Comparative Cultures Solved Exam Questions
Course Introduction
Comparative Cultures explores the diverse beliefs, practices, values, and social structures that define human societies across the globe. Through interdisciplinary analysis, students examine the similarities and differences among cultures, considering topics such as religion, language, family systems, art, and economic organization. The course encourages critical reflection on cultural relativism, ethnocentrism, and globalization, fostering a deeper understanding of how cultural perspectives shape individual and collective identities in an increasingly interconnected world.
Recommended Textbook Essentials of Cultural Anthropology 2nd Edition by Kenneth J. Guest
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Chapter 1: Anthropology in a Global Age
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Q1) Which subfield of anthropology traces the history of human evolution in fossils?
A) prehistoric archaeology
B) primatology
C) cultural anthropology
D) paleoanthropology
Answer: D
Q2) Discuss the ways in which local communities react to the potential influence of global forces. Support your description with an example from the class.
Answer: In part because of the forces of globalization, people in local communities may be driven to redefine many aspects of their personal lives. Sometimes they embrace new opportunities, and they frequently and actively resist changes they see as having a negative effect on their lives. In the example discussed at the beginning of the chapter about the Coca-Cola plant in India, the company drained and contaminated the primary water aquifer, so local people began to protest and the local village council withdrew the plant's license. When the company got support from local government, the local people gained international support and eventually took the case to the highest state court, which ruled that the factory had to cease illegal extraction of groundwater.
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Chapter 2: Culture
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Q1) The culture of consumerism in the United States and globally has intensified, especially during the last 50 years. What constitutes a culture of consumerism and how does it relate to the concept of culture more generally? What are three examples of how the culture of consumerism affects culture in general in the United States? Does it affect other cultures worldwide, and if so, how?
Answer: Students should accurately define the culture of consumerism (norms, values, beliefs, practices, and institutions that have become commonplace and accepted as normal and that cultivate the desire to acquire consumer goods to enhance one's lifestyle) and discuss how it is an aspect found within culture more generally that both has an influence on culture and is influenced by it. Examples of how consumerism affects general culture may include holidays, celebrations such as Mother's Day, gift giving, the calendar, happy hour, and eating meals out. Students should also include worldwide examples, like worldwide celebrations of events such as Cinco de Mayo, certain tourist destinations and activities, fashion, consumption of particular foods, or highly advertised pilgrimages.
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Fieldwork and Ethnography
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Q1) It is essential that ethnographers map communities because mapping:
A) allows the anthropologist to identify key informants.
B) documents the randomness of the built environment.
C) provides a deep immersion in the rhythms of daily life.
D) illuminates how use of space influences social interactions.
Answer: D
Q2) Discuss Horace Miner's article "Body Rituals among the Nacirema." What is the subject of the ethnography? What was Miner's purpose in writing it, and how did he approach that purpose?
Answer: Horace Miner's "Body Rituals among the Nacirema" is a description of typical personal care practices of Americans, presented as exotic and unfamiliar rituals. Miner's descriptions of the Nacirema are intended to make the strange seem familiar and the familiar strange, and to challenge the reader's assumptions and ethnocentrism.
Q3) The roots of cultural anthropology and ethnographic fieldwork lie in:
A) early biological models.
B) modern philosophical debates.
C) turn-of-the-century demographic trends.
D) late nineteenth-century globalization.
Answer: D
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Language
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Q1) Which term is used to describe the extinction of languages that have very few speakers?
A) linguistic shift
B) Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
C) language loss
D) historical linguistics
Q2) What do linguists call small units of sound that carry meaning on their own?
A) phonemes
B) syntax
C) morphemes
D) paralanguage
Q3) The term dialect is a nonstandard variation of a language that:
A) is particular to a specific region.
B) varies over time.
C) depends on context.
D) depends on the distance between places.
Q4) What do linguistic anthropologists think about how women and men use language in different ways? What are the two models that explain why language is used in gendered ways, and what are examples that illustrate their hypotheses? Which one of these two models is more compelling to you, and why?
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Chapter 5: Race and Racism
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Q1) Explain what is meant by the concept of "white privilege."
Q2) The failure of the New York State school system to create an annual school budget that would ensure all students received the same level of funding reflects what aspect of racism?
A) racialization
B) racial ideology
C) colonial
D) institutional racism
Q3) Identify three reasons why anthropologists feel that the concept of "race" is a flawed system of classification, and give an example to support each reason.
Q4) Brazilians have hundreds of ways of categorizing people according to race. The particular system they use is based on a continuum of what?
A) language
B) ethnicities
C) genotypes
D) color shades
Q5) How does the U.S. census, taken every ten years since 1790, provide a window into the changing conception of "race"?
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Chapter 6: Ethnicity and Nationalism
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Q1) Identify three things that are used as ethnic boundary markers, and explain in what cultures they are used and how.
Q2) What do anthropologists call a story that is told about the founding and history of a particular group to reinforce a common sense of identity?
A) diaspora
B) folktale
C) origin myth
D) history
Q3) What country only exists during the ninety minutes its team plays a soccer match?
A) United Kingdom
B) England
C) France
D) South Africa
Q4) Explain why England is called the "90-minute nation," and why it has become a point of contention for people who identify as English. What key concept(s) from the text does this represent?
Q5) Explain what is meant when we say that a nation is an imagined community, and give an example.
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Chapter 7: Gender
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Q1) What do we call the process through which a sense of gender becomes normative and seems natural to us?
A) performance of gender
B) gender stratification
C) cultural construction of gender
D) gender hierarchy
Q2) What does Carla Freeman's research on women's participation in the industrialized labor force in Barbados indicate?
A) that women are victims of an exploitative work environment
B) that women cannot resist male dominance once they enter the global economy
C) that women are not simply victims in the practices of flexible accumulation
D) that the exploitation of women increased as women asserted a different status
Q3) Explain how feminist research on gender stratification and gender roles has changed since Margaret Mead's pioneering research, paying particular attention to the approaches and findings of Sherri Ortner, Michelle Rosaldo, and Annette Weiner. What do we understand about how gender should be studied today?
Q4) Define the concept of intersex, and explain how physicians' attitudes toward children born intersex have changed in recent decades in parallel with changes in attitudes toward sexuality.
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Chapter 8: Sexuality
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Q1) This chapter highlights anthropological investigations of sexuality in several different parts of the world (Sweden, Suriname, Nicaragua, Japan, Nigeria). Pick two of them and describe the studies themselves and the researchers' analyses and key findings. What is similar about these studies? How do they differ? How do the studies you chose highlight the value of an ethnocartography of human sexuality?
Q2) Many different cultural institutions and systems of power interconnect to regulate sexuality, affecting both individual lives and group experiences. How do anthropologists refer to this aspect of overlapping systems and institutions in our daily lives?
A) intersectionality
B) hegemony
C) sexology
D) sexual discourse
Q3) Define sexuality and, using a minimum of three examples from the text, describe the ways in which culture influences sexual beliefs and behaviors.
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Chapter 9: Kinship, Family, and Marriage
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Q1) What is distinctive about new kinship groups created through affinal relationships?
A) They are linked through alliance, not through shared biology or common descent.
B) They can be traced through consanguine or blood relatives.
C) They are distinguished by relation to a founding ancestor.
D) They are distinguished by multiple founding ancestors.
Q2) You attend a friend's wedding. At one point, the father of the groom hands a set of new car keys to the bride. What would you, as an anthropologist, call this?
A) gift exchange
B) bridewealth
C) reciprocity
D) dowry
Q3) In a matrilineal descent group, continued membership in the same family group is passed down through which member?
A) father
B) mother
C) uncle
D) aunt
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Chapter 10: Class and Inequality
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Q1) The work of anthropologist Leith Mullings has examined the connections between class, race, and gender, which resulted in the development of which useful analytical framework?
A) intersectionality
B) interpretive anthropology
C) theory of class
D) systems of power
Q2) In a populous market town, a small number of merchants and landholders have accumulated wealth and extreme stratification arises. Which is the best explanation for this?
A) Economic relations are based on the exchange of money rather than reciprocity.
B) Wealth is often acquired by those who have great skill with money.
C) The absence of legal controls allowed a small subset of the population to control the market.
D) The absence of central banks prevented the redistribution of wealth.
Q3) How does Pem Davidson Buck's work on the history of poor white people in rural Kentucky reflect how income and wealth are affected by other forms of social stratification?
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Chapter 11: The Global Economy
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Q1) Describe the "foraging" adaptive strategy (i.e. the means of obtaining resources, settlement patterns, and division of labor.) When did humans first use this adaptive strategy? How many humans rely on it today? Where are the primary locations where it is practiced today?
Q2) Seven million Côte d'Ivoirians earn their living in the cocoa and coffee farming industry. How much of the profits reaped from this industry go to the farmers themselves?
A) Farmers in Côte d'Ivoire receive a significant part of the profits.
B) Farmers in Côte d'Ivoire are included in a profit-sharing plan with Archer Daniels Midland.
C) Farmers in Côte d'Ivoire receive only a tiny fraction of the profits.
D) Farmers in Côte d'Ivoire receive nearly all of the profits.
Q3) Your office has performed the traditional "Secret Santa" exchange for many years. In this event, every office mate brings a gift worth no more than $20 dollars to be anonymously given at the annual holiday party. This an example of:
A) redistribution.
B) balanced reciprocity.
C) generalized reciprocity.
D) negative reciprocity.
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Page 13
Chapter 12: Politics and Power
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Q1) Explain what hegemony is and give an example that illustrates your explanation.
Q2) To resist the power of state institutions, some societies use different systems to settle issues that might normally go to the state court system. What are these systems known as?
A) alternative legal structures
B) independent courts systems
C) common law structures
D) customary laws
Q3) Anthropologist Carolyn Nordstrom works in war zones to describe the real and messy experiences of war. In her account, an individual health-care provider in Mozambique, targeted by the military forces that terrorized local villages, managed to hide and survive until they had moved through the area. The provider then worked to help others. How does this case directly challenge the long legacy of Western philosophers who argue that human nature is innately violent?
Q4) Catherine Lutz warns that, if left unchecked, militarization:
A) can shape other cultural institutions to its own ends.
B) may eliminate civil society.
C) will encourage the production of bullets, bombs, tanks, planes, and missiles.
D) will make organizing civil society for war an uncontested process.
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Chapter 13: Religion
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Q1) Anthropologist Marvin Harris (1927-2001) developed the theory of cultural materialism, which is built on Karl Marx's analysis of the way in which the material conditions of a society shape its other components. What is the basic premise of Harris's theory of cultural materialism, and how does it relate to religion? How can Harris's theory be applied to explain why cows are sacred in India? What is an example of a religious practice that people engage in within the United States that could be explained using the theory of cultural materialism? Do you think Harris's theory is useful in examining religion and religious practices? Why or why not?
Q2) Which of the following individuals believed that ideas can be just as powerful as economics in shaping society?
A) Emile Durkheim
B) Max Weber
C) Karl Marx
D) Victor Turner
Q3) What did anthropologist George Gmelch note about baseball as an activity?
A) It was rife with Christian worship.
B) It was rife with skeptics.
C) It was rife with magic.
D) It was rife with religious tenets.
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Page 15
Chapter 14: Health, Illness, and the Body
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Q1) The complete collection of microorganisms in the body's ecosystem is referred to as what?
A) microsystem
B) human ecosystem
C) microbiome
D) biodome
Q2) Laurent Pordié and Nomad RSI, a French NGO, helped local amchis:
A) to grow and distribute medicinal plants to distant villages and establish a school to train new practitioners.
B) promote their products in alternative market for alternative cures that is growing in Europe and North America.
C) to cooperate with the Indian government to get modern medicine to remote Himalayan villages.
D) to treat victims of military violence.
Q3) Overall human life expectancy increased from 31 years in 1900 to what in 2015?
A) 67.2 years
B) 70.5 years
C) 78.9 years
D) 83.6 years
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Page 16
Chapter 15: Art and Media
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Q1) What is reflected in decisions about what is displayed as fine art?
A) wealth and power stratification
B) egalitarianism
C) artistic skill and prowess
D) gender equality
Q2) Which population made up the majority of the 40 million people who read National Geographic at its peak?
A) anthropologists and their students
B) people over the age of forty-five
C) students at elite high schools
D) the middle class
Q3) Following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, many institutions felt that art might offer a way to foster understanding between different cultures. What was the surprising discovery made by anthropologist Jessica Winegar about such efforts?
A) Incidents of violence against Muslims increased.
B) Muslim artists were welcomed into the world of high art.
C) They reinforced stereotypes and existing dichotomies.
D) Incidents of violence against Muslims decreased.
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