Anthropologists study only non-Western cultures.
The origins of BEV are found mostly in West Africa, not in the dialects of the southern
part of the United States.
Acculturation is the process by which people lose the culture that they learned as
children.
Postmodernism refers to the breakdown of traditional categories, standards, and
boundaries in favor of a more fluid, context-dependent set of identities.
Essentialism 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.
Biological races have been scientifically discredited not just among humans but also
among all living species.
Diaspora refers to the hegemonic policy of dominators to isolate individuals who
publicly resist from the rest of the population.
Host countries that emphasize assimilation tend to encourage minority ethnic groups to
retain their identities.
One consequence of the ongoing globalization of work and migration is that skilled
Western workers must now compete against well-educated workers in such low-wage
countries as India, where an experienced software programmer earns one-fifth the
average salary of a comparable U.S. worker.
When indigenous peoples are incorporated into modern nation-states, they usually
become part of the impoverished classes.
Flexibility in sexual expression seems to be an aspect of our primate heritage.
Mass media can play an important role is constructing and maintaining national and
ethnic identities.
The higher proportion of expanded family households among poorer Americans has
been explained as an adaptation to poverty.
Readers of a text make their own interpretations and derive their own feelings from it.
“Readers” of media messages constantly produce their own meanings.
Max Weber argued that the spread of capitalism was closely linked to the ethics and
values of Catholicism.
In Latin America, the drive by indigenous peoples for self-identification has
emphasized their autochthony, with an implicit call for excluding strangers from their
communities.
By participating in a ritual, participants signal that they accept the common social and
ethical order prescribed by their religion.
Historically, scientists have approached the study of human biological diversity in two
main ways: racial classification, which is now largely abandoned; and the current
explanatory approach, which focuses on understanding specific differences.
Sociolinguists and cultural anthropologists studying Puerto Rican communities in the
Midwestern United States found that Puerto Rican parents valued education more than
non-Hispanics.
Recent census data reveal that more U.S. women are now living without a husband than
with one.
Overall, countries in the Global South tend to be more conservative than countries in
the Global North.
In cultural terms, a race is an ethnic group that has a biological basis.
Polygynous marriages often serve important economic and political functions, with the
number of wives a man has serving as an indicator of his wealth, prestige, and status.
Fortunately for applied anthropologists eager to do effective international work, all
governments are genuinely and realistically committed to improving the lives of their
citizens.
In Melanesia, mana is an essential sacred life force that resides in people, animals,
plants, and objects.
Culture is not itself biological but rests on certain features of human biology.
Recent genetic research suggests that a speech-friendly mutation took hold in humans
around 150,000 years ago, thus conferring selective advantages (linguistic and cultural
abilities) that allowed those who had it to spread it, at the expense of those who did not.
Diffusion plays an important role in spreading cultural traits around the world.
Higher amounts of melanin in the skin inhibit the body’s ability to manufacture vitamin
D. This confers an adaptive advantage in environments with excessive sun exposure.
The reason there are more modern-day Rosie the Riveters is that modern industry is
even more physically demanding than it was during World War II.
Only people living in the industrialized, capitalist countries of Europe and the United
States are ethnocentric.
With the spread of industrialization, the existence of indigenous economies, ecologies,
and populations has become threatened all over the world.
Although acculturation can be applied to any case of cultural contact and change, the
term most often has described Westernization, the positive influence of Western
expansion that has spread democratic and capitalistic values to those less fortunate.
As humans organize their lives and adapt to different environments, our abilities to
learn, think symbolically, use language, and employ tools and other products
A. rest on certain features of human biology that make culture itself a biological
phenomenon.
B. have made some human groups more cultured than others.
C. prove that only fully developed adults have the capacity for culture; children lack the
capacity for culture until they mature.
D. rest on certain features of human biology that make culture, which is not itself
biological, possible.
E. are shared with other animals capable of organized group life such as baboons,
wolves, and even ants.
What is the term for the study of the music of the world and of music as an aspect of
culture?
A. acoustic anthropology
B. harmonic anthropology
C. tonal anthropology
D. ethnomusicology
E. sociomusicology
Traditional ethnographic research focused on the single community or culture, which
was treated as more or less isolated and unique in time and space. However,
A. all such single communities have already been studied, so anthropologists have very
limited project choices.
B. there has been a shift within the discipline toward a recognition of ongoing and
inescapable flows of people, technology, images, and information.
C. the American Anthropological Association still requires its members to strive toward
research focused on one single community.
D. this is no longer true, nor has it ever been true, a fact that renders classic
ethnographies historical curiosities and not serious academic works.
E. there has been a shift within the discipline against the concept of culture and toward
the individual as the only true, reliable unit of analysis.
Organizations in the United States such as the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Council of La Raza, a
Hispanic advocacy group, have opposed adding a “multiracial” census category. This
suggests that
A. both organizations need to hire anthropologists.
B. classification is a political issuethese groups fear that their political clout will decline
if their numbers go down.
C. racial classification is all about cultural pride.
D. racial classification can become more scientifically accurate, people’s ignorance to
the contrary.
E. racial classification matters only to Hispanic minorities in the United States.
Who viewed the nation-state as an instrument of oppression and religion as a method of
diverting and controlling the masses?
A. Weber
B. Freud
C. Tylor
D. Marx
E. Morgan
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. descendants of tribespeople who live on as culturally distinct, colonized peoples,
many of whom aspire to autonomy
D. any population living in a nation-state on the periphery of the world system
E. people who have emigrated to a new country
Which of the following statements about religion is NOT true?
A. The functions of religious beliefs and practices vary with the society.
B. Religion is often an instrument of societal change, even revolution.
C. Religion serves only to maintain social solidarity; it does not create or maintain
societal divisions.
D. Political leaders never mix religion with politics.
E. Religious fundamentalism is as old as human culture.
The study of television’s behavioral effects in Brazil illustrates all of the following
EXCEPT
A. how investigators must carefully choose between a qualitative or quantitative data
model.
B. how the scientific method is not limited to ethnology but applies to any
anthropological endeavor that formulates research questions and gathers or uses
systematic data to test hypotheses.
C. the value of cross-cultural research, which in this case enables the researchers to
distinguish the effects of years of TV exposure and other changes associated with aging.
D. how anthropological studies may deal with several research questions.
E. the challenges researchers often face when determining whether they are observing
effects or correlations in their findings.
Because of global climate change, arctic landscapes and ecosystems are changing
rapidly and perceptibly, as the residents of Newtok, Alaska, can attest. With the land
upon which they have built their homes slowly melting and sinking, they have appealed
to the state and federal governments for assistance in helping them cover the costs of
moving their town to a different location. Ironically,
A. the land upon which the Alaskan state government buildings are located is also
melting.
B. the residents of Newtok have discovered oil on their land, making their appeal for
funds less convincing.
C. a senator from Alaska has a vacation home in Newtok, Alaska, and so is personally
committed to the predicament of the town.
D. decades ago, the U.S. government mandated that they and other Alaskan natives
abandon a nomadic life based on hunting and fishing for sedentism.
E. the economic activity of the town of Newtok is extremely polluting and thus a big
contributor to the environmental changes that have turned its residents into the first
climate change refugees in the United States.
What term describes a complex sociopolitical system that administers a territory and
populace having substantial contrasts in occupation, wealth, prestige, and power?
A. state
B. ethnic group
C. nationality
D. bureaucracy
E. culture
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 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
This chapter describes Americans’ belief that U.S. television programs inevitably
triumph over local products around the world as
A. ethnocentric.
B. culturally relative.
C. indigenized.
D. imagined.
E. politically correct.
Generalized reciprocity
A. is characterized by the immediate return of the object exchanged.
B. is the characteristic form of exchange in egalitarian societies.
C. usually develops after redistribution but before the market principle.
D. disappears with the origin of the state.
E. is exemplified by silent trade.
In a study assessing the effects of television on behavior, attitudes, and values, Kottak
and a team of researchers found that
A. television exposure has a greater impact on behavior, attitudes, and values in the
United States than in Brazil.
B. the claim that television exposure affects people’s behavior, attitudes, and values is
overstated.
C. television exposure inevitably leads to a decrease in social interaction, regardless of
the culture.
D. Brazilians watch telenovelas because they see in these programs the traditions of
their culture vividly represented and valued.
E. people’s ideas about proper family size are influenced as they see, day after day,
nuclear families smaller than the traditional ones in their town.
Findings of finely shaped bones dating from more than 70,000 years ago in South
Africa’s Blombos Cave suggest that
A. anatomically modern humans were good toolmakers but terrible artists.
B. australopithecines had the ability of symbolic thought.
C. scientists need to be careful with tampered evidence about the emergence of culture.
D. anatomically modern humans had the ability, as early as 70,000 years ago, of
symbolic thought.
E. bones were used for their functional, not aesthetic, value.
Anthropologists agree that cultural learning is uniquely elaborated among humans and
that all humans have culture. They also accept a doctrine designated in the 19th century
as the “psychic unity of man.” What does this doctrine mean?
A. Although women and men both share the emotional and intellectual capacities for
culture, at a population level there is less variability in these capacities among men than
among women.
B. Although individuals differ in their emotional and intellectual capacities, all human
populations have equivalent capacities for culture.
C. Although an individual’s genetic endowment does not affect that person’s ability to
learn cultural traditions, it does affect his or her capacity to change culture creatively.
D. Although human populations differ in their emotional and intellectual capacities, all
individuals have equivalent capacities for culture.
E. Both mental abilities and disabilities are evenly distributed among individuals of all
cultures.
Anthropology is a science, yet it has been suggested that anthropology is among the
most humanistic of all academic fields. This is because
A. its main object of study are humans.
B. of its fundamental respect for human diversity.
C. its findings are best expressed with the tools of the humanities.
D. the field, particularly in the United States, traces its origins to philosophy and
literature.
E. it puts so much emphasis on the study of culture that cannot be studied scientifically.
How does a big man increase his status?
A. Big men are village heads who are trying to turn their achieved status into something
more permanent; the standard way of doing this is through conspicuous symbolic
displays of wealth.
B. The term big man refers to the liminal state a Kapauku youth enters before marriage;
he accumulates wealth as a way of funding the wedding and paying the bride price.
C. Big men are typically war leaders and as such must have a standing supply of
“grievance gifts” to compensate the families of warriors who die under their command.
D. The primary means of becoming a big man is the wearing of a tonowi shell necklace,
which is imported from the coast and is therefore quite expensive by Kapauku
standards.
E. Big men do not keep the wealth they accumulate; instead, they redistribute it to
create and maintain alliances with political supporters.
What does the term Columbian exchange refer to?
A. the exchange of culture that occurred among Native Americans and Europeans that
eventually led to the first great civilizations in the Americas and, in Europe, the first
classless societies
B. the general reciprocity that characterized the relationship between Europeans and
Native Americans during the first 15 years after initial contact
C. the spread of people, resources, products, ideas, and diseases between the Eastern
and Western hemispheres after contact
D. the spread of European notions and technologies of warfare to Native Americans,
who never engaged in massive violent campaigns prior to the 1500s
E. the peaceful exchange among Europeans and Native Americans of native edible plant
species
Which of the following statements about chimpanzee call systems is NOT true?
A. They consist of a limited number of sounds.
B. Like language, they include displacement and cultural transmission.
C. They consist of sounds that vary in intensity and duration.
D. Calls cannot be combined when multiple stimuli are present.
E. They are stimuli dependent.
What is communitas?
A. a social inequality that is accepted even by those who are less privileged
B. a collective liminality
C. anxiety
D. the Latin word for mana
E. the supernatural
What kind of religion is based on the idea that each human has a double, which is active
during sleep?
A. animatism
B. totemism
C. animism
D. mana
E. polytheism
With unilineal descent, sex with cross-cousins is proper, but sex with parallel cousins is
considered incestuous. Why?
A. Cross-cousins are actually parallel cousins.
B. Societies with unilineal descent share a gene that impedes them from developing
sexual urges for parallel cousins.
C. This behavior is a human universal explained by Freud’s theory of attempt and
contempt.
D. Cross-cousins are considered closer relatives than all other kin.
E. Parallel cousins are considered closer relatives than cross-cousins.
The last 30 years have seen a dramatic shift in the conditions of indigenous peoples in
Latin America, where the drive by indigenous peoples for self-identification has
emphasized all of the following EXCEPT
A. political reforms involving a restructuring of the state.
B. their cultural distinctiveness.
C. their autochthony, with an implicit call for excluding strangers from their
communities.
D. territorial rights and access to natural resources, including control over economic
development.
E. reforms of military and police powers over indigenous peoples.
Religion and magic don”t just explain things and help people accomplish goalsthey also
enter the realm of human feelings. In other words,
A. they serve emotional needs as well as cognitive (i.e., explanatory) ones.
B. religion helps reduce differences by promoting brotherly love.
C. they determine the emotional well-being of all their practitioners.
D. they often lead to extreme psychological disruption and even mental illness.
E. they are psychologically and cognitively relevant, but these realms are well
contained and have no effect beyond the mental well-being of the practitioner.
Based on research in the 1960s, which of the following statements about Etoro
conceptions of heterosexual intercourse is NOT true?
A. It was thought to sap a man’s vitality.
B. Women who wanted too much heterosexual intercourse were viewed as witches.
C. Such sex was permitted only a hundred days a year.
D. It was permitted to take place only in the couple’s residence.
E. It was seen as a necessary sacrifice that would eventually lead to a man’s death.
Rituals serve the social function of creating temporary or permanent solidarity among
peopleforming a social community. We see this also in practices known as
A. mana.
B. liminality.
C. animism.
D. totemism.
E. fundamentalism.
According to anthropologist Ann Stoler, the economic determinants of gender status
include
A. the level of interest rates and the price of oil.
B. controlling one’s own and others’ trend toward overconsumption.
C. free will and overcoming ideas that associate sin with the desires of the flesh.
D. free will and overcoming ideas that split the mind and body.
E. freedom or autonomy in terms of disposing of one’s labor and its fruits, and social
power: control over the lives, labor, and produce of others.
As investigators who illustrated the functionalist approach in anthropology, both
Malinowski’s and Radcliffe-Brown’s ethnographic research focused on
A. myth and ritual and the ways that these aspects of culture created social cohesion.
B. the evolutionary history of present-day cultural patterns.
C. the role of cultural traits and practices in contemporary society.
D. the symbolic value that cultural traits and practices held with members of
contemporary society.
E. the role of cultural traits and practices aimed at conflict resolution.
In his study of Navajo music, McAllester found that it reflected the overall culture in all
of the following ways EXCEPT a general
A. Navajo conservatism extended to music.
B. Navajo stress on proper form applied to music.
C. Navajo stress on individualism extended to music.
D. Navajo liberalism extended to music.
E. distaste among the Navajo for foreign music.
What is anthropology?
A. the art of ethnography
B. the study of long-term physiological adaptation
C. the study of the stages of social evolution
D. the humanistic investigation of myths in nonindustrial societies
E. the exploration of human diversity in time and space