Anthropological Theory
Exam Materials
Course Introduction
Anthropological Theory explores the major conceptual frameworks and debates that have shaped the discipline of anthropology from its origins to the present. The course introduces students to foundational thinkers, such as Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and traces intellectual developments through structuralism, post-structuralism, feminist anthropology, and postcolonial critiques. Emphasizing the relationship between theory and ethnographic practice, students analyze how anthropologists construct knowledge about culture, power, identity, and society. By engaging with contemporary issues and global perspectives, the course encourages critical evaluation of how theoretical approaches influence the interpretation of human diversity, social organization, and cultural change.
Recommended Textbook
Cultural Anthropology 16th Edition by Conrad Phillip Kottak
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Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology
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Sample Questions
Q1) Cultural anthropologists carry out their fieldwork in A)factories.
B)the tropics.
C)the third world.
D)former colonies.
E)all kinds of societies.
Answer: E
Q2) This chapter's description of how humans cope with low oxygen pressure in high altitudes illustrates
A)human capacities for cultural and biological adaptation, the latter involving both genetic and physiological adaptations.
B)how biological adaptations are effective only when they are genetic.
C)how human plasticity has decreased ever since we embraced a sedentary lifestyle some 10,000 years ago.
D)how in matters of life or death, biology is ultimately more important than culture.
E)the need for anthropologists to pay more attention to human adaptation in extreme environments.
Answer: A
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Chapter 2: Culture
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Q1) 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.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) What does it mean to say that humans use culture instrumentally?
A)People use culture to fulfill their basic biological needs for food, drink, shelter, comfort, and reproduction.
B)People use culture to develop artistic endeavors, including musical instruments and visual arts.
C)People use culture to advance civilization.
D)Culture is a human construct.
E)Culture is instrumental in the creation of societies.
Answer: A
Q3) Culture is transmitted by both formal and informal instruction, but not by observation.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 3: Method and Theory in Cultural Anthropology
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Q1) The work of which of the following anthropologists illustrated a renewed interest in cultural change and even evolution (although of a very different sort than Tylor and Morgan had in mind)?
A)Ruth Benedict
B)Max Gluckman
C)Victor Turner
D)Julian Steward
E)Margaret Mead
Answer: D
Q2) 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.
Answer: E
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Chapter 4: Applying Anthropology
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Q1) Applied anthropology is
A)the purely academic dimension of anthropology.
B)the term used for all anthropological research programs.
C)the use of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary problems.
D)rarely possible, as anthropological studies are not practical in the "real world."
E)not guided by anthropological theory.
Q2) Which of the following is a distinguishing characteristic of the work that applied anthropologists do?
A)They enter the affected communities and talk with people.
B)They gather government statistics.
C)They consult project managers.
D)They consult government officials and other experts.
E)They promote development.
Q3) What is the relationship between theory and practice in anthropology? Do you agree that applied anthropology should be recognized as a separate subsection of anthropology?
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Chapter 5: Language and Communication
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Q1) Linguistic anthropologists also are interested in investigating the structure of language and how it varies across time and space.What is the study of the forms in which sounds combine to form words?
A)phonology
B)syntax
C)morphology
D)lexicon
E)grammar
Q2) Animal call systems exhibit linguistic productivity.
A)True
B)False
Q3) 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.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is linguistic relativity? Illustrate how it applies to languages and to dialects of English.
Q5) Discuss factors that increase linguistic diversity among speakers of the same language.
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Chapter 6: Ethnicity and Race
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Q1) Is it contradictory to say that membership in an ethnic group is an ascribed status while arguing that we negotiate our social identities? Why or why not? How do we occupy multiple social statuses?
Q2) 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.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What term refers to an organism's evident traits, or its "manifest biology?"
A)manifest destiny
B)genotype
C)biological circumscription
D)phenotype
E)hereditary inequality
Q4) The term nation has been used to refer to an ethnic group that shares a religion, language, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 7: Making a Living
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Questions
Q1) This chapter's "Focus on Globalization" section discusses economic globalization.Which of the following is an outcome of our 21<sup>st</sup>-century global economy?
A)Modern-day transnational finance has shifted economic control of local life to outsiders.
B)Economic functions are now locally controlled.
C)Foreigners now finance only a small percentage of the U.S.national debt.
D)American companies are withdrawing from foreign markets.
E)With increasing globalization there is increased face-to-face contact in economic transactions.
Q2) Which of the following was a characteristic shared by recent foraging communities?
A)They fished a great deal.
B)They relied on welfare supplied by state-level societies.
C)They spoke simplified languages.
D)They lived in marginal environments that were of little interest to food-producing societies.
E)They devolved to foraging from a more advanced level of subsistence.
Q3) How is a rent fund different from a subsistence fund? Cite examples to clarify your argument.
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Chapter 8: Political Systems
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Q1) How does one distinguish between a chiefdom and a state? Is this a useful distinction? Is it always easy to make such a distinction?
Q2) Discuss ways in which order is maintained in societies that lack chiefs and rulers.
Q3) In tribal societies, the village head leads by example and through persuasion; he lacks the ability to force people to do things.
A)True
B)False
Q4) 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 oppressed-the outer shell of power relations
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Chapter 9: Gender
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Q1) In foraging societies, gender stratification was most marked when men contributed much more to the diet than women did.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Of the following factors, which is historically correlated with the shrinking of the female factory workforce in the United States?
A)European immigration around 1900
B)World War II
C)voting rights for women
D)inflation
E)the women's rights movement
Q3) With the baby boom and the increase in industrialization, women have contributed more and more to the workplace while receiving pay equal to that of their male coworkers.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Are certain sexual preferences more natural than others? What factors compel some societies to deviate from the heterosexual norm found in most human societies?
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Chapter 10: Families, Kinship, and Descent
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Q1) U.S.kinship calculation is bilateral, traced equally through males and females; for example, father and mother.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The most common postmarital residence rule is matrilocality, in which the married couple moves in with the husband's family.
A)True B)False
Q3) 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.
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Chapter 11: Marriage
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Q1) 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.
Q2) A lobola, a substantial marital gift from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin among the BaThonga of Mozambique, is
A)a form of bride theft.
B)only given for elopements.
C)the same as a dowry.
D)widespread in patrilineal societies.
E)widespread in matrilineal societies.
Q3) The biological degeneration explanation for the incest taboo has won over supporters because of universal concerns about biology.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 12: Religion
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Q1) Like Catholicism, Pentecostalism is egalitarian, and adherents need no special education to preach or run a church.
A)True
B)False
Q2) 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
Q3) 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
Q4) How do you explain the universality of religion?
Q5) Discuss two cases illustrating religion's role in social change.
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Chapter 13: Arts, Media, and Sports
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Q1) 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.
Q2) In the United States, there is a sharp distinction between what is considered art and what is not.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Where is art found? Is art found in the same contexts in all kinds of societies?
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Chapter 14: The World System and Colonialism
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Q1) According to Marx, the bourgeoisie is made up of the people who must sell their labor to survive.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Based on the way the text defines imperialism and colonialism, do you think that they describe phenomena of the past? These terms have been used recently to describe current international affairs.Find an example of this, and compare the use of the term to its definition in the text.
Q3) 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.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Mass production has led to critical consumption as people are forced to make careful decisions regarding what is needed and what is excess.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is the world system perspective, and why is it important in anthropology?
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Chapter 15: Anthropologys Role in a Globalizing World
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Q1) How have indigenous movements, political mobilization, and identity politics affected ethnography?
Q2) Postmodernism refers to the breakdown of traditional categories, standards, and boundaries in favor of a more fluid, context-dependent set of identities.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Diseases that spread from animals to humans are known as zoonotic diseases. A)True
B)False
Q4) Social movements worldwide have adopted the term indigenous people as a self-identifying and political label based on past oppression but are now legitimizing it in the search for social, cultural, and political rights.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Development projects usually fail when they try to replace indigenous institutions with culturally alien concepts.
A)True B)False
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