ANTH 45N Lessons 1-8

How did early 20th-century American anthropology differ from the anthropology practiced in 19th-century?

19th-century anthropologists were mostly interested in present-day cultures as they existed, but 20th-century anthropologists were interested in the processes by which cultures changed.

How many phonemes are there in the word "fearlessness"?

9

In the article "Are Ethnographies Just So Stories?", Durrenberger examines whether science is a "culture-free enterprise." Using specific examples from your readings, explain the ways that anthropology is and is not a "culture-free enterprise".

After reading the article "Are Ethnographies Just So Stories?", it is evident that science is not a "culture-free enterprise" because science is always changing as time goes on. The article claims, "Even science is a cultural artifact....science changes from time to time and place to place." This is evident in our cultural understandings of science. For instance, as mentioned in the article, Europeans used to believe that the earth was at the center of the universe and the sun went around it. As time has evolved, this belief was proven incorrect and therefore has changed. In contrast, it is evident that science can be a "culture-free enterprise" when it comes to telling the truth about proven facts. The article discusses fiction writing and how the ideas of truth are "a little different, and that is why Pratt didn't understand the big flap about authenticity in anthropology." Although it might be appealing to a culture to fictionalize a proven fact, at the end of the day a fact is a fact. Furthermore, science doesn't fit the story of a cultural framework.

In a society with two exogamous lineages (moieties), who is the preferred bride for a male ego?

FZD

T/F: Activities that are biologically based, such as eating and sleeping, are universally the same for all humans.

False

T/F: Anthropologists agree that a comparative, cross-cultural approach is unnecessary as long as researchers are diligent in their work.

False

Which of the following statements is true?

Humans are plastic and are able to change their behavior in order to adapt to changing social and ecological conditions.

According to Aaron Podolefsky's article "Contemporary Warfare in the New Guinea Higlands", how are the introduction of Western goods, trade, marriage, and warfare interrelated in highland Papua New Guinea?

In Aaron Podolefsky's article "Contemporary Warfare in the New Guinea Highlands" the introduction of Western goods, trade, marriage, and warfare interrelated in highland Papua New Guinea are discussed. In sum, the argument it that the replacement by Western goods, of resources secured through trade reduced the economic need for intergroup marriage and the opportunity to arrange such marriages. Furthermore, with the early introduction of Western goods, particularly steel axes ands alt, local production was discontinued and marriage was no longer necessary to maintain these trade relations. As trade was discontinued, so decided the opportunity to make marriage arrangements between non-adjacent groups. With the decline of intergroup marriage over time, the likelihood of a dispute expanding into full-scale warfare increased. Changes in the production conditions caused changes in the trade relations which in turn caused further structural changes in regards to the web of kin ties, which finally caused changes in conflict behaviors.

Why does exogamy, the practice of seeking a husband or wife outside one's own kin group, have adaptive value outside of biological concerns for reducing genetic abnormalities?

It creates new social ties and alliances, providing access to more resources and social networks.

Which of the following statements about culture is TRUE?

It is acquired by humans as members of society through the process of enculturation.

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

Anthropologists distinguish between kin terms and genealogical kin types. What is the difference?

Kin terms are the words used for different relatives in a particular language, but genealogical kin types refers to the actual genealogical relationship.

Which of the following statements about vervet monkey call systems is NOT true?

Like language, they include displacement and cultural transmission.

As you move from generalized to negative reciprocity, which of the following increases?

Social distance between the people exchanging gifts.

What does it mean that kinship, like race, is culturally constructed?

Some genealogical kin are considered to be relatives whereas others are not, and the rules underlying such considerations vary across cultures.

Although the incest taboo is a cultural universal, cultures define incest differently. For example, in many cultures it is incestuous to marry parallel cousins but not cross cousins. What is the difference?

The children of two brothers or two sisters are parallel cousins. The children of a brother and a sister are cross cousins.

In your own words describe the four major subdivisions of anthropology

The four major subdivisions of anthropology include biological, cultural, archaeology, and linguistics. Biological anthropology is also referred to as physical anthropology because it focuses on human biology and its interaction with culture and behavior. It is a biological science that deals with the adaptations, variability, and evolution of humans and their past and current relatives. In contrast, cultural anthropology focuses on the study of the human behavior diversity among living humans. Cultural anthropology is also referred to as sociocultural anthropology and focuses on ethnology and ethnography. The third major subdivision of anthropology is archaeology. This subdivision focuses on the study of past human culture using any discovered remains. For instance, archaeology studies the material remains of past human culture from both prehistoric and historic times. The different features of these remains can tell an archaeologist a lot about the culture of humans during the time of the artifact. The final major subdivision of anthropology is anthropological linguistics. This area focuses on the study of human communication around the world through concentrations in descriptive linguistics, historical linguists, and sociolinguistics. Languages are important aspects of human culture that can be best understood in the cultural context so they can tell us about humans and their ways of communication.

Why do slash-and-burn cultivators stop using a plot of land every two to three years?

The wild vegetation needs time to reestablish itself before it is burned to clear the land and fertilize the soil.

Many foraging groups, both today and in the recent past, are familiar with the idea of food production, yet they have not adopted it. Why?

Their own economies provided a perfectly adequate and nutritious diet, with a lot less work.

Which of the following statements about purported attempts to assign humans to discrete racial categories based on common ancestry is true?

They are culturally arbitrary, even though most people assume them to be based in biology.

Traditional racial classification assumed that biological characteristics such as skin color were determined by heredity and remain stable over many generations. We now know that:

a biological similarity such as skin color is also the result of natural selection working among different populations that face similar environmental challenges.

Race, like ethnicity in general, is:

a cultural category rather than a biological reality

The Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) is:

a database that provides cross-cultural data.

Ethnology is characterized by all of the following except

a focus on the thick description of individual cultures

All of the following are a form of polygamy EXCEPT:

a man who marries, then divorces, then marries again, then divorces again, then marries again, each time to a different woman.

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

administering interviews according to an interview schedule over the phone

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

agency

A random sample:

allows generalization to the larger population from which it is drawn AND is a sample in which everyone has an equal chance of being selected.

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.

In North America, the relatively high incidence of expanded family households among people of lower socioeconomic status is:

an important strategy used by the urban poor to adapt to poverty.

__________ is a theoretical orientation which holds that evolution acts upon individuals rather than groups, and that individuals act in their own self-interest.

behavioral ecology

what are the four sub disciplines of anthropology?

biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology

According to what you learned this week, which of the following best characterizes the link between human biology and culture?

both culture and human biology are linked in shaping one another

Affinal relationships are:

created through marriage and alliance.

Research on the communication skills of nonhuman primates reveals their inability to refer to objects that are not immediately present in their environment, such as food and danger. The ability to describe things and events that are not present is called:

displacement

Applied anthropology:

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

Which of the following marital customs functions to maintain distinctions between groups?

endogamy

___________________ involves the collection of data that is used to create an account of a particular community, society, or culture.

ethnography

What component of cultural anthropology is comparative and focused on building upon our understanding of how cultural systems work?

ethnology

Longitudinal research, by definition, must involve traveling great distances to the study area.

false

T/F: Although agriculture is much more productive per acre than horticulture, horticulture is more reliable and dependable in the long run.

false

T/F: Animal call systems exhibit linguistic productivity.

false

T/F: Applied anthropology encompasses any use of the knowledge and/or techniques of its four subfields to identify, assess, and solve theoretical problems

false

T/F: Ascribed statuses are based on an individual's talents, abilities, and actions.

false

T/F: Domesticated animals, more specifically their manure and pulling capabilities, are key components of horticulture.

false

T/F: Dowries are most common in societies in which women occupy an elevated status position.

false

T/F: In general, the more complex and "advanced" a subsistence technology, the more efficient it is.

false

T/F: In societies that allow polygyny, the majority of men have multiple wives.

false

T/F: Learned behavior is found exclusively in human beings.

false

T/F: Once an individual has been enculturated, that person must adhere to the cultural rules that govern that culture.

false

T/F: Only band-level societies do not practice some sort of division of labor.

false

T/F: Phenotypic similarities and differences always have a genetic basis.

false

T/F: Polyandry is common and practiced under a wide range of conditions.

false

T/F: Serial polygamy is the practice of having more than one wife, but never more than one at the same time.

false

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

false

T/F: The English alphabet represents a written version of all 26 phonemes in the English language.

false

T/F: Theories can ultimately be proven true and directly tested.

false

T/F: With patrilineal descent, someone takes his or her father's last name but recognizes descent through both parents.

false

T/F: Your family of procreation is the one into which you were born.

false

T/F: anthropologists study only non-Western cultures

false

Linguistic anthropologists would label new words that have emerged during the digital age, such as mouse, modem, download, clickbait, and e-mail, as part of this generation's ________ vocabulary.

focal

Which of the following kinds of exchange is characteristic among the members of a family?

generalized reciprocity

________________ is the kind of exchange that is most typically found among members of a family?

generalized reciprocity

Richard Lee argued that the Ju/'hoansi (also called the !Kung San) of the Kalahari worked substantially less than do people in agricultural societies. This is because the Ju/'hoansi

have less wants than people in agricultural societies.

If an anthropologist proposes an explanation for something but it has yet to be verified, he or she has made a(n):

hypothesis

What does ethnicity mean?

identification with and feeling part of a cultural group and exclusion from other cultural groups

One of the key aspects of the holistic perspective in anthropology is

identifying the many connected aspects of human experience

First-cousin marriages (between the children of two siblings) are legally prohibited:

in some states in the United States of America.

The incest taboo - the rule that forbids sexual relations with close relatives:

is a universal across all cultures in the world.

Which of the following statements about culture is FALSE?

it is transmitted genetically

Understanding kinship systems is an important part of anthropology because:

kinship ties are important to the people anthropologists study; they are a key component of people's everyday social relations.

A unilineal descent group whose members demonstrate their common descent from an apical (founding) ancestor is a(n):

lineage

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.

In __________________, there is no required or implied social relationship between people involved in an economic transaction.

market exchange

Linguistic anthropologists also are interested in investigating the structure of language and how it varies across time and space. What is the study of the forms in which sounds combine to form words?

morphology

A holistic and comparative perspective

most characterizes anthropology when compared to other disciplines that study humans.

Many foragers try to get the "best bang for their buck", by focusing on resources (such as plant foods) that are easier to acquire, but don't necessarily provide as many calories per unit as other resources, such as big-game animals. This cliché is a good example of:

optimization

As part of their research, cultural anthropologists often hang out with the people while they work, play games, or relax. All the while, they like to ask lots of questions of the people they are studying. This method of getting to understand another culture is known as:

participant observation

Cultural anthropologists often spend a lot of time with people they are studying by hanging out with them as they work, relax, or play - often asking many questions during that process. This is known as:

participant observation

What is the term anthropologists use to identify ego's socially recognized father?

pater

A horticultural system of cultivation is characterized by:

periodic cycles of cultivation and fallowing

Anthropologists refer to sounds that make a critical difference in meaning within a language as:

phonemes

Romance languages like French and Spanish are daughter languages of Latin, which is their common

protolanguage

A measurement is _________________ if different researchers can use it and get the same results.

reliable?

In Sudan, a Nuer woman can marry a woman if her father has only daughters but no male heirs. This is done to maintain the patrilineage. The "wife" has sex with a man or men until she gets pregnant. The children born are then accepted as the offspring of both the female husband and the wife. What is important in this example is:

social rather than biological paternity, again illustrating how kinship is socially constructed.

A sociolinguist studies:

speech n its social context

Bridewealth (or lobola) is still prevalent in many African societies and traditionally involved the groom's family giving cattle (and sometimes other goods) to the family of the bride-to-be. Part of the desired effect in such an act is to help:

stabilize the marriage through establishment of mutual, vested interest.

What is the term for variations in speech due to different contexts or situations?

style shifting

T/F: A(n) ______________ represents something with which it is not intrinsically related.

symbol

What term refers to the arrangement and order of words into sentences?

syntax

In survey research, what is sampling?

the collection of a study group from a larger population

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

the genealogical method.

Which of the following was studied by Sapir and Whorf?

the influence of language on thought

In many industrial economies, alienation is typical, but in many nonindustrial socities:

the relations of production, distribution, and consumption are embedded within social relations.

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, and the needs they met, for people in contemporary society.

What unifies the four subfields of anthropology as it is practiced in the United States?

the study of human variation through time and space

What is anthropology?

the study of humans around the world and through time

What is a mode of production?

the way a society's social relations are organized to produce the labor necessary for generating the society's subsistence and energy needs

Traditionally, in some areas of the former Yugoslavia, several nuclear families were embedded in an extended family household called a zadruga. Among the Nayar in southern India, it was typical for people to live in matrilineal extended family compounds called tarawads. Descriptions of these two culturally specific cases highlight how:

there are many alternatives to the nuclear family.

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.

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.

T/F: According to the principle of linguistic relativity, all languages and dialects are equally effective as systems of communication.

true

T/F: Although humans do employ tools much more than any other animal does, tool use also turns up among several nonhuman species, including birds, beavers, sea otters, and apes.

true

T/F: Anthropological analysis of potlatching contradicts the classic economics assumption that individuals are, by nature, profit maximizers.

true

T/F: Historical linguists use linguistic similarities and differences in the world today to study long-term changes in language.

true

T/F: Horticulture is capable of supporting permanent villages.

true

T/F: In most foraging societies, private, individual ownership of land has been almost nonexistent.

true

T/F: Industrialization increases mobility, which plays a major role in the disappearance of extended families in the United States.

true

T/F: Looking at marriage cross-culturally, weddings and marriages are usually less about the couple than about relationships with the couple's social network, including friends and family.

true

A lobola, a substantial marital gift from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin, such as among the BaThonga of Mozambique, is:

widespread in patrilineal societies