In bands, the leader occupies an official office with coercive control over the members
of the community.
Health care systems refers to the nationalized health care services that exist only in core
industrial nations.
Rites of passage involve three phases: separation, liminality, and totemism.
Your family of procreation is the one into which you were born.
Biological anthropologists study only human bones.
The study of television’s impact on people’s behavior, attitudes, and values is the
domain of sociologists, not anthropologists.
Theories must be proved correct before they can be accepted.
The term indigenous people gained legitimacy within international law with the
creation in 1982 of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.
Once an individual has been enculturated, that person must adhere to the cultural rules
that govern that culture.
Strictly speaking, medical anthropology is an applied field within anthropology.
Sugar and cotton helped fuel the development of a capitalist world economy.
In general, folk art is much less symbolic than the artistic expression of full-time artists.
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.
According to Edward Tylor, religion evolved from polytheism to animism to
monotheism.
Academic and applied anthropology have a symbiotic relationship, as theory aids
practice and application fuels theory.
The only chance for human racial classification schemes to work is to shift from using
phenotypic to genotypic characteristics of human populations.
According to Wallerstein, the nations in the world system can be classified into three
types: core, periphery, and frontier.
Colonialism refers to the solicitation by peripheral countries of political and financial
assistance from core nations.
All languages and dialects are equally effective as systems of communication.
Ethnoecology is any society’s set of environmental practices and perceptionsthat is, its
cultural model of the environment and its relation to people and society.
Royal endogamy among Hawaiians functioned to limit the number of conflicts about
royal succession, this explanation being an example of the latent function of a social
custom.
Institutional discrimination happens when institutions rather than individuals are the
targets of discrimination.
Black English Vernacular (BEV) is an incomplete linguistic system that is able only to
express thoughts and ideas related to life in inner-city communities.
Although anthropologists may be interested in contemporary global issues such as
climate change, their perspective is necessarily limited to the local scale of their
fieldwork.
Morgan and Edward Tylor, both considered among the fathers of anthropology, worked
within the paradigm of unilinear evolution.
With balanced reciprocity, the giver expects something in return equal to what was
given.
A comparative study of 68 rural development projects from all around the world found
culturally compatible economic development projects to be twice as successful
financially as incompatible ones.
The anthropological approach to the study of political systems and organization is
global and comparative and includes nonstates as well as the states and nation-states
usually studied by political scientists.
Pastoralists are specialized herders whose subsistence strategies are focused on
domesticated animals.
Scientists prefer the term climate change to global warming. The former term points out
that, beyond rising temperatures, there have been changes in sea levels, precipitation,
storms, and ecosystem effects.
Serial polygamy is the practice of having more than one wife, but never more than one
at the same time.
A plural society is the opposite of a society that forces groups to assimilate.
Neolocal postmarital residence rules require newly married couples to establish their
own residence.
Cross-culturally, women’s roles tend to be focused on activities associated with the
home, but men are more active in the public domain.
The U.S. and Canadian governments use the same racial categories in their census.
A key element of multiculturalism is its respect for ethnic diversity.
Scientific medicine is not the same thing as Western medicine. Despite advances in
technology, genomics, molecular biology, pathology, surgery, diagnostics, and
applications, many Western medical procedures have little justification in logic or fact.
Which of the following statements about groups with the patrilineal-patrilocal complex
is NOT true?
A. They are often characterized by the view that the women are polluting.
B. Their land and prestige are passed through the females.
C. They have strongly developed private-public dichotomies.
D. They have their prestige goods under male control.
E. They often practice polygyny and have patterns of intervillage raiding.
How are nonindustrial economic systems embedded in society?
A. People are not aware that they are working toward a goal.
B. The economic system has little to do with the everyday life of the people.
C. The economic system cannot easily be separated from other systems, such as
kinship.
D. Most nonindustrial economies are managed systems.
E. Most economic activity takes place far from home.
What is the term for the use of force by a dominant group to compel a minority to adopt
the dominant culture?
A. attitudinal discrimination
B. genocide
C. forced assimilation
D. ethnocentrism
E. environmental racism
In states, how is art typically defined?
A. If something is mass produced, it cannot be art.
B. State societies rely heavily on critics, judges, and experts to make these decisions.
C. Only things intentionally created as art can be called art.
D. Only artists create art.
E. If it is expensive, it is art.
What do anthropologists mean when they say culture is shared?
A. Culture is an attribute of particular individuals.
B. Culture is an attribute of individuals as members of groups.
C. Culture is what ensures that all people raised in the same society have the same
opinions.
D. Culture is universally regarded as more important than the concept of the individual.
E. Passive enculturation is accomplished by more than one person.
Which of the following research methods is a distinctive strategy within anthropology?
A. its practice of cross-cultural comparison
B. the biological perspective
C. ethnography
D. the evolutionary perspective
E. working with skilled respondents
Which of the following statements about human skin color is NOT true?
A. Skin color varies because of differences in ultraviolet radiation between different
regions of the world.
B. The amount of melanin in the skin affects the body’s production of vitamin D.
C. The amount of melanin in the skin affects the body’s ability to process lactose.
D. Light skin is at a selective advantage outside the tropics, because it admits ultraviolet
radiation, which causes the body to manufacture vitamin D and thus prevents rickets
and osteoporosis.
E. Light skin is at a selective disadvantage in the tropics, because it is more susceptible
to the destruction of the folate that is needed to produce folic acid to protect against
neural tube defects in human embryos.
What did Bronislaw Malinowski mean when he referred to everyday cultural patterns as
“the imponderabilia of native life and of typical behavior”?
A. Features of culture such as distinctive smells, noises people make, how they cover
their mouths when they eat, and how they gaze at each other are so fundamental that
natives take them for granted but are there for the ethnographer to describe and make
sense of.
B. Everyday cultural patterns are full of senseless cultural “noise,” and it is the
anthropologist’s job to get at the truly valuable behaviors that distinguish one culture
from another.
C. Everyday cultural patterns of native life can best be studied by asking key informants
to explain them.
D. Features of everyday culture are, at first, imponderable, but as the ethnographer
builds rapport, their logic and functional value in society become clear.
E. Everyday cultural patterns are important but so numerous that their detailed
description should not be included in the main body of an ethnographic study.
One effect of the spread of industrialization has been
A. a decrease in global power.
B. the destruction of indigenous economies, ecologies, and populations.
C. the incorporation of indigenous communities into industrial projects.
D. an increased awareness among industrialists and states of the need for environmental
protection.
E. an increase in the equitable distribution of wealth.
Which of the following is NOT a valid criticism of many economic development
projects?
A. They often pay more attention to the physical features than to the social features of
the project’s setting.
B. Project planners have no real interest in helping communities.
C. Project personnel too rarely visit and talk with the people affected by the project.
D. The planners tend to overlook cultural diversity, especially in less developed
countries.
E. People who know little about the area affected by the project often have done most
or all of its planning, execution, and evaluation.
________ refers to the blurring and breakdown of established canonsrules, standards,
categories, distinctions, and boundaries.
A. Chaos
B. Entropy
C. Postmodern
D. Agoraphobia
E. Diaspora
There are two meanings of globalization: globalization as fact and process, and
globalization as ideology and contested policy. What is the primary and neutral
meaning of globalization as is applicable to anthropology?
A. promotion of the interests of multinational corporations at the expense of farmers
and workers
B. the efforts by international financial powers to create a global free market for goods
and services
C. the impact of the world on the rest of the universe
D. the spread and connectedness of production, communication, and technologies
across the world
E. the opposition of global free trade
Anthropologist Edmund Leach (1955) observed that, depending on the society, several
different kinds of rights are allocated by marriage. According to Leach, marriage can,
but doesn”t always, accomplish each of the following EXCEPT
A. give either or both spouses a monopoly in the sexuality of the other.
B. give either or both spouses rights to the labor of the other.
C. give either or both spouses rights over the latent and manifest functions of the other.
D. give either or both spouses rights over the other’s property.
E. establish a socially significant “relationship of affinity” between spouses and their
relatives.
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.
What process is most responsible for the existence of international culture?
A. ethnocentrism
B. cultural relativism
C. dendritic acculturation
D. gene flow
E. cultural diffusion, whether direct, indirect, or by force
What best typifies the intervention philosophy of the French empire?
A. carte blanche
B. savoir-faire
C. coup d”tat
D. mission civilisatrice
E. nom de plume
Robert Bellah (1978) coined the term world-rejecting religion to describe most forms of
Christianity, including Protestantism. More generally, world-rejecting religions
A. are shamanic religions that reject the encroachment of capitalism and modernity.
B. reject the material world and focus on the body’s internal biological balance.
C. are a recent historical phenomenon.
D. tend to reject the naturalthe mundane, ordinary, material, secularworld and focus
instead on a higher realm of reality.
E. focus on the effects that heavenly bodies such as the moon, sun, and Mars have on
social life.
Which of the following statements is true regarding the relationship between art and
religion?
A. All non-Western art is produced anonymously for religious purposes.
B. In all societies, art is produced for religious purposes as well as its aesthetic value.
C. All of the greatest accomplishments in Western art have been commissioned by
formal religions.
D. Since nonstate societies lack permanent buildings dedicated to art (museums) or
religion (temples, churches), there is no link between art and religion in these societies.
E. Western art is divorced from religion.
As an example of how virtually no one is immune from larger political and economic
forces, the Yanomami tribal society of Brazil has suffered recent changes as a result of
A. being overrun by the more expansion-minded Nilotic peoples.
B. modern-minded big men amassing so much wealth that people have begun to regard
them as chiefs.
C. village raiding among tribal groups.
D. the involvement of NGOs in their internal political affairs.
E. encroachment by gold miners and cattle ranchers.
Interpretive anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz approach the study of culture as
A. a diachronic phenomenon.
B. functional puzzles.
C. a system of meaning.
D. underlying sets of rules that must be deciphered through the analysis of cultural
patterns.
E. distinct from human psychology.
Applied anthropology
A. originated at the same time that anthropology’s four-field approach became
established among early twentieth-century U.S. academics.
B. has yet to be recognized by the American Anthropological Association.
C. encompasses any use of the knowledge and/or techniques of its four subfields to
identify, assess, and solve practical problems.
D. focuses on preparing emerging academic scholars to improve their grant application
skills.
E. is a European phenomenon.
Who the mentioned in the text as a founder of the anthropology of religion?
A. Margaret Mead
B. Claude Lvi-Strauss
C. Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard
D. Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
E. Bronislaw Malinowski
Culture can be adaptive or maladaptive. It is maladaptive when
A. it exhibits cultural traits that are not shared with the majority of the group.
B. it threatens the core values of a culture that guarantee its integration.
C. cultural traits diminish the survival of particular individuals but not others.
D. cultural traits, patterns, and inventions disrupt the world economy, causing
international discontent.
E. cultural traits, patterns, and inventions threaten the group’s continued survival and
reproduction and thus its very existence.
What term refers to the existence of “high” and “low” dialects within a single language?
A. displacement
B. diglossia
C. semantics
D. kinesics
E. lexicon
What is the name of the custom by which a widower marries the sister of his deceased
wife?
A. sororate marriage
B. serial polyandry
C. filial marriage
D. levirate marriage
E. fraternal marriage
Despite the analytical usefulness of learning about anthropologist Elman Service’s
typology of political organization into bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states, it is
important to remember that
A. Bronislaw Malinowski first came up with this typology.
B. it applies to only the reality of societies in the so-called Third World.
C. none of these political entities, or polities, can be studied as a self-contained form of
political organization, because all exist within nation-states.
D. it has no practical value in ethnographic research, only in theoretical anthropology.
E. people all over the world vocally reject being classified under such a typology and
typically express their anger through hidden transcripts.
Which of the following was NOT used by the traditional Inuit to handle disputes?
A. blood feuds
B. song contests
C. killing of the offender
D. courts of law
E. kin ties
Which of the following is true about medical anthropology?
A. It is the field that has proved that people from rural areas suffer only from illnesses
and not diseases.
B. It applies non-Western health knowledge to a troubled industrialized medical system.
C. Typically in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, this field does market
research on the use of health products around the world.
D. This field applies Western medicine to solve health problems around the world.
E. This growing field considers the biocultural context and implications of disease and
illness.
What are the two basic social units of foraging societies?
A. the band and the clan
B. the lineage and the nuclear family
C. the extended family and the clan
D. the nuclear family and the band
E. the band and the extended family
Animism, polytheism, and monotheism are the
A. three kinds of religion that exist in the world today.
B. stages of ritual, according to Victor Turner.
C. stages, according to Edward Tylor, through which religion evolved.
D. stages through which all present-day religions have passed.
E. names for the three psychological needs that all individuals have, thus explaining the
universality of religion.
The presence of ethnic neighborhoods indicates what kind of coexistence?
A. assimilation
B. acculturation
C. enculturation
D. colonialism
E. multiculturalism
The labels First World, Second World, and Third World represent a common, if
ethnocentric, way of categorizing nations. First World refers to the democratic West,
which is traditionally conceived of as being in opposition to a Second World ruled by
A. folk economic and political models.
B. primitive neoliberalism.
C. Communism.
D. dictators.
E. imperialism.
Among the classic works of processual approaches to culture is Edmund Leach’s
Political Systems of Highland Burma. This study made a tremendously important point
by taking a regional rather than a local perspective.