Anthropology Exam 1

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

Cultural Relativism

One problem with the argument that chimpanzees and humans are similar because they share so much _____ in common is that humans also share a significant percentage of it with daffodils

DNA

Who was responsible for the theory of social evolution?

EB Tylor

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

Ethnocentrism

The experience of feeling that the way your culture does things is the right way and any different way of doing things is wrong is called _________________.

Ethnocentrism

T/F Non-random mating among the Hutterite sect in Canada is a good example of how genetic drift works.

False

T/F The scientific method is a research method in pursuit of ultimate truths

False

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

A goal of synthesizing the entire context of human experience.

Ethics, which are _______________________________, are important to anthropologists.

A moral imperative

The defining feature of historical particularism is

Individual societies develop particular cultural traits and undergo a unique process of change.

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

Industrialization

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

Informed Consent

A cross-cultural perspective on eating insect larvae would reveal

The artificiality of taste the cultural constructions of insects as food, that eating, insects can be adaptive.

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

True

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

True

T/F Most anthropologists believe in a single unified theory of culture

True

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

(a) published and unpublished accounts of mask collectors who visited different villages(b) all of the answers are correct(c) interviews of village elders in different villages(d) museum collections

The most successful life form on earth is thought by many to be __________.

1 to 3 cells

When did anthropology emerge as an academic discipline

1800s

The idea that Ongee ancestors make tidal waves and earthquakes would be understood by an interpretive anthropologist as

A way of explaining how the world works

The example of dogs and wolves being able to breed even though they are different species underscores what important aspect of our approach to evolutionary theory?

Ambiguity is part of our own taxonomic system

A symbol is:

An object, idea, image, figure, or character that represents something else

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 thinker who developed evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century was:

Charles Darwin

The historical practice of more powerful countries claiming possession of less powerful ones is called _____________________ and was a driving force in anthropology.

Colonialism

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

Cultural Anthropology

______________________ refers to the adaptive changes that organisms make across generations.

Evolution

Gene flow is the movement of genetic material across different ecosystems.

False

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

False

T/F All humans are born with some culture.

False

T/F Contemporary cultural anthropologists often rank societies along an evolutionary scale from "primitive" to "advanced."

False

T/F Cultural appropriation involves relationships of power.

False

T/F Cultural relativism is important because it helps anthropologists understand and defend all the things that people in other cultures do.

False

T/F Culture is uniquely human.

False

T/F Humans and chimpanzees share 98% of their genes

False

T/F People rarely hold conflicting values.

False

The American anthropologist responsible for the concept of historical particularism was named

Franz Boas

The theory of culture that proposes that cultural practices, beliefs, and institutions fulfill the psychological and physical needs of society is called

Functionalism

Loss of genetic variation occurring when a small population creates a new, usually isolated, community is known as the _______________.

Gene flow

Michael Ames developed exhibits with native Canadian communities at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia because he believed in ______________.

Interpretive theory

The idea of biological evolution was first proposed by

Lamarck in the late 1700s

Linguistic anthropologists traditionally study

Language

2. The subfield of anthropology that studies language use is called

Linguistic Anthropology

How would a critical relativist explain Native American criticisms of cultural appropriation?

Native Americans claims from their point of view though it doesn't mean we should accept them as the only way to view the issue.

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

Natural Selection

The theorist most connected with post-structuralism is

Renato Rosaldo

An ethical approach to anthropological research would emphasize

Responsibilities toward the host country and the people being studied.

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

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

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

The Industrial Revolution

One of the useful results of a phylogeny is to show that

The ancestral history of a species or group of related species.

The primary ethical responsibility of anthropologists is to (who):

The people or species they study

The term diversity, when defined anthropologically, means?

The sheer variety of ways of being human around the world.

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

Theories

A change in DNA sequence leading to variation is known as mutation.

True

Genetic drift can occur because of an intentional change in health policies in a particular country.

True

Many evolutionary processes interact to affect the organism T/F

True

The physical characteristics of any organism that can be seen are known as the phenotype.

True

The core idea of Darwin's and Wallace's ideas—descent with modifications via natural selection—is intimately tied to what larger force?

Variation

The Greek philosopher Aristotle proposed that all life was arranged in

a great chain of being

A social consequence of introducing coffee into the highlands of Papua New Guinea was that

a)young men gained social status b) coffee plantations took over all open land c)people had more access to commodities

An evolutionary perspective on variations in physical traits reflects

adaptive changes

Comparing DNA sequences allows us to understand whether organisms are connected through common ___________.

ancestor

The peppered moth is a classic example of how environmental factors

are part of the interaction between genotype and phenotype

Examples of social institutions are

are patterns of beliefs and behavior centered on basic social needs.

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

building and testing hypothesizes by collecting, classifying and measuring data.

When Kay Warren presented her anthropological research, a group of Maya intellectuals, activists, and political leaders:

challenged her right to study, as a foreigner

One of the central ideas of Darwin's theory of evolution was the idea that

change in organisms was related to their adaptability to a particular environment.

A taxonomic structure is one that

classifies species by a system

"Owning" culture (means)

controlling symbols that give meaning

Anthropologists believe that analyzing human cultural phenomena by comparing those phenomena across different societies, called the _____________ approach, is necessary to appreciate how "artificial" our beliefs and actions are.

cross culture

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

cultural appropriation

Collective definitions of proper and improper behavior that "build" meanings through common experiences and negotiations are cultural __________________.

cultural construction

The ability of African cichlids, a popular pet fish, to develop highly similar body shapes despite coming from two different and geographically distant environments is an example of

developmental bias

The process of learning culture from a very young age is called

encultration

If you wanted to understand the norms of a society, you would most likely focus on

everyday interactions

When cultural anthropologists live in societies for one or more years observing social life, they are doing

fieldwork

The theory that posits that cultural practices and beliefs serve purposes for society is called

functionalism

Individuals migrating from one country to another can fundamentally alter genetic variation in all members of both populations because of _________

genetic drift

_____________ emerges when genetic variation within a group grows so large that its members begin exhibiting important genetic and physical differences.

genetic flow

The Human Terrain System, a program of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, used anthropologists to ______________________________.

help soldiers understand village politics and translate information.

Because our values and beliefs include many elements of life such as clothes, food, and language means that culture is

integrated

An ______________ approach to culture, such as that promoted by Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, and Mary Douglas, emphasizes that culture is a shared system of meanings.

interpretive

Many anthropologists are wary about traditions because, while they may feel antiquated to some people, they are often _____________.

invented

One of the more important ways that anthropology contributes to the development of evolutionary theory is that

it challenges the biological reductionism of much evolutionary theory

The success of simple life forms such as bacteria challenges one of the early ideas about evolution because

it demonstrates the oversimplification that comes from thinking humans are more highly evolved

Cultural determinism is unproductive for cultural analysis because

it explains all human action as the product of culture alone, it can justify atrocities, it denies the influence of factors like physical environment and biology on humans

Culture is (includes what characteristics?)

learned, shared based on symbols, integrated, dynamic

The comparative method is

look at similarities and differences across two or more cultures.

Plasticity can be understood as not being Lamarckian because

modification happens before genetic changes appear that change in place across generations

If you observed gradual changes in environmental temperature and, at the same time, observed that there were changes in the phenotype of a butterfly species over fifteen generations, which theory might best help explain what is going on?

natural selection

Speciation, when considered as an outcome consistent with Darwin's idea of descent with modification, supports the idea that

new life forms originate as a result of previously exiting ones

In terms of the extended evolutionary synthesis, large-scale agriculture, which produces massive amounts of both food and pollution, can be understood as a form of

niche construction

The influence of figures like Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and Galileo Galilei on the intellectual history of evolution is that they showed the importance of

observing nature and using evidence to build knowledge

During fieldwork, cultural anthropologists

participant-observation

Norms are stable because

people learn them when they are young

Sickle-cell anemia, a blood cell mutation, takes a toll on those afflicted, but is an example of a mutation that may also be useful because it

provides resistance to malaria in the tropics

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

qualitative

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

quantitative data

Anthropologists overcome ethnocentrism by

seeing matters from the point of view of another culture

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

social evolutionism

Gregor Mendel's findings about inheritance among pea plants stemmed from what key ability that he possessed?

the ability to observe closely

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

Ethnocentrism is:

the judgment of other groups by one's own standards and values

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, often focusing on the rise of cities, is called

Archaeology

Why was the discovery of penicillin in 1928 useful in our understanding of evolution?

Bacteria evolve quickly so we could study themm evolving.

If a functionalist were to explain why the teacher lectures from the front of the classroom to students organized in neatly arranged chairs, she or he would emphasize that

this way of teaching people to promote shared cultural goals.

One of the important ways that genetic material is moved between different populations, such as through gene flow, is

through a choice of sexual partner

The main idea behind the holistic perspective is to study culture

through systematic connections of different parts

The most enduring and ritualized aspects of culture are referred to as

traditions

While the behaviors selected for by Belyaev and Trut in their work with foxes have some genetic basis, it remains true that

variations in behavior and morphology are expected because genes don't always shape such variability

An anthropologist studying the evolution of human‒bacteria interactions would be most interested in all of the following except

what ever one doesn't sound like a bacteria

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

Biological Anthropology

Who was responsible for the theory of functionalism?

Bronislaw Malinowski

The work of Russian geneticists over forty years, selecting for tameness among foxes, resulted in changes in animal ___________.

phentotype

An evolutionary perspective would be most likely to explain colonialism as

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

The structuralist approach to culture theorizes what?

people make sense of the world through binary oppositions.

The idea that embraces dynamic cultural processes and the idea that the observer of cultural processes can never see culture completely objectively represent

post-structuralism

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

Proof of their primitive nature

T/F Qualitative methods often use the researchers themselves as the research instrument

True

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

True

Biological anthropologist Andrea Wiley's work with lactase persistence is important to public health because it draws attention to

policies should promote non-milk products that are also high in calcium, fat and protein

If you wanted to study genetic drift in Hutterite colonies such as those in which Michael Park studied gene flow, you would be interested in

population records that suggest a dramatic reduction in population

Domesticated and wild animals may differ in all the morphological traits listed below except

tameness

What U.S. food-policy ideas might emerge out of Andrea Wiley's research on lactase persistence?

policies should promote non-milk food products that are also high in calcium, protein and fat

The controversy between Native Americans and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) schools using mascots illustrates

the power of tradition

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

Culture

The nineteenth-century British anthropologist credited with the development of the concept of culture through an evolutionary perspective was

E. B Taylor

The method of data collection that involves prolonged and intensive observation of everyday life and is a hallmark of cultural anthropology is

Ethnographic Method

T/F Variation in genes acts as the sole source for biological change of traits in an organism.

False

The perspective that aims to identify and understand cultures in the entirety is called

Holistic

T/F Anthropologists have always approached a problem by specializing in one of the four subfields.

True

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

True

T/F Clyde Kluckhohn argued that both biological and cultural aspects of humanity must be seen as a continuum of small changes.

True

T/F Culture can be transmitted virtually through the Internet in addition to face-to-face interaction

True

T/F Culture consists of the collective processes that make the artificial seem natural.

True

T/F Historical archaeologists excavate sites where written historical documentation exists that provide an accurate description of the way the people actually lived.

True

"Survival of the fittest" is taken to mean competition for __________________.

mating

A _________ charts the evolutionary history of a particular taxonomic branch and yields information about its ancestry.

phylogenetic

The application of a holistic perspective to understand changes in everyday practices, such as eating breakfast cereals, reveals

the processes of cultural appropriation