Anthropology of Religion Exam
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Course Introduction
Anthropology of Religion explores the diverse ways in which religious beliefs, practices, and institutions shape and are shaped by human societies. This course examines religion as a cultural phenomenon by analyzing myths, rituals, symbols, and worldviews through cross-cultural comparisons. Key theoretical approaches and ethnographic case studies highlight the roles of religion in identity formation, social cohesion, conflict, power dynamics, and adaptation to change. Students engage with topics such as shamanism, magic and witchcraft, religious movements, secularism, and globalization, fostering a deep understanding of how religion influences and reflects broader sociocultural processes.
Recommended Textbook
Cultural Anthropology 3rd Edition by Nancy Bonvillain
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Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology
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Q1) __________ is an area of study that uses the theories and techniques of anthropology to solve real-world problems.
A) Classical anthropology
B) Cultural anthropology
C) Applied anthropology
D) Relief work
Answer: C
Q2) The Spanish colonization of South America in the sixteenth century A.D. is an example of __________.
A) culture change
B) civilization
C) globalization
D) comparative perspective
Answer: C
Q3) There is sometimes tension between __________ and human rights.
A) anthropologists
B) ethnology
C) cultural relativism
D) ethnographic research
Answer: C
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Chapter 2: The Nature of Culture
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Q1) __________ is the spread of ideas, material objects, and cultural practices from one society to another through direct and indirect culture contact.
A) Diffusion
B) Syncretism
C) Culture history
D) Ethnogenesis
Answer: A
Q2) Ideas and behaviors so deeply embedded in a culture that they are regarded as universally normal or natural.
A) norms
B) cultural cores
C) symbolic systems
D) naturalized concepts
Answer: D
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Chapter 3: Studying Culture
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Q1) Environmental adaptation, technologies, and methods of acquiring food are emphasized in __________ perspectives in anthropology.
A) functionalist
B) symbolic
C) interpretive
D) materialist
Answer: D
Q2) Ethnohistorians are interested in __________.
A) using historical documents rather than fieldwork to do anthropology
B) constructing a global cultural world history based on the HRAF
C) reconstructing and interpreting the history of indigenous peoples from their point of view
D) creating a more scientific basis for the study of cultural histories
Answer: C
Q3) The founder of the functionalist perspective in anthropology was __________.
A) Clifford Geertz
B) Edward Tylor
C) Franz Boas
D) Bronislaw Malinowski
Answer: D
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Chapter 4: Language and Culture
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Q1) Researchers have concentrated on __________ as the most likely nonhuman primate to successfully train to use language.
A) gorillas
B) orangutans
C) chimpanzees
D) gibbons
Q2) In your experience, what are some examples of new vocabularies that reflect changing cultural priorities? How are these new words disseminated throughout the population?
Q3) What steps did the Oakland Board of Education take in 1996 to improve the standard English reading comprehension of African-American students? Why was their statement on their policy mistaken? What was the outcome?
Q4) A/An __________ is a variation in the way languages are pronounced.
A) accent
B) dialect
C) pidgin
D) creole
Q5) Give three examples of nonverbal communication and explain why nonverbal communication is problematic in cross-cultural situations.
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Chapter 5: Learning Ones Culture
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Q1) Folklore conveys important lessons about __________.
A) who is in charge
B) what types of clothing to wear during battle
C) philosophical and ethical principles
D) how to maintain one's social status
Q2) Research on expressing aggression suggests a cross-cultural pattern of __________.
A) higher male aggression
B) cross-sex permissiveness of aggression
C) no particular gender relationship with the expression of aggression
D) higher aggression in male children does not correlate to higher status for males in the culture
Q3) Culture as a whole is a __________ system.
A) symbolic
B) linguistic
C) relativistic
D) sociological
Q4) Discuss the idea of social birth by comparing common American practices with those of the Zuni.
Q5) How is gender identity structured in the Western world? Give a few examples.
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Making a Living
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Q1) __________ is a subsistence strategy that focuses on raising and caring for herds of domesticated animals.
A) Pastoralism
B) Horticulture
C) Agriculture
D) Foraging
Q2) How does the gender distribution of labor and the ability to own property affect gender relations across cultures and subsistence strategies?
Q3) Which of the following does NOT characterize industrial agriculture?
A) specialization of crop production
B) a tendency toward competition among producers
C) overproduction of farm products
D) better quality diets
Q4) Which of the following subsistence strategies typically results in the highest amount of mobility?
A) foraging
B) agriculture
C) horticulture
D) intensive agriculture
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Chapter 7: Economic Systems
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Q1) __________ is the exchange of goods and services in which each party seeks to benefit at the expense of the other, thus making a profit.
A) Trade
B) Exchange
C) Negative reciprocity
D) Capitalism
Q2) Explain how trade with the British altered production of materials, concepts of value, and the rights and status of women in Tongan society.
Q3) Given what you have read and learned about the causes and effects of the origins of food production, support or refute the idea that food production may have come about as an irreversible accident.
Q4) __________ companies contribute to environmental exploitation.
A) Farming
B) Coal and oil
C) Horticultural
D) Timber, mineral, and oil
Q5) Compare and contrast subsistence strategies among foraging, pastoral, horticulture, and agricultural societies.
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Chapter 8: Kinship and Descent
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Q1) Why do some societies have joking relationships and avoidance relationships among certain relatives?
A) so that relatives will always have something to talk about
B) so that problematic relationship between certain relatives will have carefully defined sets of interactive behaviors
C) so that individuals can institutionalize their feeling about certain relatives
D) so that improper sexual innuendos can be avoided
Q2) __________ creates strong gender identity and solidarity in a society.
A) Ambilineal descent
B) Double descent
C) Parallel descent
D) Unilineal descent
Q3) Who is most likely to exert authority over a child among the Trobriand Islanders?
A) child's father
B) child's mother
C) child's maternal uncle
D) child's maternal aunt
Q4) In what ways are clans different from lineages? How are the two the same?
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Chapter 9: Marriage and the Family
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Q1) The Na, an ethnic group in southern China, __________.
A) use matrilineal descent and patrilineal inheritance rules
B) are the only culture other than the Nuer to practice ghost marriage
C) do not recognize marital ties or obligations at all
D) practice both polygynous and polyandrous marriage
Q2) In joint and extended families conflicts over __________ are common.
A) adequate space
B) housework and chores
C) authority and inheritance
D) budgets and expenses
Q3) The lovers of Nayar women establish the paternity of children by __________.
A) marrying the woman when she becomes pregnant
B) paying the husband when his wife becomes pregnant
C) giving three gifts a year to the woman as long as they are lovers
D) accompanying the woman to the hospital so his name can be recorded with the birth
Q4) Describe several economic deterrents to divorce.
Q5) All marriage systems are both exogamous and endogamous to some degree. What are the formal and informal rules of exogamy and endogamy common in the United States?
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Chapter 10: Gender
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Q1) Post-Second World War interest in popular psychology reinforced what type of gender ideologies in the United States?
A) Men were inherently aggressive and domineering while women were inherently passive and docile.
B) Culture was the most powerful arbitrator of gender identity and parenting could not affect gender roles as other forms of enculturation would win out.
C) While gender differences were not inherent, the teaching of gender roles that ran counter to social expectations would lead to unhappiness.
D) Men and women were seen as similar and equally capable in terms of employment and work, but fundamentally different as parents.
Q2) Gender equality is most likely to exist in societies where __________.
A) men own property but women provide the labor to make it productive
B) all individuals make contributions to subsistence and hierarchies are weak or absent
C) agriculture is the means of subsistence
D) matrilineal kinship systems are the norm
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Chapter 11: Equality and Inequality
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Q1) How do the ideologies of race, ethnicity, class, the "melting pot" and the "American Dream" work to maintain and justify social stratification in the United States?
Q2) Brazilians employ about __________ different labels to identify a person's race.
A) 20
B) 50
C) 200
D) 500
Q3) Explain the distinctions among prestige, ascribed status, and achieved status, giving examples of each.
Q4) If there is too great a difference in caste between two people, contact between them can be __________ for the higher caste person.
A) stressful
B) difficult to maintain
C) embarrassing
D) ritually polluting
Q5) What is race? How is race integrated into systems such as class and caste?
Q6) Compare and contrast caste and class as forms of social stratification.
Q7) Discuss the situation of Burakumin as an outgroup in Japan.
Q8) Explain the concept of a ranked society using the Samoans as your example.
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Chapter 12: Political Systems
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Q1) The typology of band, tribe, chiefdom, and state is still used because __________.
A) all societies fall into one of these three types
B) these categories are scientifically demonstrable
C) they are useful tools for discussion of societal differences
D) they are absolute cases
Q2) Which of the following is NOT an example of a band society?
A) Saami
B) Navajo
C) Tiwi
D) Mbuti
Q3) The kinship system of the Hidatsa of North Dakota was based on __________.
A) bilateral membership in two oppositional clans
B) patrilineal clans and moieties
C) matrilineal clans and moieties
D) age grades and seniority
Q4) What are age grades? How were age grades used by the Hidatsa of the Dakotas to serve social functions? Can you think of example from our own society that serves this same social function? What other ways might a society fill this social function?
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Chapter 13: Conflict and Conflict Resolution
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Q1) Define the four types of social sanctions used to maintain social norms. Give examples of each of the four.
Q2) Wars in the African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, and Burundi have broken out in the last two decades primarily due to control over which of the following?
A) central governments
B) resources
C) territory
D) port cities
Q3) __________ produce damage to society that lasts for generations after the conflict has ended.
A) Wars
B) Civil wars
C) Corruption investigations
D) Nuclear warfare
Q4) A Toraja pattern of behavior that regulates conflict is __________.
A) avoidance of people with whom there are disputes
B) formalized arguments that serve as courts
C) band level community size
D) shouting matches which are limited to the village's public square
Page 15
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Chapter 14: Religion
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Q1) According to the Dine creation story, all people live in the __________ world.
A) second
B) fourth
C) lower
D) lowest
Q2) What is the term for a force, power, or essence that endows people, animals, other living things, and possibly inanimate objects with special qualities or powers?
A) ghosts
B) mana
C) totemism
D) animism
Q3) The term "supernatural" may not be the most fitting term to describe religion, as some societies __________.
A) do not know the meaning of the word "supernatural"
B) do not understand nature
C) regard the spirit realm as ever-present and a part of the natural world
D) think the spirit realm hardly ever communicates with humans
Q4) Give five functions of religion in society with an example for each.
Q5) How are Islam, Christianity, and Judaism different from one another?
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Chapter 15: The Arts
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Q1) What is the term for art produced by a particular group of people that comes to express and symbolize their ethnic identity?
A) symbolic expression
B) identity art
C) representational art
D) ethnic art
Q2) Helen Frankenhaler was a __________ painter.
A) mixed media
B) realist
C) abstract impressionist
D) pointillist
Q3) Navajo healers use __________ as part of healing ceremonies.
A) carved wooden bowls
B) sand paintings
C) body painting
D) human sculptures carved from stone
Q4) What role do proverbs and riddles play in societies? Why are these considered art too?
Q5) How have global commerce and tourism affected the arts of the Diné?
Q6) What are the commonalities and differences between oral and written literature?
Page 17
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Chapter 16: Colonialism and Cultural Transformations
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Q1) Which of the following was a negative result of the creation of cash economies in colonies?
A) The social cohesiveness of local communities was disturbed due to migration for work.
B) Indigenous peoples resorted to armed conflict in retaliation to a taxation system.
C) The roles of women in their communities shifted because there was no need for their services.
D) The desire for wealth led to warfare and conflict between indigenous tribes.
Q2) Early state societies in North Africa, the Middle East, China, Mexico, and __________ engaged in expansion through conquest.
A) England
B) Australia
C) Canada
D) Peru
Q3) Define the term "white man's burden" and describe its essential philosophical components. What connection do pacification and the idea of a "sacred trust" have to the idea of a white man's burden?
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Chapter 17: Living in a Global World
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Q1) A typical pattern of labor migration in Malaysia and Mexico for poor rural families is
A) for entire families to move to cities
B) for young, unmarried daughters to be sent to work in factories
C) for sons to be sent to work in factories
D) for men to move to agricultural areas with larger populations and sharecrop
Q2) In the late twentieth century, indigenous communities' struggles for self-determination around the world have __________.
A) suffered
B) become unnecessary
C) been ignored
D) been revitalized
Q3) The Kenyan and Tanzanian governments took thousands of square miles of land from the Maasai in order to create __________.
A) a wildlife reserve
B) military training camps
C) farmland
D) a national forest
Q4) Why did the genocide in of 1994 occur in Rwanda?
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