Among other changes that occur with the transition to intensive agriculture:
a. population sizes tend to decrease.
b. peasants’ surpluses are transferred to the dominant elite.
c. a more egalitarian lifestyle emerges.
d. populations became less sedentary.
e. trade tends to occur at the local level rather than at the long-distance level.
Evaluate which of the five sexes in biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling’s continuum
represents the hijras of India. How do they perform their gender identity in daily life?
What economic and social roles do they play in society? Why are they often victims of
violence?
How did early twentieth-century anthropology differ from the anthropology practiced in
the nineteenth century Europe?
a. Twentieth-century anthropologists’ research focused on kinship and religion, whereas
nineteenth-century anthropologists were more interested in economics and politics.
b. Whereas twentieth-century anthropologists took a four-field approach to
understanding culture, nineteenth-century were mostly interested in material culture.
c. Nineteenth-century anthropologists were mostly interested in present-day cultures as
they existed, but twentieth-century anthropologists were interested in the processes by
which cultures changed.
d. Nineteenth-century anthropologists conducted long-term fieldwork, but
twentieth-century anthropologists tended to rely on explorers’ accounts.
e. Although twentieth-century anthropologists did fieldwork in Africa and the Pacific,
anthropologists in the nineteenth century primarily explored ancient cultures of the
Mediterranean region.
What do historic archaeologists have access to that sets them apart from other
archaeologists?
a. processual methods
b. written records
c. large cities
d. social capital
e. formal art
How long has the Iraqi ethnicity existed in the Middle East?
a. never
b. since World War II
c. two hundred years
d. five hundred years
e. at least two thousand years
In the United States, the system of taxation is a form of:
a. redistribution.
b. balanced reciprocity.
c. negative reciprocity.
d. generalized reciprocity.
e. capitalism.
Linguistic anthropologists would label new words that have emerged during the digital
age, such as mouse, modem, download, and email, as part of our generation’s ________
vocabulary.
a. cultural
b. ancestral
c. emotional
d. tonal
e. focal
The Bafokeng people of South Africa formed the corporation Royal Bafokeng Nation,
Inc. to:
a. recover land taken by white settlers.
b. get wealthy from platinum mining.
c. make the Bafokeng people wealthy.
d. take advantage of native sovereignty.
e. fight court battles for them.
Illness narratives:
a. are based on a physician’s assessment of an illness.
b. are the personal stories that people tell to explain their illness.
c. are ethnographic studies of disease and illness.
d. have been shown to be of limited value in treating disease.
e. are effective only in developing regions with limited access to biomedical treatment.
Anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard worked with the Azande peoples and studied
which of the following topics in relation to religion?
a. ritual
b. magic
c. rites
d. ceremony
e. doctrine
Given the poverty rates reported in the 2009 U.S. Census Bureau report, it is important
to recognize that most of the nation’s poor are:
a. white and live in rural and suburban areas.
b. black and live in urban areas.
c. Hispanic and are evenly distributed between rural and urban areas.
d. Asian and live in urban areas.
e. Native American.
Anthropologist Bruce Whitehouse’s research with Malian migrants to Brazzaville in the
Republic of Congo suggests that they:
a. are mostly Christian.
b. mostly work in factories.
c. are reshaping globalization from the top down.
d. rarely return back to their home community of Togotala.
e. are treated like outsiders, segregated by religion and language.
Globally, the movement toward independence from colonizing nations occurred:
a. in the early twenty-first century.
b. in the late 1700s.
c. in the mid-1800s.
d. in the late nineteenth century.
e. in the mid-twentieth century.
Students at Antioch College developed a sexual offense policy centered on which of the
following guidelines?
a. “safety first”
b. “no means no”
c. “just say no”
d. “yes means yes”
e. “sex is only for procreation”
Based on what linguistic anthropologist David Harrison found in Asia, which of the
following statements best describes how language shapes the idea of time in Tuva?
a. Tuvans are digital natives.
b. Words for time were not part of the focal vocabulary in Tuva.
c. Words for time and space are no longer known among people in Tuva.
d. While the future is seen as behind them, the past is seen as in front.
e. Like Americans, Tuvans see the future as in front of them and the past behind.
Anthropologists are primarily interested in:
a. analyzing religion’s ultimate truth or falsity.
b. capturing religious expression and making it come alive for others.
c. validating their own religious beliefs.
d. spreading atheism.
e. creating a record of exotic, shamanic traditions.
The Defense of Marriage Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2004 forbids the federal
government from recognizing which of the following?
a. adolescent marriages
b. marriages of divorced adults
c. same-sex marriages
d. marriages of affinal relatives
e. heterosexual marriages
As discussed in the text, anthropologist Paul Farmer:
a. is a founding member of Doctors Without Borders and works closely with German
physicians in Afghanistan.
b. is cofounder of Partners in Health, which works with local communities in Haiti to
improve the health conditions of poor Haitians.
c. has studied cultural beliefs and practices surrounding childbirth in a number of
countries.
d. linked the degenerative disease kuru with cannibalistic death ritual in South Fore.
e. studies the conflict resulting from medical pluralism between Hmong immigrants and
American health-care professionals.
Currently, the world is consuming natural resources at a rate ________ sustainable
levels.
a. 25 percent less than
b. 50 percent more than
c. 100 percent less than
d. equal to
e. five hundred times
The largest group of people who immigrated to the United States in 2011 by country of
origin were from:
a. South Korea.
b. China.
c. India.
d. Dominican Republic.
e. Mexico.
Through the 1960s, the American Academy of Pediatrics attempted to manage the
condition of children born with genitalia of both sexes through:
a. hormone therapy only.
b. surgery only.
c. psychological counseling only.
d. hormone therapy, surgery, and counseling.
e. the condition has never been managed by the medical community.
Balanced reciprocity can be described as:
a. aims to build social relationships, with an obligation that the object returned will be
of proportional value.
b. a form of exchange in which goods are collected from the members of the group and
reallocated in a different pattern.
c. practices that reallocate resources among a group to maximize collective good.
d. exchanges that are made through bonds of affection, including among kin, without
the expectation that they will be repaid in kind.
e. a pattern of exchange in which the parties seek to receive more than they give.
The learned behaviors perceived as masculine or feminine are called:
a. sexual dimorphism.
b. alternate sexualities.
c. cultural constructions.
d. universal beliefs.
e. gender stratification.
The concept that people of European descent are superior to all others is:
a. fascism.
b. Nazi ideology.
c. racism.
d. white supremacy.
e. Zionism.
In the 1950s, Jim Crow laws in many parts of the United States created a caste system
of legal inequality. White Americans and black Americans had to live by different and
inherently unfair rules and members of the civil rights movement held protests, sit-ins,
and marches to oppose this legal inequality that eventually resulted in the Civil Rights
Act, which eliminated much of the legal inequality in the country. This is an example of
a:
a. cause clbre.
b. public enterprise.
c. social movement.
d. rights initiative.
e. crusade.
What kind of researchers work to record languages that are disappearing by finding the
last speakers and making recordings and dictionaries to preserve them for the future and
for language revitalization?
a. descriptive linguists
b. salvage anthropologists
c. cultural anthropologists
d. sociolinguists
e. linguistic archaeologists
Changes in the environment due to global warming will:
a. cause massive population growth in animal species.
b. stimulate less frequent extreme weather.
c. result in intense pressures on the human species.
d. dramatically increase rainfall and flooding.
e. cause the sea level to retreat.
Heterosexuality in the United States:
a. is the country’s historical norm of sexuality.
b. is a relatively new invention, and not the historical norm.
c. refers to reproductive intercourse between a man and a woman only.
d. was enshrined by Victorian society as a Christian ideal.
e. excludes erotic feelings for the opposite sex as a perversion.
After the Civil War, many states passed laws mandating the segregation of American
citizens of European and African descent. These policies were known as:
a. antimiscegenation.
b. caste.
c. discrimination.
d. “darky” laws.
e. Jim Crow.
According to the text, Mayan women of Mexico’s Yucatn Peninsula typically gave
birth:
a. after going to the hospital.
b. attended by physicians, but in their own homes.
c. while sitting or reclining in hammocks.
d. after drinking cups of pulque,an herbal tranquilizer.
e. through the assistance of epidural pain blockers.
The trafficking of human organs discussed in the text provides a disturbing example of
the impacts of:
a. colonialism.
b. imperialism.
c. participation.
d. globalization.
e. fieldwork.
Geneticists point out that dividing people by skin color is as logical as dividing them
by:
a. brain size.
b. earwax.
c. eyelashes.
d. facial hair.
e. toenails.
Compare and contrast the concepts “genotype” and “phenotype.”
According to the textbook, the development of social media technologies such as
Facebook and YouTube and ubiquitous access to information networks through
smartphones have transformed digital activism. Discuss how digital activism has taken
place in recent years by comparing democratic protests that have taken place in China
to the events of the Arab Spring or the Occupy movement in the United States. How
have activists challenged authorities in government and corporations by using novel
methods?
Using an interpretivist approach, anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926″2006) argues
that seemingly straightforward actions such as winking have deep cultural meanings.
Describe what constitutes an interpretivist approach. Next, provide your own example
of a cultural action that you think conveys deep cultural meaning. What do you believe
the action symbolizes culturally? How do you know that the action conveys deep
cultural meaning and how did you learn its meaning? Would an individual need to be a
member of the particular society in order to understand the deep cultural meaning of the
action, or would anyone be able to interpret it correctly? Discuss why or why not.
Anthropologists have clearly demonstrated that kinship is not solely given at birth via
biological connections or through marriage alliances, but can be acquired through other
means. What are three other ways in which kinship can be acquired? What are the
benefits of being able to acquire kinship outside of biological relations and marriage?
Are these other forms of acquiring kinship present in the United States? Are they
present in your own home community? Provide at least two examples of alternate forms
of acquiring kinship in the United States and in your own home community.
Using historical and cross-cultural examples provided in the text, evaluate the value of
an anthropological approach to sexuality. What do historical and cross-cultural cases of
sexuality tell us about sexual norms? Did you learn anything in this chapter about
sexuality that you had previously taken for granted? If so, what did you learn? If not,
provide an example of something discussed in the chapter that you think someone in an
older generation might be surprised to learn.
How does tracing the links in the chain as commodities origination in Cte d”Ivoire
inform us of the complex dynamics in the global economy? After defining the term
commodity chain and identifying the commodities produced and exported from this
nation, discuss how the recent history of this former colony illustrates three important
dimensions of the global economy.
Explain how globalism has enabled flexible accumulation, and how it works. Provide
an example from the class.
Linguistic anthropologists have shown that languages are disappearing at an
unprecedented rate. Many argue that efforts should be made to preserve these
endangered languages by documenting their lexicon and grammar. Why are
anthropologists interested in preserving languages? Do you agree with these efforts?
Why or why not? Which types of knowledge are embedded in language that might
make them worthwhile to preserve? What are some of the techniques or strategies that
have been used to either preserve or revitalize less-prominent languages? Discuss two
examples where anthropologists have been involved in preserving endangered
languages, and reflect on how information technology may be used in language
revitalization.
A distinguishing feature of contemporary globalization is the high rate of global
migration, both between and within nations. Scholars have analyzed how this
unprecedented movement is closely linked to uneven development in the global
economy. Discuss how uneven development and development policies may influence
individual decisions to migrate. Draw on examples from the chapter or your own
experience to discuss the diverse range of motivations, destinations, and contexts that
shape internal and external migration. How can we understand global migrations in
terms of “pushes” and “pulls”?
Analyze Sunaina Maira’s ethnography Desis in the House. Who are desis? What
conflicts of ethnicity, gender, and authenticity do they navigate? What if anything can
we learn about the experiences of second-generation immigrants from the case study of
desi culture?
Evaluate the merits of the “man the hunter, woman the gatherer” debate. What are two
of the specific cultural debates used to support the notion that there is a biological basis
for the behaviors reported in this model? Provide two examples from the text that do
not support the biological argument in favor of a gendered division of labor in foraging
societies. Conclude by discussing the accuracy of the evolutionary model for
understanding the idealized model of the sexual division of labor.
One aspect of globalization is uneven development. Explain what this means and how it
affects the world. Provide an example from the class.
Mental maps of reality constitute one of the four elements that anthropologists often
consider when conducting cross-cultural research. Define mental maps of reality and
discuss the two important functions that mental maps of reality play regarding culture.
Provide a concrete example for each of the two functions. Conclude by discussing why
anthropologists should consider a group of people’s mental maps of reality when trying
to understand their culture.
Former Harvard University president and economist Lawrence Summers commented in
a 2005 speech that his school and others similar to it likely had more men in science
and math faculties than women because men’s brains were better suited for success in
these areas. Does Summers’s statement reflect a nature or nurture perspective of human
experience? Based on what you have read in Chapter 2 of your textbook, is Summers
correct in his statement? What may be some of the reasons why there is a gender
discrepancy in science and math faculties in U.S. colleges and universities? What role
does culture play in such gender discrepancies?
Define sexuality and, using a minimum of three examples from the text, describe the
ways in which culture influences sexual beliefs and behaviors.