Status in chiefdoms and states is based primarily on differential access to resources.
The cargo cults of Melanesia functioned to integrate Melanesians and set the stage for
the formation of political parties and economic interest groups.
Human biological differences are evident only to individuals who wrongfully sustain
the validity of human races.
In Melanesia, mana is an essential sacred life force that resides in people, animals,
plants, and objects.
To Kottak, the widespread U.S. belief that recreation and religion are separate domains
is both ethnocentric and false. Further, it may be taking the “fun” out of religion.
Strictly speaking, medical anthropology is an applied field within anthropology.
Linguistic productivity refers to the fixed linguistic structures that prevent the creation
of new expressions.
A nation-state refers to an ethnic group that is not politically autonomous.
Gender roles are the instinctual behaviors that are the exclusive domain of each sex.
An achieved status is not automatic. It comes through choices, actions, efforts, talents,
or accomplishments, and is always perceived as positive by a society.
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.
In postsocialist Russia’s initial changeover to capitalism, all of the following declined
EXCEPT
A.the birth rate.
B.the poverty rate.
C.life expectancy.
D.the gross domestic product.
E.farm and industry subsidies.
What is hegemony?
A.overt sociopolitical strategies used to control people
B.use of 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
An agreement to take part in research after having the nature, procedures, and possible
impacts of the research explained is known as
A.a research protocol briefing.
B.the do no harm directive.
C.informed consent.
D.etic and emic protocols.
E.implied consent.
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.
What is the term for the arbitrary rule that automatically places the children of a union
between members of different socioeconomic groups into the less-privileged group?
A.hypervitaminosis
B.polygyny
C.polyandry
D.hypodescent
E.hypogamy
Synonymous with tribe or ethnic group, what term used to refer to a culture that shared
a single language, religion, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship?
A.monoculture
B.country
C.nation
D.society
E.homeland
Neoliberalism is a new form of the old economic liberalism laid out in Adam Smith’s
The Wealth of Nations (1776). To Smith, economic liberalism encouraged free
enterprise and competition, with the goal of generating profits. However, this meaning
of liberal
A.is a Protestant ideology.
B.varies depending on whether it refers to politics in a Western or non-Western context.
C.has no implications for the relationship between economics and the state.
D.is a more accurate use of the term than the one Americans typically hear in current
talk radio.
E.is different from the one typically used in current U.S. politics, in which liberal is the
opposite of conservative.
What is the commonly stated goal for most development projects?
A.greater socioeconomic stratification
B.ethnocide
C.cultural assimilation
D.decreased local autonomy
E.increased equity
Like bifurcate merging kinship terminology, generational kinship terminology
A.is common in North America.
B.makes sense only from the perspective of ego.
C.illustrates the complicated ways in which adults confuse their children about the
realities of biology.
D.uses the same term for parents and their siblings, but lumping is more complete
(there are only two terms for the parental generation).
E.uses the same term for parents and grandparents, so there is less lumping than in the
bifurcate merging kinship system.
How does the modern world system affect ethnographers?
A.There are almost no truly isolated cultures left, making it difficult to do real
ethnographic research.
B.They need to be aware of the fact that any culture they study is influenced by and has
influence on other cultures.
C.They must be careful when comparing their findings to those who did work in the
first half of the 20th century, when there were many isolated cultures.
D.There are no more indigenous peoples.
E.It has brought about a blending of the races, which makes it harder to identify specific
cultures.
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.
The research technique that uses diagrams and symbols to record kin connections is
called
A.kin-based interviewing.
B.genealogical participant observation.
C.interpretive anthropology.
D.DNA testing.
E.the genealogical method.
Why do slash-and-burn cultivators stop using a plot of land every two to three years?
A.They burn so much wood that the air becomes too polluted to support a healthful
existence.
B.Slash-and-burn cultivation is unique to segmentary-lineage organized societies, and
crop rotation follows the cycle of interlineage exchange.
C.Slash-and-burn cultivation is associated with big-game hunting, which requires
regular movement so as not to deplete the animal population.
D.Slash-and-burn cultivators use relatively primitive irrigation systems, which have to
be repaired every three to four years.
E.The wild vegetation needs time to reestablish itself before it is burned to clear the
land and fertilize the soil.
In Arembepe, Brazil, a degree of community solidarity was promoted by the myth that
everyone was kin. However, social solidarity was actually much less developed in
Arembepe than in societies with clans and lineages. Why?
A.Intense social solidarity requires not a myth but a biologically grounded genealogy
that shows people’s actual relatedness.
B.Arembepeiros who became successful were bound by social obligation to share their
wealth. This powerful leveling mechanism worked against social solidarity.
C.In societies with clans and lineages, social solidarity is much more developed,
because they have more elaborate kinship rituals than Arembepeiros do.
D.Intense social solidarity is possible only in societies having homogeneous ancestry. In
Arembepe, high ethnic diversity weakens kinship ties.
E.Intense social solidarity demands that some people be excluded. By asserting they
were all relatedthat is, by excluding no oneArembepeiros were actually weakening
kinship’s potential strength in creating and maintaining group solidarity.
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 with 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.
What is the term that anthropologists use to refer to the biological father of a child?
A.pater
B.creator
C.moiety
D.genitor
E.provider
What term refers to the manipulation of the supernatural to accomplish specific goals?
A.animism
B.magic
C.religion
D.a rite of passage
E.pantheism
Despite the variety of research techniques the ethnographer may utilize in the field, in
the best studies the hallmark of ethnography remains
A.collaborating with the community to construct a cohesive image of local culture.
B.entering the community and getting to know its people.
C.gathering large quantities of data on a limited budget.
D.defining the local culture in such a way as to highlight what makes the particular
culture so unlike any other.
E.providing detailed descriptions of “the imponderabilia of native life and of typical
behavior.”
Vietnamese children learning French history in French colonial schools is an example
of
A.bilingual education.
B.diffusion.
C.cultural borrowing.
D.cultural imperialism.
E.ethnocide.
Totemism, one form of cosmology, is
A.a system, in this case a religious one, for imagining and understanding the universe.
B.Claude Lvi-Strauss’s term to describe the binary oppositions prevalent in religious
myths all over the world.
C.a synonym for folklore.
D.the etic explanation of people’s view on human agency.
E.the emic concept of spirituality.
According to Victor Turner, all rites of passage have three phases: separation, liminality,
and incorporation. Of these three, the liminal phasewhich is the most interestingis
typically characterized by
A.intensification of the social hierarchy.
B.a forming of an implicit ranking system.
C.the use of secular language.
D.symbolic reversals of ordinary behavior.
E.no change in the social norms.
Who was studied at a distance during the 1940s in an attempt to predict the behavior of
the political enemies of the United States?
A.the Koreans and English
B.the Yanomami and Betsileo
C.the Malagasy
D.the Germans and Japanese
E.the Brazilians and Indonesians
Polygyny, although formally outlawed, has survived in Turkey since the Ottoman
period, when having several wives was viewed as a symbol of power, wealth, and
sexual prowess. Unlike in the past, when the practice was customary and not illegal,
polygyny can put contemporary women at risk. How?
A.Women in polygynous unions have less of a chance to marry several men themselves.
B.Because their marriages have no official status, secondary wives who are abused or
mistreated have no legal recourse.
C.The increase in the number of wives a man takes on increases inter-wife feuds.
D.As cross-cultural studies have shown, violence against women is correlated with the
presence of polygyny in society.
E.Unlike in the past, polygynous unions are no longer unions based on romantic love.
Why should the numbers from Kinsey’s research be considered merely illustrative,
rather than statistically accurate?
A.sample sizes that were too small
B.flaws in the statistical models used
C.a reliance on nonrandom samples
D.failure to account for variance in the target population
E.incorrect assignment of causation
How do the rules of endogamy function in society?
A.They prove that the incest taboo is not the cultural universal it was once thought to
be.
B.They encourage the extension of affinal bonds to an ever-widening circle of people.
C.They tend to maintain social distinctions between groups.
D.They expand the gene pool.
E.They extend kin ties across classes.
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
The actions individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming
cultural identities are referred to as
A.psychological individualism.
B.dynamic structuralism.
C.free will.
D.agency.
E.volition.
In an example of how definitions of art change through time and space, this chapter
describes how French impressionism, currently widely esteemed as exceptional art, was
initially
A.celebrated as one of the great innovations of 19th-century painting.
B.based on abstract sand paintings from French colonies in West Africa.
C.considered a throwback to “old school” painting styles.
D.ignored for lacking any originality.
E.criticized for being too sketchy and spontaneous to be considered art.
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