Human biological differences are evident only to individuals who wrongfully sustain
the validity of human races.
Behaviors associated with sports fandom could be considered secular rituals.
In a study among the Hopi of northeastern Arizona, more than a third of the women of
this community had been divorced at least once, which correlates with the fact that
these women were socially and economically insecure.
Culture is transmitted in society.
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.
Racial categories in Japan are more rigid than racial categories in Brazil.
Longitudinal research is the long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or
other unit, usually based on repeated visits.
French colonial strategies incorporated both direct and indirect rule.
The current world stratification system features a substantial contrast between
capitalists and workers in the core nations, and workers on the periphery.
Really good key cultural consultants will actually end up recording most of the data
needed to write an ethnography.
A syncretism is a mixture of cultural influences from a series of different cultural
traditions.
Adding together men’s and women’s subsistence activities and their domestic work,
men tend to work more hours than women do.
Culture is transmitted by both formal and informal instruction, but not by observation.
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.
Anthropological analysis of potlatching contradicts the classic economics assumption
that individuals are, by nature, profit maximizers.
Gender roles are the instinctual behaviors that are the exclusive domain of each sex.
According to Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, it is easier and more effective to
dominate people in their minds than to try to control their bodies.
Higher wages and improved benefits for workers in core nations are possible only
because an added surplus from the periphery enables companies to maintain high profit
margins.
Appreciating art involves an aesthetic appreciation of form as well as feeling.
The United States originally started out as a peripheral nation, but by 1900 it had
asserted itself as a member of the industrialized core.
Band- and tribal-level societies actively promote craft and task specialization.
Biologists have rejected the idea of three great raceswhite, black, and yellowlargely
because it fails to account for Native Americans.
Population control in states refers to the police and military.
Phonology is the study of speech sounds.
Religious fundamentalism is as old as religion itself.
Outside North America, Western Europe, and the European-derived cultures of Latin
America, neolocal residence isn”t all that common.
Like race, kinship is a cultural construction, in that it exhibits considerable cultural
diversity.
Potlatching is a form of competitive feasting that enables individuals to redistribute
surplus materials while simultaneously increasing their own prestige.
The term nation is used to refer to an ethnic group that shares a religion, language,
history, territory, ancestry, and kinship.
This chapter’s overview of the history of anthropological theory suggests that the
discipline has made no important contributions to social theory in general.
According to Marx, the bourgeoisie is made up of the people who must sell their labor
to survive.
There is no difference between the biological and cultural definitions of race.
Modern technology plays an important role in both facilitating cultural imperialism and
resisting it.
In non-Western societies, artists tend to be iconoclastic and antisocial.
Which is NOT true of core nations?
A. They export their raw materials to other countries.
B. They consist of the strongest and most powerful states.
C. They have advanced systems of production.
D. They have complex economies.
E. They represent the dominant structural position in the world system.
In the United States, the rise in female employment, especially in professional careers,
when coupled with ________, has dramatically increased household incomes in the
upper classes. This pattern has been one factor sharpening the contrast in household
income between the richest and poorest populations of Americans.
A. homogamy
B. serial monogamy
C. endogamy
D. sororal polygyny
E. exogamy
In a comparative study of 68 development projects, Kottak determined that
A. overinnovation was the most productive development model.
B. culturally compatible development projects were twice as successful as incompatible
ones.
C. the Soviet socialist bloc model was the most successful.
D. the capitalist bloc model was the most financially successful.
E. the underdifferentiated model led to the most equity.
Today’s global economy and communications link all contemporary people, directly or
indirectly, in the modern world system. People must now cope with forces generated by
progressively larger systemsthe region, the nation, and the world. For anthropologists
studying contemporary forms of adaptation, why might this be a challenge?
A. Truly isolated indigenous communities, anthropology’s traditional and ongoing study
focus, are becoming harder to find.
B. According to Marcus and Fischer (1986), “The cultures of world peoples need to be
constantly rediscovered as these people reinvent them in changing historical
circumstances.”
C. A more dynamic world system, with greater and faster movements of people across
space, speeds up the process of evolution, making the study of genetic adaptations more
difficult.
D. Anthropological research tools do not work in this new modern world system,
making their contributions less valuable.
E. Since cultures are tied to place, people moving around and connecting across space
means the end of culture, and thus the end of anthropology.
According to genealogical kin types used by anthropologists to study kinship relations,
what kind of relative is ego’s mother’s brother?
A. lineal relative
B. affinal relative
C. collateral relative
D. nuclear family member
E. member of the P2 generation
What is hegemony?
A. overt sociopolitical strategies used to control people
B. social controls that induce guilt and shame in the population
C. the critique of power by the oppressed that goes on offstage, in private, where the
power holders can”t see it
D. a stratified social order in which subordinates comply with domination by
internalizing their rulers’ values and accepting the “naturalness” of domination
E. open, public interactions between dominators and the oppressedthe outer shell of
power relations
What is the term for the marital exchange in which the bride’s family or kin group
provides substantial gifts when their daughter marries?
A. polygamy
B. bridewealth
C. dowry
D. progeny price
E. brideservice
Sapir and Whorf argued that the grammatical categories of different languages lead
their speakers to think about things in particular ways. However, studies on the
differences between female and male Americans in regard to the color terms they use
suggest that
A. changes in the U.S. economy, society, and culture have had no impact on the use of
color terms, or on any other terms for that matter.
B. contrary to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it might be more reasonable to say that
changes in culture produce changes in language and thought rather than the reverse.
C. in support of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, different languages produce different ways
of thinking.
D. women and men are equally sensitive to the marketing tactics of the cosmetic
industry.
E. women spend more money on status goods than do men.
Many human traits reflect the fact that our primate ancestors lived in trees. These traits
include all of the following EXCEPT
A. grasping ability.
B. depth and color vision.
C. learning ability based on a large brain.
D. substantial parental investment in a limited number of offspring.
E. echolocation made possible by overlapping visual fields.
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.
Because nonindustrial economies can have features of both horticulture and agriculture,
it is useful to discuss cultivators as being arranged along a cultivation continuum.
Which of the following generally occurs in moving toward the more intensive end of
the cultivating continuum?
A. increased leisure time
B. improved overall health status of the population
C. increased egalitarianism
D. increasing economic specialization
E. longer fallow periods
Which of the following statements about nonstate societies is true?
A. Warfare is conducted by professional armies.
B. Political institutions are maintained totally separate from economic institutions.
C. Social control is maintained mostly through physical coercion.
D. Economic, political, and religious activities are often embedded in one another.
E. All political power is based on religion.
Bronislaw Malinowski found that the Trobriand Islanders used magic when sailing, a
hazardous activity. He proposed that
A. people turn to magic to instill psychological stress on their competitors, especially
when the fish supply is very low.
B. magic actually reduced the fishing results for the Trobriand Islanders, but at least
they did not feel directly responsible, since then they could blame it on bad luck.
C. magic was a surprisingly effective stand-in for proper fishing skills and experience,
because it made people confident in their capacities.
D. because people can”t control matters such as wind, weather, and the fish supply, they
turn to magic.
E. magic emboldened people to take more risks.
Which of the following statements about polygynous marriages is true?
A. They are characteristic of high social instability, as with serial monogamy in
southern California and Washington, D.C.
B. They frequently involve a hierarchical arrangement among the wives.
C. They are associated with male infanticide.
D. They are characterized by there being more than one husband in a single household.
E. They tend to occur in societies that have more men than women.
Which of the following economic principles is generally dominant in industrial society?
A. generalized exchange
B. the market principle
C. redistribution
D. negative reciprocity
E. balanced reciprocity
Depending on the situation, the same man might declare “I”m Jimmy’s father”; “I”m
your boss”; “I”m African American”; or “I”m your professor.” This phenomenon,
whereby a person’s claimed or perceived identity varies depending on context, is called
A. ethnicity.
B. hypodescent.
C. a situational negotiation of social identity.
D. ethnic tolerance.
E. rotating core personality traits.
This chapter’s survey of the major theoretical perspectives that have characterized
anthropology highlights all of the following EXCEPT
A. a continuous concern with how to define and study culture.
B. the theoretical and methodological shift from complexity to models that simplify
human diversity.
C. a continuous concern with scientific fundamentals and whether or not anthropology’s
research subject is best studied scientifically.
D. attention to whether or not anthropological data ought to be comparative across time
and space.
E. the discipline’s profound commitment to understanding human diversity.
Which of the following statements about shifting cultivation is true?
A. It is typically associated with the use of draft animals.
B. It cannot support permanent villages.
C. It requires irrigation.
D. It requires cultivators to change plots of land, with the fallowing durations varying in
different societies.
E. It relies extensively on chemical fertilizers.
In survey research, what term is used to refer to the attributes that vary among the
members of a population?
A. unknowns
B. questionnaires
C. interviews
D. variables
E. random samples
Recently, India’s four largest cities introduced commuter trains exclusively for female
passengers. The aim of this new service was to
A. support women’s effort to keep men out of their own domestic space.
B. offer women an alternative method of transportation to and from work with less risk
of harassment or violence.
C. offer women work in the transportation industry.
D. help women maintain their traditional gender roles in society.
E. increase the gap between public and domestic spaces that women inhabit on a
day-to-day basis.
Ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political statustheir
own countryare called
A. ethnicities.
B. nationalities.
C. imaginary communes.
D. secondary states.
E. diasporas.
What term refers to wealth or resources invested in business with the intent of
producing a profit?
A. the modern world system
B. industrialization
C. an open class system
D. socioeconomic stratification
E. capital
Which of the following is NOT a feature of urban life?
A. dispersed settlements
B. high population density
C. social heterogeneity
D. economic differentiation
E. geographic mobility
The techniques that anthropologists have used to analyze myth and folktales can be
extended to two popular films in American culture, The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars.
Which of the following is NOT an example of such an analysis, revealing the
similarities between the two films?
A. Star Wars is a systematic structural transformation of The Wizard of Oz.
B. In both movies, fairy-tale heroes are often accompanied on their adventures by
secondary characters who personify the virtues needed for a successful quest.
C. Both films focus on the child’s relationship with the parent of the same sex, dividing
that parent into three parts.
D. Both heroes use magic to accomplish their goals.
E. Confirming Lvi-Strauss’s analysis of myths around the world, these movies have
many secondary cultural references that only cultured audiences are able to perceive
and appreciate.
In what kind of kinship calculation are kin ties traced equally through males and
females?
A. bilineal
B. bifurcate merging
C. bifurcate collateral
D. bilateral
E. biluminous
All of the following are examples of an ethnocentric view of art in the non-Western
world EXCEPT that
A. all non-Western art is produced for religious purposes.
B. all non-Western art is anonymously produced by the culture.
C. non-Westerners cannot appreciate Western art, because they are not cultured enough.
D. non-Western artists simply follow tradition; they do not exercise their creativity or
break from the norm.
E. non-Western sculpture is not always art.
Tribal societies, which are typically organized by village life or membership in descent
groups, tend to be egalitarian. However, egalitarianism diminishes
A. as tribal leaders gain too much power and start to put it to use to buy favors.
B. as village size and population density increase.
C. as the village head’s family grows.
D. the closer one is to the big man’s wife.
E. as the overall population ages.
What is the most common system of kinship classification used in the United States?
A. bifurcate merging
B. lineal
C. bifurcate collateral
D. generational
E. patrilineal
Illustrating how forces from world centers can and are creatively modified to fit the
local culture, how did the Native Australians interpret the movie Rambo?
A. They saw Rambo as an imperialist agent.
B. They saw Rambo as a Communist spy.
C. They assigned Rambo to the kangaroo clan.
D. They created tribal ties and kin links between Rambo and the prisoners he was
rescuing.
E. They “creatively opposed” the film as a form of resistance to the world system.
Which of the following was NOT a reason that the Indian sacred cow is adaptive in
Harris’s studies?
A. Zebu cattle require less food per animal than do beef cattle.
B. Wandering cattle indirectly provide fertilizer for agricultural fields.
C. Zebu cattle are frequently slaughtered and their meat distributed on ceremonial
occasions.
D. Cattle dung provides a cheap source of heating and cooking energy.
E. Harris demonstrated that the Indian sacred cows are not adaptive.
Which of the following is a characteristic of most foraging societies?
A. social stratification
B. sedentism
C. egalitarianism
D. irrigation
E. large populations
Which of the following statements about ethnicity is true?
A. Ethnicity is one’s identification with a group that shares a common set of beliefs,
values, customs, and norms.
B. Americans maintain a clear distinction between ethnicity and race.
C. Ethnicity is based on common biological features.
D. Ethnicity is the politically correct term for race.
E. Ethnicity and race are synonyms.
Which of the following is most characteristic of foragers?
A. unilineal descent and ancestor worship
B. territoriality and organized warfare
C. high mobility and small groups with flexible affiliations
D. a redistributive economy and specialized leadership roles
E. permanent villages and full-time priests
The American Anthropological Association has formally acknowledged a public service
role by recognizing that anthropology has which two dimensions?
A. academic anthropology and applied anthropology
B. ethnology and public ethnography
C. cultural resource management and medical anthropology
D. private anthropology and public anthropology
E. applied anthropology and practicing anthropology
Identities are
A. fixed by both genotype and phenotype.
B. never dependent on context.
C. not fixed; they are fluid and multiple.
D. fictions.
E. creative constructs and therefore of little real consequence.