De facto discrimination occurs when laws exist that harm a specific group and its
members.
Genocide refers to the physical destruction of an ethnic or religious group through mass
murder.
One theory regarding the universality of the incest taboo argues that by forcing people
to marry outside their immediate kin group, peaceful alliances between people would
extend to include a greater number of individuals.
Sapir and Whorf argued that all humans share a single set of universal grammatical
categories.
Nonstate societies generally lack permanent, specialized venues for art and religion.
In tribal societies, the village head leads by example and through persuasion; he lacks
the ability to force people to do things.
Communitas is the strong feeling of collective unity shared by individuals at the core of
a society who define themselves in opposition to the society’s liminal members.
Sociolinguists study linguistic performance by categorizing speakers as inadequate,
competent, or highly proficient.
The etic perspective refers to a non-scientific perspective.
U.S. kinship calculation is bilateral, traced equally through males and females; for
example, father and mother.
Neoliberalism refers to a revival of Adam Smith’s classic economic liberalism, which
suggests that governments should not regulate private enterprise and that free market
forces should rule.
Anthropologist W. Arens (1981) argued that the reason football is such a peculiarly U.S.
pastime is that Americans enjoy particularly violent sports.
Applied anthropology encompasses any use of the knowledge and/or techniques its four
subfields to identify, assess, and solve theoretical problems.
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.
Hunting is a distinctive human activity not shared with the apes.
Development projects usually fail when they try to replace indigenous institutions with
culturally alien concepts.
With the baby boom and the increase in industrialization, women have contributed more
and more to the workplace while receiving pay equal to that of their male coworkers.
Foragers typically live in mobile bands that disperse in the dry season and aggregate in
the rainy season.
Multiculturalism emphasizes the need for a series of cultures to abandon their old ethnic
identities and join together to forge a new and unique cultural identity.
The idea of universal and inalienable human rights that are superior to the laws and
ethics of any culture can conflict with some of the ideas central to cultural relativism.
As the post-World War II framework of nationsthe former Soviet Union and the
socialist and non-socialist countries of eastern Europe and Asiadisintegrates,
multiculturalism based on the U.S. and Canadian examples is becoming increasingly
popular.
Gender stratification tends to be extremely pronounced in patrilineal-patrilocal
societies.
Cultural values, social forces, and the media influence international sports success.
A new view of early human origins suggests that the emergence of a pair bond between
male and female would have allowed humans to recognize their relatives.
In chiefdoms, individuals are ranked according to seniority, but everyone is believed to
have descended from a common set of ancestors.
In the United States, there is a sharp distinction between what is considered art and
what is not.
Belgian colonial administrators were careful to use culturally significant differences to
distinguish between the Hutus and Tutsis.
Incest is a cultural universal that is defined the same way by all cultures.
In his comparison of rural versus urban communities, Robert Redfield found that
cultural innovations spread from urban areas to rural ones.
Physical features cluster into discrete genetic units.
Methodological relativism does not preclude making moral judgments or taking action.
The most common postmarital residence rule is matrilocality, in which the married
couple moves in with the husband’s family.
Studies investigating differences in the way men and women talk are examples of
sociolinguistics.
The term hypodescent refers to individuals who are racially pure.
Catharsis is an intense emotional release.
Pantribal sodalities function to integrate the community by providing a series of
important nonkin relationships.
Cross-culturally, the subsistence contributions of men and women are roughly equal.
Adaptation refers to the processes by which organisms cope with environmental forces
and stresses, such as those posed by climate and topography.
Trade and other economic relations between core and periphery disproportionately
benefit capitalists in the core.
The Hindu principle of ahimsa functions to ensure that cattle’s milk production is
maximized.
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 prelinguistic.
E. Paleolithic foragers were not Homo sapiens.
A sociolinguist studies
A. the interaction of history and sociology.
B. cross-cultural comparisons of phonemic distinctions.
C. the universal grammar of language.
D. linguistic competence.
E. speech in its social context.
In a bifurcate merging kinship system, which of the following would be called by the
same term?
A. F and MB
B. M and MZ
C. MB and FB
D. FZ and MZ
E. JR and BJ
Which of the following statements about polyandry is most likely true?
A. It is found only among fishing communities in Madagascar.
B. It is a cultural adaptation to the high labor demands of rice cultivation.
C. It is a cultural adaptation to mobility associated with male travel for trade,
commerce, and warfare.
D. Polyandry is almost always sororate.
E. It is legal in the United States.
What does ego stand for in a depiction of a kinship system?
A. the sense of distinct individuality that is present in any society
B. the emotional attachment felt by the people who use the system
C. the point of reference used to determine which kin terms go where
D. the boundary between one’s kin group and outsiders
E. a gender-free way of reckoning kinship
According to studies in the 1960s, why did young Etoro men and boys engage in
homosexual relationships?
A. They did not understand biological reproduction, which is why they no longer exist.
B. The status of Etoro women was the highest in the world, in a status above and
beyond males.
C. Genetic drift created a population dominated by a homosexual gene.
D. They believed it necessary for boys to ingest semen in order to mature in a healthy
way.
E. A warrior cult of older adult men vigorously enforced a monopoly on access to
women.
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 North America, the relatively high incidence of expanded family households in the
lower class is
A. the reason why the families of lower-class urbanites are dysfunctional.
B. an important strategy the urban poor use to adapt to poverty.
C. maladaptive, since poor families should be smaller in order to cut down on expenses.
D. caused by bifurcate merging, a practice brought to the United States by Irish
immigrants during the early part of the 20th century.
E. the result of enduring cultural ties to Europe.
How does the modern world system affect ethnographers?
A. There are almost no truly isolated cultures left, making it difficult to do real
ethnographic research.
B. They need to be aware of the fact that any culture they study is influenced by and has
influence on other cultures.
C. They must be careful when comparing their findings to those who did work in the
first half of the 20th century, when there were many isolated cultures.
D. There are no more indigenous peoples.
E. It has brought about a blending of the races, which makes it harder to identify
specific cultures.
When does copula deletion (absence of the verb “to be”) occur in BEV?
A. where SE has contractions
B. randomly
C. in the past tense
D. in the future tense
E. in SE, not BEV
Based on his observations that contact between neighboring tribes had existed since
humanity’s beginnings and covered enormous areas, Franz Boas argued
A. against treating cultures as isolated phenomena.
B. that even the earliest foragers engaged in warfare.
C. that language must have originated among the Neandertals.
D. that biology, not culture, was responsible for the vast majority of human diversity.
E. that general anthropologists were wrong to focus too much attention on biology.
What best characterizes the intervention philosophy of the British empire?
A. manifest destiny
B. white man’s burden
C. this land is our land
D. fifty-four forty or fight
E. in his majesty’s domain
All of the following are a form of polygamy EXCEPT
A. a man who marries, then divorces, then marries again, then divorces again, then
marries again, each time to a different woman.
B. a man who has four wives simultaneously.
C. a woman who has three husbands, all of whom are brothers.
D. a man who has three wives, all of whom are sisters.
E. a man who has two unrelated wives.
The Bar of Venezuela recognize multiple fathers, even though biologically there can be
only one actual genitor. This example shows
A. that women have a better understanding of biological processes than do men.
B. that like race and gender, kinship is culturally constructed.
C. cultures’ explanations for biological processes vary because the access and quality of
educational systems vary as well.
D. how, as in the United States, having more than one father is detrimental to a child’s
development and adjustment in society.
E. that multiple (partible) paternity is a common and beneficial biological fact.
Intersex, a group of conditions involving discrepancy between external genitals and
internal genitals, can have a variety of chromosomal causes that create a sex-gender
difference. Which of the following chromosomal anomalies identifies a person with the
chromosomes of a woman and female internal anatomy, but with male external
genitals?
A. XY Intersex person
B. True Gonadal Intersex person
C. Klinefelter’s syndrome (XXY configuration)
D. XX Intersex person
E. Turner syndrome
Which of the following best defines polygyny?
A. the type of marriage in which there is more than one husband
B. the custom whereby a wife marries the brother of her dead husband
C. the type of marriage involving only two spouses
D. the custom whereby a widower marries the sister of his dead wife
E. the type of marriage in which there is more than one wife
Franz Boas is the undisputed father of four-field U.S. anthropology. One of his most
important and enduring contributions to anthropology was
A. the field’s earliest example of multi-timed and multi-sited ethnography.
B. providing evidence that both biology and culture are susceptible to evolutionary
forces, thus providing a framework for the comparative method.
C. stressing the relevance of independent invention in human cultural history.
D. showing that human biology was plastic, and that biology (including race) did not
determine culture.
E. expanding the local ethnographic focus to include a regional perspective.
A holistic and comparative perspective
A. makes general anthropology superior to sociocultural anthropology.
B. refers only to the cultural aspects of human diversity that anthropologists study.
C. makes anthropology an interesting field of study, but too broad of one for any
application to real problems people face today.
D. most characterizes anthropology, compared to other disciplines that study humans.
E. is the hallmark of all social sciences, not just anthropology.
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
A. cultural transmission.
B. displacement.
C. linguistic imagination.
D. phonology.
E. productivity.
Intensive agriculture
A. has a significant impact on the environment, but this impact is very localized and can
be controlled.
B. can actually breed greater ecological diversity.
C. is not ecologically destructive when it is done with fuel-efficient machinery.
D. has significant environmental effects such as deforestation, water pollution, and
reduction of ecological diversity.
E. is an ecological improvement over sectorial fallowing.
Which of the following is NOT one of the possible consequences experienced after the
“shock phase” of an encounter between indigenous societies and more powerful
outsiders?
A. increased mortality
B. a broad-spectrum revolution
C. fragmentation of kin groups
D. damaged social support systems
E. disrupted subsistence
What kinds of societies typically are associated with slash-and-burn cultivation?
A. foraging societies
B. state-level societies
C. hydraulic societies
D. nonindustrial societies
E. nomadic societies
What term refers to a custom or social action that operates to reduce differences in
wealth and bring standouts in line with community norms?
A. rite of passage
B. revitalization movement
C. syncretism
D. taboo
E. leveling mechanism
Which of the following statements is NOT true?
A. The feminization of poverty is unique to the United States.
B. Households headed by women tend to be poorer than those headed by men.
C. Married couples are much more secure economically than single mothers.
D. Women now head more than half the households in the United States.
E. The feminization of poverty has serious consequences with regard to living standards
and health.
Why does this chapter on culture include a section that describes similarities and
differences between humans and apes, our closest relatives?
A. to emphasize culture’s evolutionary basis
B. to better define culture as a capacity that distinguishes members of the zoological
family hominidae from anatomically modern humans
C. to stress that there is no such thing as human nature
D. to promote the study of primatology, which has nothing to do with human culture
E. to illustrate how evolution is just a theory
The actions that individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming
cultural identities are referred to as
A. psychological individualism.
B. dynamic structuralism.
C. free will.
D. agency.
E. volition.
Language and communication involve much more than just verbal speech. The study of
communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions is
known as
A. linguistic physiology.
B. biosemantics.
C. kinesics.
D. protolinguistics.
E. diglossia.
Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined culture as ideas based on cultural learning and
symbols. For anthropologist Leslie White, culture originated when our ancestors
acquired the ability to use symbols. What is a symbol? It is
A. a distinctive or unique cultural trait, pattern, or integration that can be translated into
other cultures.
B. any element within a culture that distinguishes it from other cultures, precisely
because it is difficult to translate.
C. something verbal or nonverbal, within a particular language or culture, that comes to
stand for something else, with no necessary or natural connection to the thing for which
it stands.
D. a linguistic sign within a particular language that comes to stand for something else
in another language.
E. something verbal or nonverbal with a nonarbitrary association with what it
symbolizes.
What is the term for policies and practices that harm a group and its members?
A. colonialism
B. racism
C. prejudice
D. ethnocentrism
E. discrimination
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.
Noting that chiefdoms created the megalithic cultures of Europe, such as the one that
built Stonehenge, Kottak reminds us that
A. chiefdoms that failed to become states did not have enough stone.
B. chiefdoms and states can fall as well as rise.
C. all chiefdoms end up becoming states.
D. all powerful chiefdoms required elaborate stonework to be recognized by competing
groups.
E. chiefdoms have been among the rarest forms of social organization throughout
human history.
East Asians who have emigrated recently from India and Pakistan to northern areas of
the United Kingdom have a higher incidence of rickets and osteoporosis than the
general British population. This phenomenon illustrates that
A. natural selection continues today.
B. genetic adaptation of environmental stressors can occur within one generation.
C. cultural adaptation provides effective shortcuts to those that are genetically
disadvantaged in a foreign environment.
D. because of global warming, the lack of sunlight that people are exposed to in the
northern regions is made up for by the intensity of the sunlight.
E. natural selection’s role in determining skin color is a thing of the past, relevant only
prior to the 16th century, when massive population migrations altered the geographic
distribution of dark-skinned people.
Who are peasants?
A. people who ignore social norms of behavior
B. small farmers who own their own land and sell all their crops to buy necessities
C. rural people who produce food for their own subsistence but also sell their surpluses
D. anyone who lives in the country
E. anyone who falls below the poverty line
Anthropologists have an interest in sports because, as the media’s illustrations of U.S.
football suggest,
A. sports can symbolize certain key aspects of the culture where they are highly
popular.
B. sports are a rare aspect of culture that is influenced by culture but not vice versa.
C. sports allow for easy cross-cultural cultural comparison, because in the international
arena the way sports are practiced is the same.
D. they give insight into unfamiliar cultural dynamics that have nothing to do with the
general culture.
E. they exemplify how the media determine single-handedly which sports are popular
and which are not.