A policy of ethnic expulsion aims at removing from a country groups who are culturally
different. There are many examples, including Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s;
Uganda expelling 74,000 Asians in 1972; and so on. The neofascist parties of
contemporary western Europe advocate the repatriation of immigrant workers. What is
one of the potential consequences of such policies?
A. the breakup of imaginary communes
B. the creation of refugeespeople who have been forced or have chosen to flee a
country, to escape persecution or war
C. state-mandated forced assimilation
D. the creation of class consciousness
E. gender stratification
Ethnicity means identification with
A. the cultural values of the dominant culture.
B. and feeling part of a biologically racial group.
C. your neighbors in a multicultural society.
D. and feeling part of a cultural tradition and exclusion from other cultural traditions.
E. and feeling part of two or more groups in a plural society.
What is the term for the kind of cultural change that results when two or more cultures
have consistent firsthand contact?
A. acculturation
B. enculturation
C. independent invention
D. colonization
E. imperialism
What term does anthropologist Fredrik Barth use to refer to a society that combines
ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization, and the economic interdependence of those
groups?
A. pluralism
B. broad-spectrum subsistence
C. plural society
D. multicultural
E. assimilationist
In 1998, the American Anthropological Association issued a statement on race. This
statement makes all of the following points EXCEPT that
A. there is greater variation within “racial” groups than between them.
B. although the continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind
as a single species, some scientists suggest that current racial divisions in society that
keep certain groups from interbreeding might lead to a true separate species.
C. physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly
over geographic areas.
D. physical variations in the human species have no meanings beyond the social ones
that humans put on them.
E. race evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about
human differences and group behavior.
Cargo cults, syncretic religions that mix Melanesian and Christian beliefs, are
A. culturally defined activities associated with the transition from one place or stage of
life to another.
B. a religious response to the expansion of the world capitalist economy, often with
political and economic consequences.
C. cultural acts that mock the widespread but erroneous belief of European cultural
supremacy.
D. just like religious fundamentalism in that they are ancient cultural phenomena
enjoying a rebirth in current world affairs.
E. antimodernist movements that reject anything Western.
An examination of racial taxonomies from around the world indicates that
A. all cultures classify races similarly.
B. the classification of racial types is an arbitrary and culturally specific process.
C. classifying racial types can best be done by considering only phenotypic traits.
D. classifying racial types can best be done by considering only the genotype involved.
E. the best classification of racial types considers genotype as well as phenotype.
Development projects should aim to accomplish all of the following EXCEPT
A. promoting change, but not overinnovation.
B. preserving local systems while working to make them better.
C. respecting local traditions.
D. drawing models of development from indigenous practices.
E. developing strategies with little input from the local communities.
What is the name of the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a
territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time?
A. apartheid
B. colonialism
C. alienation
D. petty capitalism
E. industrialization
In nonindustrial societies, artists
A. tend to be full-time specialists.
B. tend to be part-time specialists.
C. do not exist.
D. are relegated to the hidden transcript of the social contract.
E. tend to display their work exclusively in galleries.
A recent cross-cultural study of 87 societies, all of which had incest taboos, investigated
the rate at which such taboos were broken. The results of this study add to the evidence
that
A. cultural universals, like the human ability to make fire, always have a genetic basis.
B. Freud was right: children everywhere have sexual feelings toward their parents.
C. although tabooed, incest does happen.
D. many societies need better educational systems.
E. many societies need better techniques of social control.
This chapter argues that the World Bank’s approach to corruption is
A. effective when dealing with cases in postsocialist nations.
B. wrong to assume that the state (public)-private dichotomy is universal and that it
takes a similar form in all societies.
C. right to assume that the fallacy of underdifferentiation applies equally to all societies.
D. wrong to assume that in postsocialist nations officials don”t respect business moral
codes.
E. ineffective, because it lacks the expertise of ethnographically informed secret agents.
How are cultural rights different from human rights?
A. Human rights are real, whereas cultural rights are just perceived.
B. The United Nations protects human rights but not cultural rights.
C. Cultural rights are vested in groups, not in individuals.
D. Cultural rights are more clear-cut than human rights.
E. The term cultural rights is a politically correct synonym for human rights.
What happens as one moves along the cultivation continuum?
A. Ceremonies and rituals become less formal.
B. More time for leisurely pursuits becomes available.
C. The use of land and labor intensifies.
D. There is a heavier reliance on swidden cultivation.
E. The use of communal cooking houses becomes more common.
Which of the following is NOT a problem with defining religion?
A. There are both sacred and secular rituals.
B. Distinctions between supernatural and natural are not consistently made in a society,
making it difficult to tell what is a religion and what isn”t.
C. Behaviors considered appropriate for religious occasions vary between cultures.
D. Only one religion can be considered true, so all others must be classified as myth.
E. Defining religion with reference to supernatural powers makes it difficult to classify
ritual-like behavior in secular contexts.
In the anthropological study of political systems, social control maintains social norms
(cultural standards) and regulates conflict. Which of the following is NOT a form of
social control?
A. hegemony
B. shame
C. making subordinates believe they will eventually gain power
D. exogamy
E. gossip
The Handsome Lake religion
A. led the Iroquois Indians to reject European farming techniques and therefore avoid
ethnocide.
B. was compatible with the Iroquois’ stress on female over male labor.
C. led the Iroquois to adopt communal longhouses.
D. was a revitalization movement that helped the Iroquois survive in a drastically
modified environment.
E. involved the adoption of matrilineal descent groups that protected the Iroquois from
cultural extinction.
What term refers to the arrangement and order of words into sentences?
A. syntax
B. lexicon
C. grammar
D. phonology
E. morphology
________ is synonymous with the arts.
A. Social creativity
B. Aesthetics
C. Myth
D. Expressive culture
E. Performance
What kind of evidence led scientists studying remains at South Africa’s Blombos Cave
to suggest that they had found proof of symbolic thought dated to more than 70,000
years ago?
A. The tools found were specialized for different purposes.
B. Among the bone tools they found were some that were not just sharp but also
symmetrical and polished, characteristics that do not add functional value to the tool.
C. Like Upper Paleolithic cave paintings in Europe, the art in Blombos Cave exhibited
graphic representations on its walls.
D. What looks like rudimentary pedestals were found that may have been used to
exhibit artistic objects.
E. Among the smaller objects found were earrings and necklaces.
Antimodernism describes the rejection of the modern in favor of what is perceived to be
an earlier, purer, better way of life. Fundamentalism describes antimodernist
movements in various religions. Ironically,
A. fundamentalist movements have both benefited from and promoted the use of
technology for international networking.
B. fundamentalists never lead a better way of life, precisely because they reject the
benefits of modern life.
C. religious fundamentalism is itself a modern phenomenon, based on a strong feeling
among its adherents of alienation from the perceived secularism of the surrounding
modern culture.
D. fundamentalist sentiments depend on recognition of the modern culture.
E. religious fundamentalism is an extremely old phenomenon that actually spurred the
rise of modernism.
Why is it important to remember that the chiefdom and the state, like many categories
used by social scientists, are ideal types?
A. They distinguish political and sociopolitical analyses among social scientists.
B. They are useless in sociopolitical analysis.
C. They represent social goals that politicians should strive to achieve.
D. They are labels that make social contrasts seem sharper than they really are.
E. They ensure that the field of anthropology remains more scientific.
Social movements worldwide have adopted which term as a self-identifying and
political label based on past oppression but now legitimizing a search for social,
cultural, and political rights?
A. indio
B. indigenous people
C. mestizo
D. autochthon
E. freedom fighter
Bronislaw Malinowski, an early contributor to the cross-cultural study of human
psychology, is famous for his fieldwork among the Trobriand Islanders of the South
Pacific. Although some of his specific findings have been questioned by more recent
scholars, no contemporary anthropologist would dispute Malinowski’s contention that
A. Freud’s work is worthless once taken out of its particular cultural context (patriarchal
Austria during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries).
B. psychology and anthropology have little relevance to each other, since the former
focuses on the individual and the latter studies cultures and societies as a whole.
C. psychologists are not willing to step out of their tightly controlled laboratories, and
anthropologists are too focused on finding exotic exceptions to every possible human
universal.
D. researchers cannot get at what is in people’s minds, only at what they say and do.
E. individual psychology is molded in a specific cultural context.
In an ethnographic field study of political systems in northern Mozambique, Nicholas
Kottak found that avoiding shame can be an effective control against breaking social
norms. This example of how shame can be a powerful social sanction
A. is unique among ethnographic cases illustrating the variety of sociopolitical systems
that exist in the world today.
B. is often a key component of the formal processes of social control.
C. is evidence that shame is a cultural universal.
D. is an indication that women tend to suffer from the consequences of shame more
than men do.
E. joins the work of many other anthropologists that cite the importance of informal
processes of social control, including gossip and stigma.
Which of the following LEAST explains the existence of cultural generalities?
A. cultural borrowing
B. globalization
C. colonialism
D. isolationism
E. trade
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
Which of the following is a reason that the Madagascar project to increase rice
production was successful?
A. Malagasy leaders were of the peasantry and were therefore prepared to follow the
descent-group ethic of pooling resources for the good of the group as a whole.
B. The elites and the lower class were of different origins and thus had no strong
connections through kinship, descent, or marriage.
C. There is a clear fit between capitalist development schemes and corporate
descent-group social organization.
D. The project took into account the inevitability of native forms of social organization
breaking down into nuclear family organization, impersonality, and alienation.
E. The educated members of Malagasy society are those who have struggled to fend for
themselves and therefore brought an innovative kind of independence to the project.
All of the following are associated with plow agriculture EXCEPT
A. a decline in both polygyny and unilineal descent.
B. differential rights in divorce and sexuality for men and women.
C. an overall increase in the status of women as new production techniques called for
female as well as male labor.
D. a sharp contrast between the domestic and extradomestic realms.
E. the isolation of women in nuclear family households.
Because music is a cultural universal and musical abilities seem to run in families,
A. everybody, regardless of culture, loves to dance.
B. it is possible to use musical abilities as a biological marker for human races.
C. it has been suggested that music is a concept of a social fiction.
D. anthropologists should investigate the connection between music and formerly
misunderstood kinship arrangements.
E. it has been suggested that the predisposition for music may have a genetic basis.
This chapter’s description of the San Bushmen’s relation to the government of Botswana
is a telling example of how
A. foragers are willingly choosing to change their lifestyles and become a part of the
global village.
B. foraging communities’ identities are being reshaped by their relation with NGOs.
C. the foraging lifestyle has finally become a thing of the past.
D. more and more foragers have come under the control of nation-states and are now
influenced by the forces of globalization.
E. human rights are limited.