Cultural relativists believe that a culture should be judged only according to the
standards and traditions of that culture and not according to the standards of other
cultural traditions.
Colonialism often involves dividing up ethnic groups to weaken their authority.
Traditionally, art and religion occupy mutually exclusive realms in society.
Homogamy is the practice of marrying within a culturally prescribed group to which
one does not belong.
Cultures have different definitions and expectations of relationships that are
biologically or genetically equivalent. In other words, kinship is socially constructed.
In unilineal descent, one’s ancestry is traced through only one line of descent.
The elites of archaic states restricted access to sumptuary goods.
Native American berdaches were permitted to marry men.
Despite the increasing popularity of team research among anthropologists, the best
ethnographies are always the product of individual work.
Since there are so many anthropologists in the United States, the distinction between
emic and etic does not apply to American culture.
It is safe to assume that there is less cultural diversity among the poorest, less
developed countries in the world.
As an academic discipline, anthropology falls under both the social sciences and the
humanities.
Early anthropologists explained incest taboos as a reflection of “instinctive horror” of
mating with close relatives. However, this explanation for incest taboos has been
rejected because formal incest restrictions would be unnecessary if humans really do
have an instinctive aversion to incest.
Same-sex marriages are not culturally viable institutions.
All human nonverbal communication is instinctive, not influenced by cultural factors.
In agricultural societies, women generally dominate the practice of subsistence labor.
Some researchers have proposed that early humans with a biological penchant for
music may have been able to live more effectively in social groups, thus conferring an
adaptive advantage to this penchant.
Much of the history of anthropology has been about the roles and relative prominence
of culture and the individual.
The characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer are participant observation, the
genealogical method, and in-depth interviewing.
Cross-culturally, divorce is known only in industrialized societies where a high
percentage of women are gainfully employed.
A nuclear family includes ego, ego’s parents, and ego’s grandparents.
One of the definitions of state is a centrally organized political unit, a government.
The Samoan community living in Los Angeles has successfully used the mataisystem to
deal with modern urban problems.
Art and religion are similar, because both refer to aspects of culture that are of more
than ordinary significance.
In tribal societies, unlike industrial ones, marriage entails only an agreement between
the people getting married; descent groups play only a minor role.
Most band and tribal societies in the world today are completely cut off from the rest of
the world.
After reaching an all-time low for the 20th century in the 1970s, the nuclear family is
now making a rebound, accounting for a greater number of U.S. households each year.
When people are asked to give up the basis of their livelihood, they usually comply,
especially if they are paid money.
In modern states, there tends to be much more uniformity in the culture’s artistic
standards compared to in less stratified societies.
Reasons why there are so many single-parent families headed by women include male
migration, divorce, abandonment, and the idea that women are responsible for the
children.
Worldwide, Islam is growing at a rate of about 2.9 percent annually, versus 2.3 percent
for Christianity, whose overall growth rate is the same as the rate of world population
increase.
Contemporary, applied ecological anthropologists work to plan and implement policies
aimed at environmental preservation. They also advocate for people who are at risk,
actually or potentially. One of the roles for today’s environmental anthropologist is to
assess the extent and nature of risk perception and to harness that awareness to combat
environmental degradation.
Archaeologists study only prehistoric communities.
The media offer a rich web of external connectionsthrough cable, satellite, the Internet,
television, movies, radio, telephones, print, and other sourcesthat can provide contact,
information, entertainment, and potential social validation.
In many countries, use of the English language reflects a colonial history and is thus a
consequence of forced diffusion.
All art is objectively beautiful.
Despite the differences among theoretical paradigms of practitioners as varied as Harris
(cultural materialism), White (neoevolutionism), Julian Steward (cultural ecology), and
Margaret Mead (configurationalism), all of them have what in common?
A. a strong sense of determinism, leaving very little (if any) room for the exercise of
individual human agency
B. a well-founded suspicion in the claims of science
C. an embrace of reflexive anthropology
D. a sense of moral duty to help the people they studied to accelerate their path to
civilization
E. a strong concern for the future of anthropological education
Archaeologists studying sunken ships off the coast of Florida or analyzing the content
of modern garbage are examples of how
A. archaeologists study the culture of historical and even living peoples.
B. Hollywood has popularized archaeology in recent movies, making it a popular
college major.
C. archaeology is going through an identity crisis, with its practitioners questioning the
discipline’s focus on studying prehistory.
D. archaeology is free from having to worry about the impact of its work on people.
E. training in the use of research skills for extreme environmentssuch as landfills and
the deep seaare worth the time, resources, and risk for the sake of the anthropological
knowledge gained.
Economic relationships are characteristically embedded in other relationships, such as
kinship, in all of the following kinds of societies EXCEPT
A. states.
B. foragers.
C. horticulturalists.
D. pastoralists.
E. chiefdoms.
According to Max Weber, prestige is the basis of
A. economic status.
B. political status.
C. social status.
D. power.
E. political capital.
Despite differences arising from environmental variation, all foraging economies have
shared one essential feature, their
A. emphasis on devising new forms of organic pesticides.
B. reliance on welfare supplied by state-level societies.
C. willingness to test out new food-producing technologies to see if they are any better
than what they are used to.
D. interest in developing irrigation technologies to control sources of water.
E. reliance on available natural resources for their subsistence, rather than controlling
the reproduction of plants and animals.
Cultural, including linguistic, diversity is alive, well, and thriving in many countries.
Local entrepreneurs and international companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft
that capitalize on that diversity are positioned to succeed. That success depends,
however, in large part on
A. their ability to creatively impose their product on others.
B. their capacity to take a biocultural approach to marketing.
C. external market forces that have little to do with people’s cultural, including
linguistic, preferences.
D. their ability to hire workers from the markets they hope to enter and teach them the
values of their corporate culture.
E. their capacity to follow one of the main lessons of applied anthropology, that
external inputs fit best when tailored properly to local settings.
Among patrilineal-patrilocal cultivators,
A. women remain the primary producers of subsistence crops.
B. women govern the extradomestic distribution of prestige items.
C. women fear contacts, including sexual intercourse, with men.
D. polygyny decreases household productivity, because a man must provide for more
than one wife.
E. the population pressure on strategic resources is relaxed.
Which of the following statements about political leaders in foraging bands is true?
A. They maintain power by keeping up strong ties with the commoner class.
B. They have inherited special access to strategic resources.
C. They maintain control by conquering foreign territories.
D. They have no means of forcing people to follow their decisions.
E. They are the most dominant males in the largest, most powerful descent group.
Which of the following statements about the concept of race in Brazil is NOT true?
A. Racial classification in Brazil is built around the concept of hypodescent.
B. There are more than 500 different terms used to describe phenotypes.
C. The large number of racial categories in Brazil does not easily lend itself to
socioeconomic discrimination based on race.
D. The perception of biological races is influenced not just by their physical phenotype
but by how one dresses and behaves.
E. A person’s race can change from day to day.
The lexicon of a language is
A. a dictionary containing all of its morphemes and their meanings.
B. its degree of complexity.
C. the set of rules that govern the written but not spoken language.
D. its symbolic and poetic value.
E. the range of speech sounds.
Which of the following statements about enculturation is NOT true?
A. It occurs through a process of conscious and unconscious learning.
B. It results in internalization of a cultural tradition.
C. It may involve direct teaching.
D. It is the exchange of cultural features that results when two or more groups come
into consistent firsthand contact.
E. It is the process by which culture is learned and transmitted across generations.
Which of the following statements about Karl Marx is NOT true?
A. He analyzed 19th-century industrial production capitalism.
B. He viewed socioeconomic stratification in terms of several classes with different but
complementary interests.
C. He called the owners of the means of production the bourgeoisie.
D. He called the people who sold their own labor the proletariat.
E. He emphasized class consciousness.
Anthropologists distinguish between kin terms and genealogical kin types. What is the
difference?
A. Kin terms refers to the actual genealogical relationship; genealogical kin types are
the words used for different relatives in a particular culture.
B. The difference is only a methodological onein practice, they are the same thing.
C. Kin terms are the words used for different relatives in a particular language, but
genealogical kin types refers to the actual genealogical relationship.
D. Kin terms are the words used for socially constructed relationships, whereas
genealogical kin types refers to relatives.
E. Kin terms are the terms used for different relatives from the ego’s perspective,
whereas genealogical kin types refers to objective relatives from no perspective in
particular.
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.
The Malagasy development program described in this chapter illustrates the importance
of
A. the local government’s ability to improve the lives of its citizens, when committed to
doing so.
B. replacing subsistence farming with a viable cash crop.
C. replacing outdated traditional techniques of irrigation with more modern ones.
D. breaking down corporate descent groups, which are too independent and interfere
with development.
E. the top-down strategies developed by the UN.
Which of the following terms refers to the theoretical paradigm that holds that customs
(social practices) function to preserve the social structure?
A. the Manchester school
B. synchronic functionalism
C. configurationalism, as illustrated in the works of Benedict and Mead
D. Panglossian structuralism
E. structural functionalism, as illustrated in the work of Radcliffe-Brown and
Evans-Pritchard
Anthropology has always been concerned with how environmental forces influence
humans, and how human activities affect the biosphere and the earth itself. The 1950s
through the 1970s witnessed the emergence of an area of study known as cultural
ecology or ecological anthropology. This field
A. focused on how cultural beliefs and practices help human populations adapt to their
environment.
B. studied etic perspectives on human-environment relationships.
C. is no longer relevant, because it dealt with research models that were either regional
or local, but not global enough to account for the changes caused by climate change.
D. has limited present value, because it is not scientifically rigorous enough to address
environmental problems.
E. studied human-environment relations as cultural constructions and analyzed them as
“texts.”
This chapter’s discussion on recurrent gender patterns stresses that
A. it is the role of industrialized nations to correct patterns that are immoral.
B. the United Nations should become more involved in reversing these patterns.
C. exceptions to cross-cultural generalizations may involve societies or individuals.
D. these patterns are universals rather than generalities.
E. these generalities are based on bad data, because the studies did not use randomized
sampling.
What is the term that refers to the type of pastoral economy in which part of the
population moves with the herds while the rest stays in the village?
A. balanced subsistence
B. discretionary pastoralism
C. pastoral transhumance
D. foraging
E. transhumant nomadism
What is the term used by John Durham Peters (1997) to describe how contemporary
people simultaneously experience the local and the global?
A. bifocality
B. dual ethnography
C. reflexivity
D. the ethnographic present
E. interpretive ethnography
What is the term for the ability to create new expressions by combining other
expressions?
A. displacement
B. diglossia
C. productivity
D. morphemic utility
E. phonemic utility
To Arjun Appadurai (1990), “________” describes the linkages in the modern world
that have both enlarged and erased old boundaries and distinctions.
A. postmodern
B. ethnocentric
C. translocal
D. essentialized
E. diasporic
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.
This chapter’s “Appreciating Diversity” account describes how McDonalds was able to
succeed in the Brazilian market once it adapted to preexisting Brazilian cultural
patterns. This example illustrates
A. how the axiom of applied anthropology that innovation succeeds best when it is
culturally appropriate applies only in Western cultures.
B. applied anthropology’s danger of turning itself into a tool of capitalist interest, which
always disregard the culture and well-being of the consumer.
C. how the axiom of applied anthropology that innovation succeeds best when it is
culturally appropriate applies not just to development projects but also businesses, such
as fast food.
D. applied anthropology’s capacity to help foreign markets adapt to a marketing strategy
that must, above all costs, maintain the integrity of its brand.
E. Brazilians’ intolerance of foreign goods, because they disregard their tastes.
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.
Deforestation is a global concern. Forest loss can lead to increased greenhouse gas
production, which contributes to global warming. The destruction of tropical forests
also is a major factor in the loss of global biodiversity. The global scenarios of
deforestation include all of the following EXCEPT
A. demographic pressure, from births or immigration, on subsistence economies.
B. commercial logging and road building.
C. cash cropping.
D. the intensification of foraging lifestyles among communities that have retreated from
the chaos of modern life.
E. fuel needs associated with urban expansion.
An anthropologist has just arrived at a new field site and feels overwhelmed with a
creepy, profound feeling of alienation, of being without some of the most ordinary,
trivial (and therefore basic) cues of his culture of origin. What term best describes what
he is experiencing?
A. culture shock
B. diachrony
C. synchrony
D. configurationalism
E. agency paralysis
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.
Which of the following is NOT true about the modern world system?
A. The distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat has disappeared.
B. The contrast between capitalists and propertyless workers is a worldwide
phenomenon.
C. Stratification systems are not simple and dichotomous.
D. There is a growing middle class of skilled and professional workers.
E. Intermediate occupations create opportunities for social mobility.
What kind of society has buildings dedicated to the arts?
A. band
B. tribe
C. chiefdoms
D. segmentary lineage
E. state
Actors, musicians, and dancers
A. are not artists, since they perform but do not create art.
B. function as parasitic consumers of the creative works of artists.
C. distort and dilute the artistic mastery of other artists.
D. function as intermediaries who translate the works and ideas of other artists.
E. are marginal members of artistic communities around the world.
Anthropology may improve psychological studies of human behavior by contributing
A. examples of primitive thinking from tribal societies.
B. nothing, since anthropology focuses on culture and psychology concentrates on
personality.
C. prehistoric analysis.
D. a humanistic approach to psychology.
E. a cross-cultural perspective on models of human psychology.
What term refers to the destruction of the culture of an ethnic group?
A. genocide
B. prejudice
C. ethnocide
D. discrimination
E. diaspora