Like race, kinship is a cultural construction, in that it exhibits considerable cultural
diversity.
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is an incomplete linguistic system that is
able only to express thoughts and ideas related to life in inner-city communities.
Behaviors associated with sports fandom could be considered secular rituals.
Sociolinguists study linguistic performance by categorizing speakers as inadequate,
competent, or highly proficient.
Recent census data reveal that more U.S. women are now living without a husband than
with one.
The American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics prohibits anthropologists
from working with governments on matters of national security.
There is much greater variation within each of the traditional races than between them.
Adaptation refers to the processes by which organisms cope with environmental forces
and stresses, such as those posed by climate and topography.
By participating in a ritual, the participants signal that they accept the common social
and ethical order prescribed by their religion.
An illness is a scientifically identified health threat caused by a bacterium, virus,
fungus, parasite, or other pathogen.
All human nonverbal communication is instinctive, not influenced by cultural factors.
Ethnography is one of applied anthropology’s most valuable research tools, because it
provides a firsthand account of the lives of ordinary people.
Beyond Morgan’s and Tylor’s early anthropological work, no major theoretical
paradigm in anthropology has embraced the role of evolution in cultural change.
Neoliberalism refers to a revival of Adam Smith’s classic economic liberalism, which
suggests that governments should not regulate private enterprise and that free market
forces should rule.
Like ethnicity and language, religion is associated with social divisions within and
between societies and nations.
Flexibility in sexual expression seems to be an aspect of our primate heritage.
The distinction between small-c communism and large-C Communism is an example of
arbitrary concepts defined in the social sciences.
Incest is a cultural universal that is defined the same way by all cultures.
The Qashqai and Basseri peoples are examples of nomadic foragers who live in
modern-day Iran.
Although humans do employ tools much more than any other animal does, tool use also
turns up among several nonhuman species, including birds, beavers, sea otters, and
apes.
Dowries are most common in societies in which women occupy an elevated status
position.
The British notion of the “white man’s burden” was similar to the French concept
mission civilisatrice, in that both were racist ideologies used to justify the colonial
efforts of their respective countries.
With generalized reciprocity, the individuals participating in the exchange usually do
not know the other person prior to the exchange.
Only dominant or majority groups can have prejudiced views; minority groups are not
capable of being prejudiced.
Historical linguists use linguistic similarities and differences in the world today to study
long-term changes in language.
Morgan and Tylor, both considered among the fathers of anthropology, worked within
the paradigm of unilinear evolution.
In states, all artwork can be clearly attributed to a specific artist.
Cross-culturally, women’s roles tend to be focused on activities associated with the
home, while men are more active in the public domain.
After Christians and Muslims, the largest spiritual group are those who lack any
religious affiliation.
Comparing notions of family between the United States and Brazil, the extended family
still plays a central role for most Brazilians.
Sociolinguistics has demonstrated that men lack the linguistic capacity to distinguish
between slight changes in color.
Brazilian racial classification is based exclusively on an individual’s phenotype.
Methodological relativism does not preclude making moral judgments or taking action.
Linguistic anthropology
A.is a research strategy of biological anthropologists studying the emergence of
language among nonhuman primates.
B.relies heavily on the methods of phrenology.
C.includes sociolinguistics, descriptive linguistics, and the study of the biological basis
for speech.
D.includes cultural anthropology and paleoecology.
E.has securely dated the origin of hominid language.
Traditional racial classification assumed that biological characteristics such as skin
color were determined by heredity and remain stable over many generations. We now
know that
A.skin color is actually determined throughout child development.
B.skin color is determined by sun exposure and the amount of melanin in our diets.
C.a biological similarity such as skin color is also the result of natural selection working
among different populations that face similar environmental challenges.
D.skin color is determined by a single gene that is prone to mutations over many
generations.
E.a biological similarity such as skin color is always the result of both a common
ancestry and natural selection.
What kind of religion is based on the idea that each human has a double that is active
during sleep?
A.animatism
B.totemism
C.animism
D.mana
E.polytheism
Foraging economies are usually associated with which type of sociopolitical
organization?
A.band
B.tribal
C.state
D.chiefdom
E.primate
In survey research, a sample should
A.include the entire population in question.
B.include anyone who will be interviewed by the ethnographer.
C.target only one social, cultural, or environmental factor that influences behavior.
D.be constituted so as to allow inferences about the larger population.
E.be invariant.
Which of the following was NOT used by the traditional Inuit to handle disputes?
A.blood feuds
B.song contests
C.killing of the offender
D.courts of law
E.kin ties
In anthropology, cultural relativism is not a moral position but a methodological one. It
states that
A.because cultural values vary between cultures, they cannot be analyzed and
compared.
B.some cultures are relatively better than others.
C.to understand another culture fully, we must try to understand how the people in that
culture see things.
D.to understand another culture, we must use tactics to try to jar people so that their
true views are revealed.
E.to bring about desired cultural change, anthropologists should act as emissaries of the
most evolved cultural values.
Cultural anthropologists carry out their fieldwork in
A.factories.
B.the tropics.
C.the third world.
D.former colonies.
E.all kinds of societies.
Among horticulturalists with matrilineal descent and matrilocality,
A.women tend to have high status, but only within the domestic sphere.
B.gender and sex become indistinguishable.
C.female status tends to be high.
D.women rarely inherit any property and are therefore at a disadvantage in comparison
to their brothers.
E.women leaders are only symbolic, because men tend to have true decision-making
power.
Race, like ethnicity in general, is
A.a cultural category rather than a biological reality.
B.a biological reality as much as a cultural one.
C.used by social scientists to classify humans based on their genes and shared blood.
D.poorly understood by geneticists and is therefore considered a cultural category.
E.a meaningless concept to people living day to day.
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.
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 marital customs functions to maintain distinctions between
groups?
A.progeny price
B.levirate
C.sororate
D.sororal polygyny
E.endogamy
What kind of kinship is most common in the contemporary United States?
A.matrilateral kinship
B.bilateral kinship
C.patrilateral kinship
D.collateral kinship
E.generational kinship
The influential sociologist Max Weber defined which three related dimensions of social
stratification?
A.wealth, power, and prestige
B.cultural capital, power, and population control
C.superordinate, ordinate, and subordinate
D.judiciary, enforcement, and fiscal
E.selfishness, greed, and ignorance
Who are indigenous peoples?
A.people who live in autonomous, independent nation-states
B.peasants who are of the same ethnicity as the ruling elite
C.original inhabitants of particular areas
D.any population living in a nation-state on the periphery of the world system
E.people who have emigrated to a new country
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 success of 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 capabilities.
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.
One aspect of linguistic history is language loss. When a language disappears,
A.less strain is put on the educational system, because it has less language diversity to
deal with.
B.historical linguists have confirmation that language is also a victim of evolutionary
forces.
C.so does pride in one’s heritage.
D.cultural diversity is reduced as well.
E.humanity is that much closer to global integration.
More recent approaches in historical anthropology, while sharing an interest in power
with world-system theorists, have focused more on
A.the structural causes of colonialism.
B.how anthropological theory can aid NGOs in writing an alternate history of oppressed
peoples.
C.the role of colonial bureaucracies in shaping international culture.
D.local agency, the transformative actions of individuals and groups within colonized
societies.
E.the state’s role in denying some of its citizens a place in history.
Based on his observation that contact between neighboring tribes had existed since
humanity’s beginnings and covered enormous areas, Franz Boas argued
A.against treating cultures as isolated phenomena.
B.that even the earliest foragers engaged in warfare.
C.that language must have originated among the Neandertals.
D.that biology, not culture, was responsible for the vast majority of human diversity.
E.that general anthropologists were wrong to focus too much attention on biology.
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.
________ describes the process of viewing an identity as established, real, and frozen,
so as to hide the historical processes and politics within which that identity developed.
A.Essentialism
B.Marketing
C.Autochthony
D.Patrimony
E.Fluidity
What kind of society most likely has buildings dedicated to the arts?
A.band
B.tribe
C.forager
D.segmentary lineage
E.state
What are the means, or factors, of production?
A.synonyms of a society’s mode of production
B.a society’s institutional mechanisms for making sure that everyone is productive
C.the ways a society organizes production
D.labor forces organized by kinship ties
E.a society’s major productive resources, such as land and other natural resources, labor,
technology, and capital
Anthropology teaches us that the adaptive responses of humans can be more flexible
than those of other species because our main adaptive means are
A.biocultural.
B.ethnocentric.
C.chosen through free will.
D.sociocultural.
E.anthropomorphic.
Ethnographers typically combine emic and etic research strategies in their fieldwork.
This means they are interested in applying both
A.local- and scientist-oriented research approaches.
B.local and bifocal research approaches.
C.reflexive and salvage approaches.
D.personal and impersonal research approaches.
E.the genealogical and survey methods.
To understand royal endogamy, it is useful to distinguish between the manifest and
latent functions of customs and behavior. The manifest function of a custom refers to
the reasons people in a society give for it. Its latent function is
A.the genetically motivated reason for the custom.
B.a subconscious effect the custom has on the society members’ identification with that
belief.
C.the socially constructed perspective of why the custom exists.
D.an effect the custom has that the society’s members don’t mention or recognize.
E.the emic effect the custom has on the society, recognized only by anthropologists.
Which of the following statements about peasants is NOT true?
A.They all live in state-organized societies.
B.They owe rent to landlords.
C.They practice small-scale agriculture without modern technology such as chemical
fertilizers and tractors.
D.They owe rent to the government.
E.They are not part of the world market.
mile Durkheim, an early scholar of religion, stressed what he termed religious
effervescence. Anthropologists too have stressed
A.that proper analysis requires separation of collective re-creation from collective
religion.
B.the collective, shared, and enacted nature of religion, the emotions it generates, and
the meanings it embodies.
C.the analysis of the use of behavior-altering drugs in religious experience.
D.the collective as well as individual universality of religion.
E.the qualities that make religion present in some societies but not in others.
Cases of local communities using modern technology to preserve and revise their
traditions
A.are examples of hidden ethnocide.
B.are becoming more common.
C.contradict Gramsci’s theory of hegemony.
D.are becoming increasingly rare, due to the cost of this technology.
E.suggest that modern technology is always an agent of cultural imperialism.
Why is ethnography one of the most valuable and distinctive tools of the applied
anthropologist?
A.It is valuable insider’s data that can be routinely sold to multinational corporations
and state agencies without the consent of the people studied.
B.It provides a firsthand account of the day-to-day issues and challenges that the
members of a given community face, as well as a sense of how those people think about
and react to these issues.
C.It produces a statistically unbiased summary of human responses to set stimuli.
D.It is among the most economical and time-efficient tools that exist in the social
sciences.
E.It can be produced without leaving the comfort of the anthropologist’s office.
In which of the following forms of political organization is it most likely that the most
important leaders will acquire their positions based upon personal background or
ability, rather than heredity?
A.tribal societies
B.feudal states
C.imagined communities
D.chiefdoms
E.agrarian, preindustrial states
Intensive agriculture
A.has a significant impact on the environment, but this impact is very localized and can
be controlled.
B.can actually breed greater ecological diversity.
C.is not ecologically destructive when it is done with fuel-efficient machinery.
D.has significant environmental effects such as deforestation, water pollution, and
reduction of ecological diversity.
E.is an ecological improvement over sectorial fallowing.