In non-Western societies, artists tend to be iconoclastic and antisocial.
“Greenwashing” describes a protest tactic used by militant eco groups, whereby they
douse executives of multinational corporations in green paint.
Even though women represent more than half the U.S. workforce, single-parent
families headed by women represent more than half the households below the poverty
line.
The emic perspective focuses on local explanations of criteria and significance.
There is more collective production and performance of art in non-Western societies
than in Western, industrialized states.
French colonial strategies incorporated both direct and indirect rule.
Essentialism refers to the process of viewing an identity as established, real, and frozen,
so as to hide the historical processes and politics within which that identity developed.
Your family of procreation is the one into which you were born.
Given the realities of the contemporary world, anthropologists need to apply methods
that protect their analyses from biases caused by external forces.
Members of a clan say they are descended from a common apical ancestor.
Boas and his students were strong proponents of cross-cultural comparisons, without
which they could not validate their findings.
The key difference between a village head and a big man is that the big man has
supporters in many villages, whereas the supporters of the village head are restricted to
his respective village.
Across differing societies, women generally dominate the practice of subsistence labor.
Pastoralists are specialized herders whose subsistence strategies are focused on
domesticated animals.
Traditionally, art and religion occupy mutually exclusive realms in society.
Sugar and cotton helped fuel the development of a capitalist world economy.
Racial categories in Japan are more rigid than racial categories in Brazil.
The high level of intensification and long-term dependability of horticulture paved the
way for the emergence of large urban settlements and the first states.
The Native Australian wooden wind instrument that is a popular “tribal” instrument
known for its unique tonality is called a nadaswaram.
A commonly stated goal of recent development policy is to promote equity; that is, to
reduce poverty and promote a more even distribution of wealth.
In tribal societies, the village head leads by example and through persuasion; he lacks
the ability to force people to do things.
Indigenous cultures are at the mercy of the forces of globalization, as they can do
nothing to stop threats to their cultural identity, autonomy, and livelihood.
The origins of AAVE are found mostly in West Africa, rather than in the dialects of the
southern part of the United States.
In bands, the leader occupies an official office with coercive control over the members
of the community.
In a study among the Hopi of northeastern Arizona, more than a third of the women of
the community had been divorced at least once, which correlates with the fact that these
women were socially and economically insecure.
Social movements worldwide have adopted the term indigenous people as a
self-identifying and political label based on past oppression but are now legitimizing it
in the search for social, cultural, and political rights.
Animism, belief in souls or doubles, is thought by some to be the earliest form of
religion.
When an ethnic identity is flexible and situational, it can become an achieved status.
Colonialism refers to the solicitation by peripheral countries of political and financial
assistance from core nations.
Belgian colonial administrators were careful to use culturally significant differences to
distinguish between the Hutus and Tutsis.
Culture helps us define the world in which we live, to express feelings and ideas, and to
guide our behavior and perceptions.
Cultural particularities are unique to certain cultures, while cultural generalities are
common to several (but not all) cultures.
In all languages, the same honorifics have the same meaning, regardless of context.
Cultures are integrated, patterned systems in which a change in one part often leads to
changes in other parts.
What Caribbean people did Grasmuck and Pessar characterize as living “between two
islands?”
A.Dominicans
B.Puerto Ricans
C.Cubans
D.Jamaicans
E.Trinidadians
Which of the following statements about religion is NOT true?
A.It is a cultural construction, therefore not a reality.
B.It can both create and maintain divisions within society.
C.It is sometimes a source of conflict.
D.It is, in some cases, ecologically adaptive.
E.It can both create and maintain social solidarity.
Which of the following is NOT typical of state-level societies?
A.a purely foraging-based subsistence strategy
B.class stratification
C.boundary maintenance systems
D.intensive, managed agriculture
E.a specialized decision-making system
In theory, a biological race is a geographically isolated subdivision of a species.
Humanity (Homo sapiens) lacks such races because
A.although humans exhibit biological differences, these are only skin deep.
B.human populations have experienced a type of controlled breeding that is distinct
from that experienced by dogs and roses.
C.human populations have not been isolated enough from one another to develop such
discrete groups.
D.they are politically incorrect.
E.humans are less genetically predictable than the animals and plants that are
susceptible to domestication.
Which of the following is NOT true of the role of the Internet in marriage in
contemporary societies?
A.Like the workplace, bars, parties, and churches, the Internet is part of what has been
labeled the “marriage market.”
B.The Internet has largely supplanted traditional “offline” partner shopping, which has
dramatically faded in significance.
C.Use of the Internet for partner shopping first began to soar when dynamic websites
based on databases were introduced.
D.By 2009, over 30 percent of Internet-enabled couples were meeting through online
dating.
E.While the Internet can enhance opportunities to form new personal relationships, it
can be disruptive to existing relationships, sometimes spurring jealousy in a spouse or
partner.
________ magic is based on the belief that whatever is done to an object will affect a
person who once had contact with it.
A.Contagious
B.Imitative
C.Serial
D.Sequential
E.Simultaneous
Which of the following is a distinguishing characteristic of the work that applied
anthropologists do?
A.They enter the affected communities and talk with people.
B.They gather government statistics.
C.They consult project managers.
D.They consult government officials and other experts.
E.They promote development.
What is an illness?
A.a nonexistent ailment (only diseases are real)
B.an artificial product of biomedicine
C.a scientifically described health threat
D.a purely linguistic problem
E.a condition of poor health perceived by an individual
There is no simple or universally accepted explanation for the fact that nearly all
cultures ban incest. However, the most accepted explanation for the incest taboo is
A.a genetically programmed instinctive horror.
B.a widespread and well-founded fear of biological degeneration.
C.that following rules of exogamy is adaptively advantageous.
D.that isolated social groups are better at survival.
E.a genetically determined attraction for those most different from us.
Over time, humans have become increasingly dependent on which of the following in
order to cope with the range of environments they have occupied in time and space?
A.cultural means of adaptation
B.biological means of adaptation, mostly thanks to advanced medical research
C.a holistic and comparative approach to problem solving
D.social institutions, such as the state, that coordinate collective action
E.technological means of adaptation, such as the creation of virtual worlds that allow us
to escape from day-to-day reality
In understanding the problems that have arisen in attempts at human racial
classification, why is it important to understand the difference between genotype and
phenotype?
A.The phenotypical traits typically used to classify humans into races go together as
genetic units.
B.Phenotypical similarities and differences always have a genetic basis.
C.Attempts at human racial classification have typically used genotypic traits like blood
type as markers of common ancestry, and these traits pass on from generation to
generation in discrete bundles.
D.Although phenotypic characteristics may change, the genetic material of populations
stays the same for a long time.
E.Attempts at human racial classification typically used phenotypic traits like skin color
as markers of common ancestry, but many such traits do not reflect the existence of
shared genetic material.
If a patriarchy is a political system ruled by men, what would a matriarchy bea political
system ruled by women? Anthropologist Peggy Sanday, who investigated these
questions among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, found that
A.true matriarchies do not exist.
B.women in matriarchies see their male counterparts as being inferior.
C.women of newer generations are experimenting with new ideas of gender roles.
D.although matriarchies do exist, they are not mirror images of patriarchies because, at
least for the Minangkabau, both men and women are seen as cooperative partners for
the common good.
E.although Minangkabau women play a central role in their culture’s social, economic,
and ceremonial life, they are still regarded as having lower status than men.
What term describes an independent, centrally organized political unit, or government?
A.state
B.ethnic group
C.nationality
D.bureaucracy
E.culture
“What right do ethnographers have to represent a people or culture to which they don’t
belong?” This question illustrates
A.anthropology’s crisis in representationquestions about the role of the ethnographer
and the nature of ethnographic authority.
B.the threat that the World Wide Web poses to anthropologists who are less and less
needed to write about and publish accounts of cultural diversity.
C.the fact that anthropologists are, after all, colonial agents of the industrialized West.
D.a lack of leadership in the American Anthropological Association.
E.the problem inherent in anthropology’s overspecialization.
More than half of all U.S. families living in poverty are
A.patrifocal.
B.blended.
C.headed by men.
D.headed by women.
E.dichotomized.
Less than half of Toronto’s citizens were born outside of Canada.
Culturalincluding linguisticdiversity is alive, well, and thriving in many countries.
Local entrepreneurs and international companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft
that capitalize on that diversity are positioned to succeed. Their success depends,
however, in large part on
A.their ability to creatively impose their product on others.
B.their capacity to take a biocultural approach to marketing.
C.external market forces that have little to do with people’s cultural, including
linguistic, preferences.
D.their ability to hire workers from the markets they hope to enter and teach them the
values of their corporate culture.
E.their capacity to follow one of the main lessons of applied anthropology, that external
inputs fit best when tailored properly to local settings.
A unilineal descent group whose members demonstrate their common descent from an
apical ancestor is a(n)
A.clan.
B.lineage.
C.extended family.
D.family of procreation.
E.family of orientation.
In South 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 one or
more 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
A.the fact that only same-sex marriages are recognized in patrilineal societies.
B.social rather than biological paternity, again illustrating how kinship is socially
constructed.
C.how biology overrides culture regardless of human intentions.
D.how often marriage is simply about property.
E.that it illustrates how romantic love is both universal and complicated.
________ is the term for the physical destruction of ethnic groups by murder, warfare,
and introduced diseases.
A.Sociocide
B.Ethnocide
C.Biocide
D.Genocide
E.Patricide
Who are peasants?
A.people who ignore social norms of behavior
B.small-scale farmers who own their own land and sell all their crops to buy necessities
C.small-scale farmers with rent fund obligations
D.anyone who lives in the country
E.anyone who falls below the poverty line
What are the four subfields of anthropology?
A.medical anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, and cultural anthropology
B.archaeology, biological anthropology, applied linguistics, and applied anthropology
C.biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and
archaeology
D.genetic anthropology, physical anthropology, psychological anthropology, and
linguistic and anthropology
E.primatology, ethnology, cultural anthropology, and paleoscatology
An anthropological understanding of ethnicity and race requires exploring how people
and institutions define, negotiate, and even challenge their identities in society. One
way that anthropologistsand social scientists in generaldo this is by studying status,
which refers to
A.a mutually exclusive social identity that is set by others and has little to do with the
actions of an individual.
B.any position, no matter what its prestige, that someone occupies in society.
C.one’s biologically determined identity within a hierarchical society.
D.one’s socially negotiated identity, which always changes throughout a person’s
lifetime.
E.an identity determined by the state through census practices.
________ refers to the specialized set of terms and distinctions that are particularly
important to certain groups.
A.Syntactical vocabulary
B.Spatial vocabulary
C.Focal vocabulary
D.Vernacular vocabulary
E.Temporal vocabulary
Anthropology is a science, yet it has been suggested that anthropology is among the
most humanistic of all academic fields. This is because
A.its main object of study are humans.
B.of its fundamental respect for human diversity.
C.its findings are best expressed with the tools of the humanities.
D.the field, particularly in the United States, traces its origins to philosophy and
literature.
E.it puts so much emphasis on the study of culture that cannot be studied scientifically.
Religion and magic don’t just explain things and help people accomplish goalsthey also
enter the realm of human feelings. In other words,
A.they serve emotional needs as well as cognitive (i.e., explanatory) ones.
B.religion helps reduce differences by promoting brotherly love.
C.they determine the emotional well-being of all their practitioners.
D.they often lead to extreme psychological disruption and even mental illness.
E.they are psychologically and cognitively relevant, but these realms are well contained
and have no effect beyond the mental well-being of the practitioner.
What term refers to an organism’s evident traits, or its “manifest biology?”
A.manifest destiny
B.genotype
C.biological circumscription
D.phenotype
E.hereditary inequality
Why do anthropologists question the idea that present-day foragers can be compared to
Paleolithic foragers?
A.There are no present-day foragers.
B.The types of foraging vary so widely that few generalizations can be drawn.
C.Present-day foragers have been in contact with food-producing and industrialized
societies for long periods of time and all live within nation-states that inevitably affect
their livelihood.
D.Paleolithic foragers were pre-linguistic.
E.Paleolithic foragers were not Homo sapiens.
In a lineal system of kinship terminology, which of the following pairs would be
referred to by the same term?
A.M and FZ
B.M and MZ
C.FB and MB
D.FB and FZ
E.F and FB
Marvin Harris’s studies (1974, 1978) of how beliefs and rituals may function as part of
a group’s cultural adaptation to its environment are an illustration of
A.how religion can play a prominent role in cultural ecology.
B.the dangers that religious effervescence can pose to the environment if it is not
contained.
C.how nonhuman primates also have a capacity for religion, although it is very limited.
D.the dangers of extending the realm of religion to nature.
E.the fact that religion is evolutionarily adaptive.
What are the basic differences and similarities between horticultural and foraging
populations? Indicate reasons for the contrasts.
Answer:Answers will vary
What was the Industrial Revolution, and how did life in that period differ from previous
life in villages, towns, and cities? Why is this topic relevant to an anthropologist?
Answer:Answers will vary
Discuss factors that increase linguistic diversity among speakers of the same language.
Answer:Answers will vary
List the first four of Cohen’s adaptive strategies and summarize the key features of each.
What are the correlated variables for each strategy?
Answer:Answers will vary
Discuss some common interests of linguistics and ethnography. Of what use can
knowledge of linguistic techniques and principles be to the ethnographer?
Answer:Answers will vary
How are sexuality, sex, and gender related to each other? What are the differences
among these three analytical concepts?
Answer:Answers will vary
Hundreds of ethnic groups and so-called tribes are colonial constructs. What does this
meandoes it suggest that they are only imaginary and therefore of no consequence?
Provide illustrations with your answers.
Answer:Answers will vary
Why are forms of mass media such as print and television important to the existence of
what Benedict Anderson calls an “imagined community?” How are new communication
technologies supporting or changing what Anderson meant by this term?
Answer:Answers will vary
The election of Barack Obama to the U.S. presidency in 2008 has rekindled public
discussion on race in the United States. How does this debate highlight the gap between
“the gray” and “the brown?”
Answer:Answers will vary
On the basis of theories about the origins and functions of religion, what are the
functions that organized religion serves in U.S. society? Can religion in the United
States be described as embedded in other sociocultural institutions, such as politics? If
you have spent most of your life in a different country, feel free to write about religion
in that country.
Answer:Answers will vary
Identify government, international, and private organizations that concern themselves
with socioeconomic change abroad and hire anthropologists to help meet their goals.
Review their mission statements. Do they make reference to the dangers of
underdifferentiation or overinnovation?
Answer:Answers will vary
How can the perspective of an ethnographer, who carries out research at the local level
of communities, contribute to large-scale environmental concerns such as climate
change and deforestation?
Answer:Answers will vary
What role do the arts play as collective expressions of cultural identities? Is art
conservative or liberal? Does art promote change or inhibit it?
Answer:Answers will vary
Provide a brief account of the history of theory in the discipline. Does this account
support the view that much of the history of anthropology has been about the roles and
relative prominence of culture?
Answer:Answers will vary
Ironically, religious fundamentalism is a very modern phenomenon. Why is this an
irony? How does learning about the concept of modernism in the context of a chapter
on anthropology and religion alter, if at all, the way you understand world events today?
Answer:Answers will vary
Discuss why it is so difficult to come up with a universally applicable definition for art.
Answer:Answers will vary
We should not view contemporary foragers as isolated or pristine survivors of the Stone
Age. Why? What is the evidence to suggest this view?
Answer:Answers will vary