Which of the following correctly characterizes Dalva, one of the informants in Mary
Kenny’s study of the favela of Olinda?
a. Like many other children, she will use her formal schooling to escape conditions of
poverty.
b. A victim of child abuse, she will most likely have to spend the rest of her life in an
institution.
c. Although her family is poor, she receives strong support from her parents,
particularly her mother.
d. She works 12 hours a day sewing shirts for American corporations but barely makes
enough money to feed herself, let alone her brothers and sisters.
e. Although only 12, by organizing younger children and generating income, she has
become the head of her household.
Under most conditions, foraging requires:
a. Strong, capable leadership.
b. Complex and sophisticated tools.
c. Clear and enforceable ideas about land ownership.
d. The presence of nearby agricultural people.
e. Independence and mobility.
Which of the following was considered a primary and key advantage to Europeans in
their expansion?
a. Translators.
b. Guides.
c. New maps.
d. Education.
e. Disease.
Men in Andalusia, Spain generally view women as:
a. Angels.
b. Lustful.
c. Naive.
d. Trustworthy.
e. More intelligent than men.
In most cases, in pre-modern societies, the elderly are respected:
a. When they have wealth, power, and descendents.
b. To a far greater extent than in most modern societies.
c. But only after they have grandchildren.
d. If they are male. If they are female, not so much.
e. Because they control access to land and water.
For the Trobriand Islanders, the central part of the Kula trade is:
a. The opportunity to prove their manhood by taking long sea voyages.
b. Trading for types of food that are unavailable on their home island.
c. Trading for bracelets and armbands.
d. The opportunity to meet potential mates.
e. The after-parties that accompany all trading.
One basic rule of behavior among Indian castes is that:
a. Members of different castes do not eat together.
b. Members of lower castes must always prepare food for members of higher castes.
c. While castes are rigidly separated during religious ritual, at other times members of
different castes mingle freely with each other.
d. Members of one caste must always marry members of another.
e. Children are always members of their father’s caste, not their mother’s caste.
Describe the type of courting relationships that are practiced among the Na of China.
A major change in Lua’ subsistence patterns in the last several decades is:
a. Their growing isolation from other Thai hill tribes.
b. An increase in the diversity of crops planted.
c. A growing dependence on a few main crops which they sell to the market.
d. An increase in wild game in the forest so that they no longer need to depend on
cultivation.
e. Expulsion from their lands because of the Vietnam War.
In the text, art refers to:
a. The visual arts only.
b. Anything that human beings do outside the realm of technology.
c. Works of universally recognized beauty.
d. Anything that excites people emotionally.
e. The application of skill that reflects cultural values and patterns.
A high degree of specialization of labor:
a. Is characteristic of all human societies.
b. Occurs more among horticulturalists than pastoralists.
c. Is unrelated to the food-getting strategy of a group.
d. Exists only in industrialized societies.
e. Tends to correlate with high population and agricultural intensification.
In pre-Communist China, one group that had very high prestige was:
a. Scholars.
b. Merchants.
c. Money lenders.
d. Farmers.
e. Craftsmen.
In regulating human behavior, law:
a. Is only one among many forms of social control.
b. Is most effective in small, homogeneous tribal societies.
c. By itself has no effect on human behavior.
d. Is much less effective than supernatural controls in complex societies.
e. Has no place in small, tribal societies.
Which of the following best describes the struggle between Shi”a and Sunni Muslims?
a. It has continued uninterrupted since the time of Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab in
the early 1700s.
b. It has continued uninterrupted since the time of Mohammed Abdel Wahab in the
early 20th century.
c. It is of ancient origin but can only be understood in terms of recent and current
political events.
d. It does not affect the Islamic world outside of Iraq.
e. It is entirely a response to the Western invasion of and colonization of Islamic lands.
One important result of China’s one child policy has been:
a. The skewing of the sex ratio in favor of boys.
b. The skewing of the sex ratio in favor of girls.
c. An increase in the speed with which people have migrated from rural to urban areas.
d. A new emphasis on increasing the population in rural areas relative to urban areas.
e. The total population of China has decreased slightly over the past 10 years.
Which of the following was the key to making colonies profitable to colonial masters?
a. Corvee labor.
b. Increasing education.
c. Mass exploration.
d. Taxation.
e. Pillage.
One of the problems with efforts at development based on recreating the historical
experience of the wealthy nations is that:
a. They generally fail to consider the biologically based differences among human
beings.
b. They often fail to consider that much of the wealth of the industrialized nations was
based on exploiting the poor nations.
c. They assume that people are motivated solely by the pursuit of wealth and that
education is not necessary to development.
d. They fail to understand the true extent of poverty in the world’s poorest nations.
e. They assume that there is no connection between development programs and the
political objectives of the wealthy nations.
A primary function of rites of intensification is to:
a. Help an individual through a personal crisis.
b. Help a young man in his search for a guardian spirit.
c. Regulate male-female conflict within a society.
d. Reinforce the values and norms of the community and strengthen group identity.
e. Restrain the ghosts of dead people from taking revenge on the living.
In the early 1400s, a visitor from China to Europe:
a. Would have been concerned by the growing strength of the Catholic Church.
b. Would have been impressed by the speed with which technological innovation was
taking place.
c. Would have been impressed with advances in medicine.
d. Would have thought Europe poverty stricken and backward.
e. Would have been impressed by the size and training of European armies.
Marcel Mauss, and many other anthropologists, theorized that an important function of
gift giving is to:
a. Hold societies together.
b. Expand the technological base of a society.
c. Build up the economic resources of some families at the expense of other families.
d. Provide an outlet for the innate human desire to give and receive gifts.
e. Build up the power of the state.
Among some subarctic hunting cultures, a family with no sons might perform a
transformation ceremony for a daughter selected to “be like a man.” As part of this
ceremony, they tied dried bear ovaries to her belt to prevent menstruation and
pregnancy. This description indicates that:
a. Subarctic Indian peoples need sex education as part of their modern school
curriculum.
b. Hunting societies recognize that women are equal to men in their hunting ability.
c. These peoples recognize, as most people in the world do, the difference between sex
and gender.
d. Gender categories for these societies are not divided into masculine and feminine.
e. For these people, cultural features could be as important in determining the gender of
a child as biology.
About what percentage of the Brazilian population is composed of individuals of
African descent?
a. 10 percent.
b. 25 percent.
c. 45 percent.
d. 70 percent.
e. 90 percent.
Animal forms of verbal communication are called:
a. Response systems.
b. Animal vocal communication systems.
c. Call systems.
d. Stimulus-generated systems.
e. Stimulus-response systems.
Pure cultures, free from outside influence:
a. Have never existed.
b. Existed until the 15th century in many parts of the world.
c. Are more common in Africa than in other parts of the world.
d. Have fewer traits than those in frequent contact with the outside.
e. Tend to be much more ethnocentric than other cultures.
A god is a spiritual being who:
a. Is understood to be intimately involved in the lives of those who believe in it.
b. Is a single, most powerful creator and ruler.
c. Is responsive to prayer and magic performed by human beings.
d. Created or controls some aspect of the world.
e. Rarely experiences psychological states similar to those experienced by people.
Fear of witchcraft accusations would best be categorized as:
a. A formal mechanism of justice.
b. An informal mechanism of social control.
c. A use of psychology by authorities to control unwanted society members.
d. Irrational, since witches do not exist in any society.
e. The best way to avoid being the victim of a witch or sorcerer.
Ethnographic research on the spread of HIV/AIDS has shown that:
a. Ideas about disease transmission are not affected by cultural views.
b. NGOs have no interest in understanding how the cultural sphere interacts with
human health and economic systems.
c. Governments are providing information on disease prevention that is non-biased and
unaffected by cultural practices.
d. Behavior does not play a role in disease transmission.
e. Cultural systems and values can impact efforts to improve human health.
From an anthropological perspective, wealth is:
a. The distribution of material resources.
b. The accumulation of material resources.
c. The consumption of material resources.
d. The production of material resources.
e. Income disparity between classes.
The most important part of the Balinese cockfight is:
a. The gambling associated with it.
b. The costumes worn by the cock owners.
c. The magical ritual surrounding it.
d. Its historical origins in antiquity.
e. The special names given to the cocks by their owners.
Which of the following would a materialist be likely to study in trying to understand the
events of 9/11?
a. Economic situations in the Middle East.
b. The material objects used in the attack.
c. How the Middle East perceives the United States.
d. The history of Islam.
e. How the attacks fit into the larger pattern of culture.
Melissa Checker’s work on Hyde Park examined the environmental concerns of:
a. An African-American community in the suburbs of Augusta, Georgia.
b. A student and young professional community in Austin, Texas.
c. An African-American community on the south side of Chicago.
d. A wealthy white community in Dutchess County, NY.
e. Residents living in the streets surrounding a large urban park in London, UK.
Which of the following best characterizes “ethnic groups”?
a. A group of families living in a well-defined geographical location.
b. A group of individuals who area, at some level, all biologically related to each other.
c. A group of people who all speak the same language.
d. A group of people who all seem to others to look like each other.
e. A group of people who view themselves as sharing an identity that separates them
from others in society.
Some anthropologists argue that football is so popular in America because:
a. It is more violent than other sports.
b. It is easier to show commercials during football games than during other sorts of
sports.
c. People are willing to pay more money for football tickets than for those of other
sports.
d. It manipulates dangerous and controversial themes in American culture.
e. Members of the team are more equal in football than in other sports.
Parallel cousins are found in the Iroquois system of kinship and are defined as:
a. Mother’s sisters’ children or father’s brothers’ children.
b. Mother’s brothers’ children or father’s sisters’ children.
c. Mother’s brothers’ children or father’s brothers’ children.
d. Mother’s sisters’ children or father’s sisters’ children.
e. Cousins that are descended from the same ancestor.
A Karen house is a type of religious temple in Thailand.
Most nations in the Americas did not gain their independence until after World War II.
Define foraging.
The earliest writing probably appeared 5,500 years ago.
Frida Kahlo is an artist best known for the political content of her work.
Child-rearing practices in all cultures are designed to produce knowledgeable adults.
Although the use of dowry was typical in Indian culture, it is now illegal to demand
dowry as a precondition for marriage.
The physical environment affects culture, but culture does not affect the physical
environment.
Engaged anthropologists refrain from choosing sides in political contests.
The potlatch is an example of negative reciprocity.
What is the nation-state?
Among the Na of China, romantic love is considered more important and long lasting
than family love.
Anthropologists rarely work with groups of more than 50 individuals.
Race is a term that is always linked to classifying people according to physical
differences.
The most basic tie in society is between husband and wife.
Compare and contrast witchcraft and sorcery.