The role of natural selection in producing variation in human skin color illustrates the
explanatory approach to explaining human biological diversity.
Globalization promotes intercultural communication, migration, and commerce, thereby
increasing the opportunities for what the text describes as postmodern moments.
If John marries his deceased brother’s widow, this arrangement is called a levirate
marriage.
States are complex systems of sociopolitical organization that aim to control and
administer everything from conflict resolution to fiscal systems to population
movements.
Ethnography involves the collection of data that is used to create an account of a
particular community, society, or culture.
A mode of production is a way of organizing production, whereas the means of
production include the factors of production like land, labor, and technology.
The increasing role of the media in our lives is responsible for the deterioration of our
artistic sensibilities.
The cargo cults of Melanesia functioned to integrate Melanesians and set the stage for
the formation of political parties and economic interest groups.
Domesticated animals, more specifically their manure and pulling capabilities, are key
components of horticulture.
In Western societies, the standards for artistic completeness and mastery are maintained
in large part by critics, specialists, and experts.
As a vehicle of change, religious proselytizing is a culturally neutral factor.
Agriculturalists tend to live in permanent villages that are larger and closer to other
settlements than the semipermanent settlements of horticulturalists.
TV programming that is culturally alien tends to outperform native programming when
the alien programming comes from the United States, Great Britain, and France.
According to Bronislaw Malinowski, religion provides people with emotional comfort
during problematic times.
Antimodernism describes a rejection of the modern in favor of what is perceived as an
earlier, purer, better way of life.
Status in chiefdoms and states is based primarily upon differential access to resources.
Anthropology has three dimensions: academic, applied, and a mix of the two.
In Japan, the burakumin represent an isolated breeding population that is genetically
distinct from the rest of the country.
The differences between sociology and cultural anthropology are becoming
increasingly more distinct.
Among the Kalabari, wood sculptures represent the highest form of purely artistic
representation of loved ones.
The market principle dominates economic activities in band-level foraging societies.
Religion can be used as a powerful means of controlling society.
The seeds of industrial society were planted well before the 18th century. For example,
a knitting machine invented in England in 1589 was so far ahead of its time that it
played a profitable role in factories two and three centuries later.
Ethnosemantics studies how different members of different linguistic groups organize,
categorize, and classify their experiences and perceptions.
There is much greater variation within each of the traditional races than between them.
Ethnomusicology is one of the four main subfields of anthropology.
In most foraging societies, private ownership of bounded land was almost nonexistent.
The distinction between small-c communism and large-C Communism is an example of
arbitrary concepts defined in the social sciences.
Although culture is one of the principal means humans use to adapt to their
environment, some cultural traits can be harmful to a group’s survival.
Ethnocide refers to the intentional destruction of an ethnic group’s traditional customs,
beliefs, and behaviors.
In a bifurcate merging kinship terminology, what is merged?
A. lineal relatives and collateral relatives
B. members of the family of orientation and those of the family of procreation
C. affinal relatives and collateral relatives
D. affinal relatives and lineal relatives
E. lineal relatives and offspring
According to Marx, who are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat?
A. the products of gender differentiation from Europe’s tribal past
B. groups destined to reconcile through the postcapitalist process of alienation
C. distinct and opposed classes produced by the world capitalist economy
D. exogamous social groups
E. moiety groups that dominated Western capitalism
Recent research on the origins of language suggests that a key mutation might have
something to do with it. Comparing chimp and human genomes, it appears that
A. chimps lack the tongue-rolling gene that all humans have, which might explain why
they struggle to achieve clear speech.
B. chimps share with humans all the genetic propensities for language but lack the
language-activation mutation.
C. a speech-friendly mutation occurred among Neandertals in Europe and spread to
other human populations through gene flow.
D. the speech-friendly form of FOXP2 took hold in humans some 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.
E. the speech mutation occurred even before the hominin line split from the rest of the
hominids.
Understanding kinship systems is an important part of anthropology because
A. it provides an objective, universal perspective on how people are related to one
another.
B. kinship ties are important to the people anthropologists study; they are a key
component of people’s everyday social relations.
C. their study is part of the anthropological tradition established by the field’s pioneers.
D. kinship ties are what triggered the split between the hominin line and the rest of the
primates and is thus the defining aspect of our humanity.
E. it is the only aspect of anthropological study that the general public cares about.
Which of the following is NOT characteristic of band-level societies?
A. an egalitarian social structure
B. nuclear families
C. the sexual division of labor
D. permanent villages
E. mechanisms of social control
Which of the following kinds of exchange is characteristic among the members of a
family?
A. generalized reciprocity
B. balanced reciprocity
C. negative reciprocity
D. redistribution
E. none of these exchanges
Communism has two meanings, distinguished by how they are written. Small-c
communism describes a social system in which property is owned by the community
and in which people work for the common good. Large-C Communism
A. is just another version of neoliberalism but in disguise.
B. is an imperial doctrine to appropriate private capital for the sake of the survival of
the state.
C. is Lenin’s political theory of small-c communism.
D. refers to the social aspects of small-c communism.
E. was a political movement and doctrine seeking to overthrow capitalism and establish
a form of communism such as that which prevailed in the Soviet Union (the USSR)
from 1917 to 1991.
Human rights are seen as inalienable. This means that
A. no one can abuse them.
B. nations cannot abridge or terminate them.
C. they are vested in groups and not individuals.
D. anthropologists have no moral grounds to question them.
E. they are universally accepted by all individuals.
How are the four subfields of U.S. anthropology unified?
A. Each subfield studies human variation through time and space.
B. Each subfield studies the human capacity for language.
C. Each subfield studies human biological variability.
D. Each subfield studies human genetic variation through time and space.
E. The subfields really are not unified; their grouping into one discipline is a historical
accident.
What is pidgin?
A. A partial language that results from primitive tribes’ attempts to learn the language of
a modern industrialized state.
B. A mixed language that develops to ease communication between members of
different cultures in contact, usually in situations of trade or colonial domination.
C. A rhythmic sublanguage present in any human language as the result of a universally
shared mutation.
D. A set of languages believed to be most like the original human language, spoken by a
small population of Indian Ocean islanders.
E. Metalanguage developed by computer programmers that has yielded valuable
insights into the workings of the human brain.
All of the following are characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer EXCEPT
A. detailed work with key consultants.
B. direct, firsthand observation of behavior, including participant observation.
C. in-depth interviewing, often leading to the collection of life histories.
D. problem-oriented research.
E. longitudinal analysis of data sets gathered from state-sponsored statistical agencies.
A cross-cultural study that systematically compared romantic love in many cultures
found
A. that while people everywhere know what love is, they experience it differently.
B. evolutionary evidence for romantic love in all societies surveyed.
C. a rise in love matches over arranged marriages in industrialized societies, but the
opposite trend in nonindustrialized societies.
D. a scholarly bias throughout the social sciences that viewed romantic love as a luxury
in human life, especially in academia.
E. evidence that romantic love may be a universal, although romantic love and marriage
do not necessarily go together.
A Nuer woman married to a woman can be the pater of a child she did not father. Native
American berdaches, biological men who represent a third gender, sometimes assume
the role of a wife when married to a man with whom they share the products of their
labor. Cross-cultural examples such as these illustrate
A. that the concepts of gender and marriage are more socially constructed in some
societies than others.
B. how, if they were to be made legal, same-sex marriages could easily benefit from the
same legal rights different-sex marriages already enjoy.
C. the rare social phenomenon of polyandry.
D. how same-sex marriages make good economic sense.
E. how Edmund Leach was wrong to suggest that all societies define marriage similarly.
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. They do not use fertilizer; thus, their crops exhaust the soil quickly.
Kottak prefers the term sociopolitical organization to Morton Fried’s term political
organization in discussing the regulation or management of interrelations among groups
and their representatives, because
A. the term sociopolitical is more politically correct.
B. anthropologists and political scientists have an interest in political systems and
organization, but they cannot agree on the same terminology.
C. sociopolitical is the term that the founders of anthropology used to refer to the
regulation or management of interrelations among groups and their representatives.
D. the term political refers only to contemporary Western states.
E. Fried’s definition is much less applicable to nonstates, in which it is often difficult to
detect any public policy.
What is the term for the marginal or in-between phase of a rite of passage?
A. voodoo
B. mana
C. taboo
D. liminality
E. animism
The Inuit song battle is
A. sometimes the occasion for a “treacherous feast.”
B. a widespread feature of tribal society.
C. a ritualized means of designating hunting lands.
D. a means of resolving disputes so as to forestall open conflict.
E. used to initiate colonial strategies.
For the women of Planinica, a Muslim village in prewar Bosnia, singing signaled
A. a series of transitions between life stages.
B. the arrival of spring.
C. that the artisans of the neighboring village were in town to sell their goods.
D. different things to different women.
E. the arrival of soldiers who had finished their military service.
The growth of a market for sugar in Europe spurred
A. a tremendous expansion in the strength of independent indigenous nations of Mexico
and South America.
B. the development of a transatlantic slave trade.
C. the movement of sugar-producing nations from the periphery to the core of the world
system.
D. the movement of capitalism, once a cultural trait specific to New Guinea (where
sugar was first domesticated), to the rest of the world.
E. a long-term improvement in the distribution of wealth among the rural peasantry of
England.
Which of the following statements about U.S. racial categories is true?
A. They are applied to endogamous breeding populations.
B. They are biologically valid, as demonstrated by the Phipps case in 1970s Louisiana.
C. They are based on global racial categories that vary little among societies.
D. They are based on genetics, whereas Japan’s are based upon undemonstrated descent.
E. They are culturally arbitrary, even though most people assume them to be based in
biology.
With the term sex, anthropologists are referring to biological differences. In contrast,
they define gender as
A. the cultural construction of whether one is female, male, or something else.
B. a political system ruled by men that defines the identity of women.
C. the tasks and activities that a culture assigns to each sex.
D. the marked differences in male and female biology, which vary across cultures.
E. one’s biological identity.
Although rap music originated in the United States, it is now popular all over the world.
Which of the following mechanisms of cultural change is responsible for this?
A. acculturation
B. enculturation
C. independent invention
D. colonization
E. diffusion
As a stark reminder that no society truly is isolated, this chapter’s “Appreciating
Diversity” segment describes how various levels of political regulationlocal, regional,
national, and internationalnow determine how contemporary people such as the
Venezuelan Yanomami live their lives. All of the following are examples of this,
EXCEPT that
A. in 2005, Venezuelan president Hugo Chvez expelled foreign missionaries working
among the Yanomami, accusing them of espionage.
B. both the Yanomami and government workers such as nurses and doctors depend on
the military to provide transportation in and out of the rain forest.
C. Yanomami leaders argue that since the expulsion of the missionaries in 2005 they
have been neglected by the Venezuelan government.
D. In 2005, the Venezuelan government created the Yanomami Health Plan, with an aim
to train some Yanomami to be health workers in their villages while sending doctors
into the jungle to provide health care to remote communities.
E. Yanomami leaders have been expelled by their own communities because of
accusations of sorcery.
Lewis Henry Morgan is well known for his work The League of the Iroquois,
considered anthropology’s earliest ethnography. This and other of his works illustrate
his view of unilinear evolutionism, which is that
A. cultural diversity was actually a sign of the slowing down of cultural evolution.
B. only the better and more civilized societies could survive.
C. all societies are on some path toward civilization, but the exact paths vary.
D. natural selection acts simultaneously on the biological and cultural aspects of human
life.
E. there is one line or path through which all societies have to evolve, and this path
involves specific stages that cannot be skipped, ending at the final stage of civilization.
Art can often lead to an intense emotional release, also referred to as
A. hypercommunication.
B. catharsis.
C. exalted symbolism.
D. humor.
E. intensive aesthetics.
Any media-borne image or message can be analyzed in terms of its nature, including its
symbolism and its effects. It can also be analyzed as a text, which refers to
A. literary works and other print media.
B. anything produced by mass media having commercial value.
C. anything that can be read or processed, interpreted, and assigned meaning by anyone
exposed to it.
D. anything that can be read but whose interpretation is determined by the producer of
the text.
E. our capacity to codify information.
In general, Americans tend to maintain a greater physical distance from others they
interact with on a day-to-day basis, especially when compared to Brazilians or Italians,
who need less personal space. However, the story of American students’ attitudes
toward hugging in “Give Me a Hug” reminds us that
A. any nation usually contains diverse and even conflicting cultural values, and these
cultural values are not static.
B. the key reason for the poor track-record of U.S. diplomacy begins with failures in the
American school system.
C. some aspects of culture are more biologically determined than others.
D. cultural values regarding bodily touch and personal space are very difficult to change
from one generation to another.
E. homosexuality is becoming more prevalent, and more accepted, among teenagers.
All of the following are evidence of the tendency to view culture as a process EXCEPT
A. analysis that attempts to establish boundaries between cultures.
B. practice theory.
C. attention to agency in anthropological analysis.
D. interest in public, collective, and individual dimensions of day-to-day life.
E. interest in how acts of resistance can make and remake culture.
Which of the following functions to reduce differences in wealth between the members
of a society and tends to be directed at socially marginal individuals?
A. blood feuds
B. Olympian religions
C. rites of passage
D. cargo cults
E. witchcraft accusations
Research among horticultural societies has found that
A. women are increasingly important to the livelihood of the community the older they
get; their prestige increases with experience.
B. men tend to be the main caretakers, whereas women are involved in regional politics
and economics.
C. in the case of matrilineal societies, women tended to do all the cultivating; men were
typically involved with warfare.
D. the general patterns between gender roles and residence rule do not apply.
E. women are the main producers.
This chapter’s “Appreciating Anthropology” section describes how forensic
anthropologists work to identify victims of violence and genocide around the world.
Which of the following identifying characteristics can NOT be determined from human
skeletal remains?
A. age
B. sex
C. right- or left-handedness
D. intelligence
E. dentition
Culture
A. is the exclusive domain of the elite.
B. is acquired by humans as members of society through the process of enculturation.
C. is being destroyed by electronic media.
D. developed among nonhuman primates around 10,000 years ago.
E. is more developed in industrial nations than among hunters and gatherers.