An important cultural difference between Serbs and Croats from the former Yugoslavia
is:
a. They speak different languages.
b. Serbs are Eastern Orthodox and Croats are Catholic.
c. Serbs are generally professionals while Croats tend to hold menial unskilled jobs.
d. Serbs are attached to socialism while Croats are generally capitalists.
e. Serbs and Croats generally dress differently.
Why is skin color not biologically adequate to distinguish a group of people?
a. Skin color is a continuum of difference.
b. Skin color is not visible to all people.
c. Color is a cultural category and not all people define color the same way.
d. Skin color is never the sole characteristics of race.
e. Skin does not technically hold or transmit color.
Sexual relations in Mangaia:
a. Don”t begin until men and women are in their thirties.
b. Are as common between men as between men and women.
c. Are a very serious and private matter, generally kept secret until the birth of children.
d. Take place in private, but with much public joking.
e. Frequently take place in public.
Which of the following is not an example of the fact that one needs to know the cultural
meaning assigned to an artistic elements in order to understand it?
a. The use of minor keys in Western music.
b. The use of red dyes in Dogon sculpture.
c. The wearing of rings in Western society.
d. The use of the corn motif in Mayan sculpture.
e. Knives are used in processing food.
The main function of bridewealth is to:
a. Assure that the new family has sufficient wealth to support itself.
b. Increase the status of the bride’s family.
c. Legitimate the marriage.
d. Reimburse the bride’s family for her high school fees.
e. Provide the bride and groom with furnishings for their new home.
The relationship between language and culture is illustrated by the fact that:
a. All languages have the same number of words.
b. The most complex societies have the most complex languages.
c. The vocabulary of a language emphasizes those features of the environment that are
culturally most significant.
d. All languages contain words for all aspects of the physical environment.
e. Some words are the same in all cultures.
Prayer and magic are most likely to be used when:
a. People are superstitious.
b. The outcome of an event is uncertain.
c. People are not Christians.
d. The outcome of an event is certain and the success of the technique is assured.
e. People have sufficient time to carefully consider an event.
An emic approach to the study of culture is one that emphasizes:
a. The description of a culture from the point of view of a member of the culture.
b. The comparison of similar parts of different cultures.
c. The study of the ecological adaptation of a culture.
d. Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
e. The search for general laws or principles that can be applied to all human cultures.
Which theoretical approach argues that no knowledge is objective and all knowledge is
influenced by the observer’s own culture, social position, and gender?
a. Native anthropology.
b. Feminist anthropology.
c. Postmodernism.
d. Transcendental ethnography.
e. Collaborative ethnography.
Biopsychological equality is the notion that:
a. Every person has equal intelligence.
b. All human groups have equal biological and mental capabilities.
c. From a biological and psychological perspective humans are, for all practical
purposes, the same as other primates.
d. There should be political programs to assure equal rights of all people.
e. Human culture is rooted in human biology.
Which of the following best describes an etic perspective in research?
a. Studying agricultural techniques by measuring the fertility of the soil in laboratory
samples.
b. Studying religion by interviewing people about their belief systems.
c. Collecting recipes from informants in order to track culinary traditions.
d. Interviewing respondents about their thoughts on the political organization of their
community.
e. Following herders and writing down their life histories.
Studies of the ways in which children learn language show that:
a. A language must be consciously taught; otherwise a child will not learn it.
b. Children in different societies learn to speak their native languages at different ages
because some languages are harder to learn than others.
c. Formal education is required for a child to learn to speak his or her native language
grammatically.
d. Human beings have an inborn predisposition for learning language and will speak
grammatically even if not taught to do so.
e. Boys learn to speak much earlier than girls.
Some theories propose that dowry is a source of security for women in society.
However, these are not wholly accurate because in many cases:
a. Dowry is symbolic only.
b. The amount of dowry is too small to serve such a function.
c. Women do not retain control over their own dowries.
d. Dowry is actually used to pay debts owed to non-relatives.
e. Dowry is likely to cause jealousy and hence ill treatment by the husband’s family.
Anthropologist Leo Chavez has referred to the U.S.-Mexico border as a place of
“political theatre.” By this he means that:
a. Attempts to control immigration are farcical.
b. Although the border makes news, the issues of real importance are played out in
Washington D.C.
c. Different groups use border issues to promote their own agendas, ignoring the real
needs of immigrants.
d. “Agitprop” tactics should be used by groups seeking to reform U.S. immigration law.
e. It is a place in which the American debate over immigration is dramatically played
out.
The Peyote Road refers to:
a. Interstate Highway 35, because it leads to the Texas counties where peyote grows.
b. The rejection of “white values” by Native Americans.
c. The code of living by which a Native American Church member guides his life.
d. Living outside the law.
e. The spiritual path that Ghost Dancers believed would lead to the disappearance of the
Whites and the return of the Buffalo.
Among the Kipsigis, in negotiating the terms of the bridewealth payment, a woman’s
parents:
a. Will frequently forgo the payment if the man is nice.
b. Will ask more payment if their daughter is in love with the man.
c. Will be motivated solely by making the best financial arrangement they can.
d. Will ask less for a highly educated woman who can earn her own living.
e. Try to find a balance between seeking a high bridewealth payment and concern for
their daughter’s happiness.
Rural cultivators who produce for the subsistence of their households but are also
integrated into larger, more complex state societies are called:
a. Farmers.
b. Horticulturalists.
c. Agriculturalists.
d. Peasants.
e. Peons.
A major characteristic of industrialism is that it:
a. Is an energy-conserving strategy.
b. Restrains population growth.
c. Is incompatible with urbanization.
d. First occurred at the same time in different parts of the Western and non-Western
world.
e. Invariably expands beyond its own boundaries.
A sorcerer who manipulates the fingernails of an intended victim to cause harm to that
person is using:
a. Mythological magic.
b. Contagious magic.
c. Ecological magic.
d. Psychological reductionism.
e. Superstitious magic.
In a matrilineal society:
a. There is no concern over who the child’s biological father is.
b. Women occupy the politically important positions.
c. Inheritance and succession pass from the mother’s brother to her son.
d. Men are afraid of women.
e. Marriages are extremely stable.
All of the following are associated with Franz Boas, except:
a. He was a critic of evolution.
b. He was the first professor of anthropology at Columbia University.
c. He was a champion of human rights.
d. He did his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands.
e. He trained a generation of U.S. fieldworkers.
In the early 20th century, a key function of education in the colonies was to do all of the
following except:
a. Create leadership qualities in the local population.
b. Convince local children that they were inferior to those who had colonized them.
c. Convince subject people to buy products offered by the colonizing power.
d. Show colonial subjects that they (the colonizers) were offering something of value to
the country they had taken over.
e. Create independence in the colony.
To say that anthropology is holistic means that anthropologists are particularly
interested in:
a. Objects and acts regarded as holy by various peoples.
b. The whole personality of any particular individual.
c. The integration of biological, sociocultural, and environmental factors in explaining
human behavior.
d. Studying every culture in the world.
e. The efforts to find holes in particular theories.
One of the key beliefs of the Ghost Dance movement was:
a. The ancestors would return on an immense train.
b. A dance had the power to turn those who did it into spirits of immense power.
c. Native Americans could live in peace and harmony with all people.
d. If Native Americans would use only traditional weapons, they could drive the Whites
from their land.
e. At the end of time, white people would turn black and black people would turn white.
Multinationals play an important role in pollution because:
a. They are frequently at the forefront of efforts to clean up the environment.
b. They are more susceptible to public pressure than other corporations.
c. They are wealthy and powerful enough to circumvent national laws designed to
control pollution.
d. They are particularly able to create and market products that can control pollution.
e. Factories of multinationals tend to pollute more per unit of goods they produce than
factories of locally owned companies.
Which of the following best characterizes the cross-cultural meaning of smiling?
a. A smile always means that people are happy.
b. Smiling is a reasonably good indicator of happiness or nonviolent intent.
c. In most cultures, people smile just before they kill.
d. The meaning of a smile varies from culture to culture.
e. Americans are virtually unique in equating smiling with happiness.
The defining characteristic of horticulture is that:
a. It is the most inefficient utilization of the environment.
b. Fields are not used permanently but remain fallow for some time after being
cultivated.
c. Plows and labor-intensive methods are used.
d. It cannot support populations over 25 persons per square mile.
e. It is found only in the New World.
Cultural relativism requires that:
a. All cultures be seen as equally good.
b. All cultures be seen as equally self-serving.
c. All cultures be measured against our own.
d. An individual must give up his/her culture in order to understand another culture.
e. Values and customs be understood in terms of the culture of which they are a part.
What is ethnography?
a. It is the reconstruction of past cultures based on material remains.
b. It is the scientific study of the concept of culture and adaptation.
c. It is the process of doing qualitative, fieldwork-based research.
d. It is the protection and exhibition of cultural resources.
e. It is the process of seeking laws and general principles that govern cultural
phenomena.
Which of the following statements is incorrect?
a. Human speech must be learned through a speech community.
b. There is a critical period in which language acquisition must occur in humans.
c. Children raised in isolation are never able to fully overcome this language disability.
d. Children begin experimenting with actual language sounds by the age of 6 months.
e. There is some limited biological basis for learning one language over another.
Which of the following theoretical perspectives most takes account of issues of conflict
and struggle within cultures?
a. Functionalism.
b. Structuralism.
c. Neo-Marxism.
d. Ecological functionalism
e. Symbolic anthropology.
To replace the population, women must have, on average, between 2.1 and 2.5 children.
Inequality is inevitable in large-scale social systems.
Margaret Mead was an important early cultural anthropologist who emphasized the
importance of culture in gender behavior.
Most contemporary foragers have been pushed back by more dominant cultures and are
currently found in marginal areas of the world.
In societies that practice preferential marriage, when there is no available partner, the
individuals remain unmarried.
Apple Corporation is the only one in the U.S. that has never been cited for labor abuses.
Industrialism has led to increased equality among people worldwide.
What jobs are available to people in the Brazilian favela of Olinda?
Tribes and chiefdoms both have centralized leadership.
Pastoralism is mainly found in areas that are too dry to support human populations
through agriculture.
Because conditions in factories are difficult, Chinese workers take almost any
opportunity to leave them and return to the countryside.
Totemism is a type of religion that is practiced by Native Americans.
How were gender roles depicted in Orientalist art?
What is the current world population, and approximately how many people are
considered “un-contacted” by industrialized cultures?
Foraging societies are likely to have rigid boundaries and defend them against
encroachers.
Describe theoretical contributions of Margaret Mead in the area of gender studies in
anthropology.