors

The linked elements that contribute to the manufacture of an object like a T-shirt is called a ________.

commodity chain

Early anthropologists used the ________ method to establish models of social evolution.

comparative

Following Professor Price's definition and explanation of cultural relativism, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban's (in Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights) initial refusal to directly oppose female circumcision (or genital cutting) was an example of

confusing cultural relativsim with moral relativsim

Most families function as groups of real people who work together toward common ends. Such family groups are referred to as a

corporate group

The major difference in different kinship systems is the way they classify or group together their ______.

cousins

The unilateral decision of one social group to take control of the symbols, objects, and practices of others is called cultural _________

cultural appropriation

The ________ school emphasized that processes of enculturation shape the characteristics of a person's individual makeup.

culture and personality

The mental illness or psychological malady that a particular group of people suffers is also known as a ________.

culture-bound syndrome

According to Mauss and Durkheim, a key feature of the concept of personhood in many cultures is

defined socially

An example of _______ reciprocity is the Sagali rite in the Trobriand Islands, in which women make and give away banana leaf bundles when somebody dies.

delayed

Franz Boas and his students were ________, emphasizing that cultural characteristics result from a spread of cultural attributes from one society to another.

diffusionists

Anthropologist George W. Stocking, Jr., suggested that researchers should try to look at objects in several _______, beyond just height, width, and depth, including time, power, wealth, and aesthetics.

dimensions

Bronislaw Malinowski developed the _______ method, which requires the researcher to live with people for years in order to develop the "native's point of view."

ethnographic

The idea that cultures pass through stages from primitive to complex is known as social _____

evolution

One reason many anthropologists are skeptical of _______ is that it compares humans with primates to prove that certain things, like male dominance, are natural.

evolutionary psychology

When social norms dictate that someone from a particular clan must marry outside of that clan, anthropologists say that the clan is

exogamous

A biological determinist

explain human behavior, cognition, and perception as a result of evolutionary processes.

Anthropologists call family groups that consist of larger groups of relatives beyond the nuclear family ______ families.

extended

In the face of disparities in access to food, anthropologists are increasingly studying the issue of ______.

food security

For the Bantu and Sudanic villagers living near the Ituri Forest, the forest is

full of frightening malevolent spirits unfit for habitation.

What are people who belong to conservative religious movements that advocate a return to traditional principles called?

fundamentalists

The _____ system refers to the ideas and social patterns a society uses to organize males, females, and those who do not fit either category.

gender/sex

Anthropologists commonly refer to the ideas and social patterns a society uses to organize males, females, and those who do not fit either category as

gender/sex systems

The application of genetic explanations for breast cancer is an example of _________.

geneticization

One of the main reasons localization interests anthropologists is that

global integration creates opportunity for local cultures to express themselves.

A society's separate legal and constitutional domain that is the source of law, order, and legitimate force is the _______.

government

Anthropologist Ashraf Ghani's successes as a finance minister and presidential candidate in Afghanistan can be attributed to what?

his attentiveness to local social norms and priorities.

A visual anthropology perspective is applicable to all of the following except

how people need to work in order to buy things

The "one drop rule" enlarged the slave population by

including the mixed-race of children of slaveholders in the enslaved population.

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

informed consent

Ethnocentrism

is a common feature of culture.

Using the term "Caucasian" to describe white Americans

is incorrect and is a holdover from discredited racial classifications that perpetuates the perception that race is a valid construct

A key feature of environmental ______ movements is their attention to the linkages between social marginalization and environmental degradation.

justice

The ability to digest milk into adulthood is called _______.

lactase persistence

Culture is

learned and shared.

The recent rise of autonomy movements among Hawaiian separatists and Zapatistas in Mexico are examples of

localization

The anthropological study of _________ includes looking at the ideas and practices of manhood and how gender/sex identities are constructed.

masculinity

The practice in which a third party intervenes in a dispute to aid the parties in reaching an agreement is called _______

mediation

The practice in which a third party intervenes in a dispute to aid the parties in reaching an agreement is called _______.

mediation

Although all primates use some form of call system, some, such as chimps and ______, are known to be capable of more complex communication than a simple call system.

monkeys

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

natural selection

The flexibility of the brain is called

neural plasticity

Anthropologists began to understand the adaptability of the human brain by studying

nonhuman primates

After the US Civil War the biologizing of race became extreme and people were defined as black if they had a single African ancestor, which came to be known as the "_____ rule."

one drop

Claire Sterk's primary research methods were

participant observation and in-depth interviews

Which of the following would not be an explanation for divine madness (buduh) in Bali, Indonesia, by a biocultural anthropologist?

particular communities evolved to suffer from particular maladies.

Norms are stable because

people learn them when they are young

Saying race is ________ constructed is not enough because conceptions of race have real consequences.

socially

Power that transcends individuals, operating in settings and orchestrating settings in which social and individual actions take place, is

structural power

Most visitors to the 1935 exhibition of African art at New York's Museum of Modern Art were confronted for the first time by traditional African carvings of human and animal figures that were

stylized and symbolic representations of their subjects

The core of Anthony F. C. Wallace's understanding of religion was belief in

supernatural things

A relativistic perspective on the meanings of Coca-Cola in Tzotzil Maya communities in Chiapas, Mexico, would emphasize

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

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

the construction of statistical models to explain activities in the community.

Which approach to religious beliefs and behaviors do the Welsch and Vivanco feel is most effective at explaining why people engage in religious behaviors, especially behaviors that do not directly benefit the individual, such as the actions of Jonathan Daniels, Tom Coleman, or suicide bombers in the Middle East?

the idea that religion is a system of social action

A key component of nutritional anthropology as defined by Audrey Richards was attention to

the interrelationship between biology, health, ecology, political-economic, and cultural concerns.

A biocultural perspective on gender variance would emphasize all of the following EXCEPT

the relative allocation of sex-specific hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen, that influence whether a person is male or female.

If anthropologist Roy Rappaport were studying organic farming practices in the rural United States, he would likely want to understand

the understandings farmers themselves have of the landscape, as well as the understandings scientists and other outsiders have of the same landscape.

The main idea behind the holistic perspective is to study culture

through systematic connections of different parts.

James Ferguson, who is an anthropologist of development, argues that development exist

to expand state power

A word that best describes participant observation is

unstructured

An anthropologist who promotes principles of agroecology would likely view horticulture as

useful to learn new principles about sustainable farming.

The comparative method

uses data from many different societies.

Claire Sterk built rapport with the prostitutes she studied by

all of the options

Anthropologists often disguise the identity of their

informants

The exchange of brass rods for the purchase of cattle or the payment of bride price is an example of the use of

limited-purpose money.

What is the family formed by a married couple and their children called?

nuclear family

The approach that compares ancient texts and documents to analyze long-term linguistic change is called _______.

philology

If you were conducting a symbolic analysis of TV programs and wanted to identify a key scenario such as the Horatio Alger myth, which of the following would you focus on?

plots that are repeated in many of the programs that American viewers interpret as commonplace social experiences.

When a woman marries more than one man she is practicing

polyandry

Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 film Triumph of the Will celebrated and glorified the Nazi regime with footage of actual rallies and conventions. Although every frame of this film was authentic and nothing in it was staged, many people describe it as a _______ film because of the way it manipulated the footage to glorify Hitler and the Nazis.

propaganda

Good illustrations of a _______ include a funeral, wedding, graduation, or initiation, in which an individual or group of individuals change social position.

rite of passage

The reproductive forms and functions of the body are referred to as our _____.

sex

The practice of referring to people by the names of their children (such as father of Peter or mother of Susan) is called _______.

teknonymy

A foodways perspective on human evolution would emphasize

that changes in human dietary physiology are intertwined with how people grow, share, and eat food.

An action theorist studying political power in the US Senate would be especially interested in

the normative rules of conduct that senators are supposed to follow.

One of the primary reasons indigenous leaders criticize the dominant model for administering protected environmental areas is

they assume nature must be uninhabited by people.

The Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania practice

transhumant pastoralism.

A key finding of anthropologist Matthew Gutmann's fieldwork on masculinity in Mexico is that

women challenge men's domination over them by arguing and issuing ultimatums.