Cultural Anthropology Midterm

Field notes are usually written on the spot, not after the fact.

False

People in the periphery responded passively to capitalist expansion.

False

Culture is uniquely human.

True

One reason many environmental anthropologists are skeptical of _______ as a sole explanation for environmental degradation is that it doesn't recognize that different societies and people within each society consume differing amounts of resources.

overpopulation

Foodways rarely change because people are conservative.

False

Systematic conversations with informants to collect data are called ______.

Interviews

The theorist most connected with post-structuralism is

Renato Rosaldo

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

culture and personality

Culture is

learned and shared

Anthropologist Sherry Ortner distinguished three kinds of culturally powerful symbols that include all of the following except

narrative symbols

A word that best describes participant observation is

unstructured

Although cultural differences produce different behaviors and practices, humans feel emotions in the same way worldwide.

False

An ecological footprint is a measurement of the population an area can support.

False

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

False

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

False

Most mammals use some form of call system to communicate with others of their species. Dogs and chimpanzees share an additional linguistic characteristic because they can communicate simple combinations of ideas about things they are not currently seeing.

False

The use of money is a human universal.

False

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

False

Why is Fairhead and Leach's study about landscape change in Guinea important?

It shows why forests can increase because of human population growth and cultivation.

Analyses that focus on the linkages between political-economic power, social inequality, and ecological destruction are typical of which approach?

Political ecology

For pastoral groups such as the Dinka and the Nuer, the cow acts as which kind of symbol?

Summarizing symbol

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

Survey Interview

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

True

A key marker of development anthropology's success is when local perspectives and voices are paid attention to in development projects.

True

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

True

America's pattern of gender inequality is built into our linguistic practices.

True

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

True

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

True

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

True

Many non-Western societies have conservation traditions that are based on distinct principles of human-nature relationship.

True

The most important goal of the Congolese sapeur is to

accumulate prestige.

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

appropriation

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

artifactual

Because the years of crucial human brain development coincide with the years of enculturation, we can refer to the human brain as a ______ brain

biocultural

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

challenged her right to study the Maya culture as a foreign anthropologist.

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

commodity chain

People who live through objects and images not of their own making are ________.

consumers

Because the years of crucial human brain development coincide with the years of enculturation, we can refer to the human brain as a ______ brain.

cultured

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

defined socially

People around the world often think of _______ as undermining self-determination but will often accept it when it is on their own terms.

development

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

ethnocentrism

Eating practices mark

gender, age, ethnic group

If a single female immigrant brings a trait to a small, sparsely populated island and within many generations it is present in 50% of the population, it would be an example of

genetic drift.

One of the main reasons localization interests anthropologists is that

global integration creates opportunity for local cultures to express themselves. it is easier to study local settings than global settings. anthropologists have always been locally focused.

Cultural ________ occurs when influential nations of the West impose their products and beliefs on less powerful nations.

imperialism

The enhanced cognition of early modern humans allowed for

increased sophistication in toolmaking better defense against predators. organizing social groups.

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

informed consent

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

invented

The comparative method

is a general approach, holds that no society or behavior should be seen in isolation, refers to the practice of comparing two or more cultures.

A world systems theory is important for all of the following reasons except

it lends itself readily to ethnographic methodology.

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

justice

is a key element of anthropological fieldwork because it is a systematic research strategy of "just hanging out."

participant observation

Which of the following analyses of Christmas shopping would be least likely to come from a follower of cultural economics?

people always make decisions about what to buy on the basis of getting the lowest price.

From an anthropological perspective, the main reason Wall Street banks are not the bastions of individualism and cold rationalism many think they are is that

personal relationships and local knowledge are critical to successful transactions.

The set of visible characteristics of an individual is called a

phenotype

refers to the structure of speech sounds.

phonology

Mary Douglas compared food's structure in society with language and a formal dinner with a _______________.

sentence

are words or objects that stand for something else.

signs

Claire Sterk gained initial entry to the community of prostitutes she wished to study

slowly and by not presenting herself as an expert.

A major social impact of industrial agriculture is __________, as can be seen by the creation of a peasant class.

social stratification

is the study of how sociocultural norms and contexts shape language use in society.

sociolinguistics

On the island of Java in Indonesia, nearly every sentence marks a person's _______ between speaker and listener.

status (position)

There are four major modes of _______ that anthropologists understand as the social relationships and practices necessary for procuring, producing, and distributing food.

subsistence

If an anthropologist who studies cultural models were to analyze the Ilongot concept of liget, she or he might emphasize

that individuals have their own idiosyncratic ideas and experience of the emotion, that Ilongot culture has a patterned way of understanding liget, that Ilongot understandings of liget help them interpret other people's actions

Edward Sapir, who had been a student of Franz Boas, saw himself as both a cultural anthropologist and a professionally trained linguist. He urged cultural anthropologists to pay close attention to language during field research because

the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up from the language habits of a particular social group., language is a guide to "social reality.", we understand the material world through the language we speak.

If Benjamin Whorf were trying to find further proof that grammar shapes the way people perceive the world, which of the following would NOT be a focus of his research?

the density of the population in the several communities.

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.

An anthropologist who studies the cultural landscape of Zapotec farmers of southern Mexico would be primarily interested in

the meanings and images they have of nature that shape their farming practices.

An evolutionary perspective would be most likely to explain colonialism as

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

Which of the following would most interest an anthropologist who studies geneticization?

the search for a breast cancer gene

Using life history interviews, researchers are able to

understand how a person's age affects his or her role in the community.

The concept of "fortress conservation" would be applicable to all of the following situations EXCEPT

The construction of ecotourist facilities to protect visitors from wandering lions in the Tanzanian savannas

What do environmental anthropologists study?

The effects of global economic changes on human-nature relationships The impact of pollution on certain groups The impact of sustainable development initiatives on certain groups

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

True

Although language is one of the most rule-bound aspects of human culture, it is also one of the least conscious.

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

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

True

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

True

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

True

Globalization and localization are complementary dynamics.

True

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

True

Language can be used to exclude or marginalize some people.

True

Nature and nurture are not opposed but intertwined.

True

Qualitative methods often use the researchers themselves as the research instrument.

True

The ecological costs of producing beef in the United States are externalized on the landscape and water resources.

True

Anthropologists are generally ignored by "development" experts at institutions like the World Bank.

False

Cultural models and personal cognitive models are the same thing.

False

The Russian concept of blat, in which people give and receive favors, interests anthropologists because it appears to be preventing the emergence of capitalist markets.

False

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

False

In which of the following locations would you find an anthropologist doing fieldwork?

Silicon Valley, A factory, A Malawian village

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

True

A cultural relativist would explain neural plasticity as

closely related to cultural differences in how people perceive and think.

A substantivist would be most likely to explain the Kula cycle as

closely tied to important social institutions, such as kin networks, trading ties, and political structure.

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 relativism with moral relativism

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

cultural anthropology

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.

gorilla

If Jakob Grimm, who developed what has come to be known as Grimm's law, were analyzing the historical relationships among the so-called dialects of Chinese (such as Cantonese and Mandarin), what data would he be looking for in his linguistic fieldwork?

how the speakers of each dialect pronounce different words with similar meanings in the several dialects

Claire Sterk built rapport with the prostitutes she studied by

listening to the women's stories, providing practical assistance, truly wanting to learn from the women and acknowledging their expertise

What pivotal evolutionary shift happened around 1.8 to 2 million years ago that is closely related to human foodways?

meat consumption increased

are people who leave their homes to work for a time in other regions or countries

migrants

A ______ is when anthropologists drop into a community for just a few weeks to collect data.

rapid apprasial