Cultural Anthropology Exam Preparation Guide
Course Introduction
Cultural Anthropology explores the diverse ways in which people around the world live, think, and interact. The course examines foundational concepts such as culture, kinship, language, religion, social organization, and identity, providing students with a broad understanding of human societies both past and present. Through ethnographic case studies and theoretical perspectives, students learn to analyze cultural practices, beliefs, and values, and to consider how globalization, power dynamics, and historical context influence cultural expression. The course encourages critical thinking about cross-cultural similarities and differences, fostering an appreciation for cultural diversity and its significance in a rapidly changing 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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Sample Questions
Q1) When companies move their production facilities around the world to take advantage of cheaper labor and lower taxes, what do anthropologists call this?
A) ethnology
B) increasing migration
C) time-space compression
D) flexible accumulation
Answer: D
Q2) Explain why anthropologists study nonhuman primates like apes and monkeys. Answer: In order to understand which aspects of human physiology and behavior are uniquely human and which attributes are legacies of our primate heritage, it is necessary to study our closest living relatives. The study of nonhuman primates gives us clues about our human behavior and the shared behavior of all primates. Careful observation of primates in their natural habitats and captivity has offered significant insights into sexuality, parenting, male and female differences, cooperation, intergroup conflict, and aggression. These insights can also help us understand what the behavior of human ancestors may have been like.
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3
Chapter 2: Culture
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Sample Questions
Q1) Former Harvard University president and economist Lawrence Summers commented in a 2005 speech that his school and others similar to it likely had more men in science and math faculties than women because men's brains were better suited for success in these areas. Does Summers's statement reflect a nature or nurture perspective of human experience? Based on what you have read in Chapter 2, what may be some of the reasons why there is a gender discrepancy in science and math faculties in U.S. colleges and universities? What role does culture play in such discrepancies?
Answer: Students must identify the statement as belonging to the nature or biological perspective of human experience. They should argue that Summers's statement is incorrect given the vast variability in human experiences worldwide. They should provide at least two reasons for gender discrepancy and reference culture as an influence. Students should conclude by explicitly discussing how culture shapes the way humans perceive gender and gender roles in society.
Q2) What did anthropologist Eric Wolf believe to be inherent in all relationships?
A) belief system
B) power dynamics
C) stratification
D) human agency
Answer: B
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Fieldwork and Ethnography
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Q1) Imagine thousands of people, all screaming, yelling, and drinking, while a smaller group in the center area fight over the remains of a dead pig. If it were part of the research described in Horace Miner's interpretations of Nacirema culture, this might be seen as significant in anthropological terms because it:
A) illustrates mass ritual effectively.
B) demonstrates the attitudes of a large population toward pork consumption.
C) helps to understand how ethnographic accounts are interpretations.
D) affords a window into the nature of spectacle.
Answer: C
Q2) Sydney Mintz conducted research on sugar production in Puerto Rico in the 1970s and 1980s, examining the way local communities were affected by capitalism. What other problems did his work help to illustrate?
A) the use of small-scale communities as a subject of research
B) the changing nature of food production
C) the consequences of globalization on communities
D) banking systems as a central power in global economies
Answer: C
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Chapter 4: Language
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Q1) To investigate the focal vocabulary of a language in a particular community, a linguistic anthropologist would most likely:
A) search for genetic evidence for the origin of syntax and grammar among the current members of that community.
B) seek to discover words that offer sophisticated ways to describe local cultural realities.
C) set up experiments that show how that community uses language differently than others.
D) focus on the dialects that are present within the group based on where they live.
Q2) The work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics presents a challenge to anthropology because it:
A) includes translating bible texts at a low cost.
B) captures data that might otherwise be lost, but also seeks to impose a certain religious belief.
C) is a means of embedding a specific religious belief into a digital format.
D) is actually a means of maintaining secrecy about the institute's motives.
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Chapter 5: Race and Racism
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Q1) We can understand the observable differences in body ratios-height versus width-that anthropologists have documented as a matter of ________, or the way genes are expressed in an organism's physical form.
A) race
B) inheritance
C) ethnicity
D) phenotype
Q2) What do we call the British Empire's military, economic, and political control over many regions including Canada, the Caribbean, Bahrain, Mandatory Palestine, and India?
A) colonialism
B) hypodescent
C) nativism
D) institutional racism
Q3) Explain how and why Jim Crow laws came to the American South.
Q4) All human beings of every race share what percent of their DNA?
A) 90
B) 95.5
C) 98.9
D) 99.9
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Ethnicity and Nationalism
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Q1) 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
Q2) Since the 1600s, there has been an influx of many different nationalities into the United States. What do many of today's immigrants experience after they gain entry?
A) assimilation
B) origin myths
C) citizenship
D) nationalism
Q3) The United States has been described as a so-called melting pot for immigrants, but not all immigrant groups follow the same trajectory. In a brief essay, compare and contrast the experiences of Italian, Jewish, Greek, or other European immigrants with those of immigrants from China or India.
Q4) Compare how and why ethnic-making projects in Rwanda and Bosnia have given rise to conflict.
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8
Chapter 7: Gender
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Sample Questions
Q1) With which of the following statements about human behavior would an anthropologist be most likely to agree?
A) It is a combination of biology and enculturation.
B) It is almost entirely dictated by biology.
C) It is almost entirely dictated by enculturation.
D) It is a result of biology or cultural expectations depending on the person, but never both in the same individual.
Q2) Anne Fausto-Sterling's analysis of biological sexual identity identifies how many different sexes?
A) three
B) four
C) six
D) five
Q3) How must individuals living in cultures with a binary gender system (such as the United States) be classified in order to gain certain legal recognition?
A) One must choose either male or female.
B) One is either male, female, or intersex.
C) One is either male, female, or transgender.
D) One must choose either male, female, or neither sex.
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Page 9
Chapter 8: Sexuality
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which term describes people whose sexual attraction to others can include both sexes?
A) bisexual
B) transgender
C) homosexual
D) Two-Spirits
Q2) Which of the following best describes machismo in Nicaragua?
A) It is a kind of gender performance.
B) It is a sexually deviant act.
C) It is simply a display of sexual bravado.
D) It confers a special status.
Q3) The spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), such HIV/AIDS, is a global challenge. Some areas of the world are experiencing higher rates of STIs than others. What might be one of the reasons for these increases?
A) The number of individuals being tested is going up.
B) The way individuals conceptualize what "having sex" means is different in different places.
C) There is an increase in laws that make it illegal to get tested for an STI.
D) There is a severe lack of funding for U.N. sexual education programs.
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Kinship, Family, and Marriage
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Q1) Anthropologists argue that kinship is one of several ways in which individuals form groups. Name and describe three other ways in which humans form groups. Does kinship influence how these other groups are formed? Why or why not?
Q2) A patrilineal descent group traces kinships through which side of the family?
A) mother's
B) sibling's
C) grandparent's
D) father's
Q3) Within a family structure, we learn how to treat our kin. What other aspects of life in society does family prepare us to navigate?
A) age, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality
B) DNA and biological relations
C) the impact of politics on family relations
D) birth and death rates
Q4) A daughter-in-law is an example of what kind of relative?
A) Consanguine
B) Extramarital
C) exogamous
D) affinal
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Chapter 10: Class and Inequality
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Ju/Hoansi of the Kalihari are:
A) ranked.
B) egalitarian.
C) hierarchical.
D) stratified.
Q2) Which of the following members of a ranked society may not accumulate great wealth but enjoy high prestige?
A) women
B) elders
C) men
D) chiefs
Q3) In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx argued that capitalist societies consisted of two distinct classes of people: those who own the means of production and those who must sell their labor in return for wages. What did he call these classes? What other resources or factors distinguished these two classes, according to Marx? Give an example of a way Marx's theory could be applied to understanding societies living in a global economy today? Do you find Marx's theory helpful in understanding class and social inequality today? Why or why not?
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Chapter 11: The Global Economy
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Q1) When did the majority of anticolonial and independence movements occur? Why did they occur then? In your answer, identify three strategies commonly used to gain national independence and explain how external forces often contributed to the quest for independence.
Q2) Currently, the world is consuming natural resources at double the rate required to maintain sustainable levels. What problem does this illustrate about the sustainability of the current global economy?
A) The global population is not evenly distributed.
B) The human ecological footprint is too large.
C) Capitalism must be perfected.
D) Technology is not advancing quick enough.
Q3) The position that the free market and free trade rather than the state are the main mechanisms for ensuring economic growth is associated with which theorist?
A) John Keynes
B) Adam Smith
C) Karl Marx
D) Henry Ford
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Chapter 12: Politics and Power
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Q1) Anthropologists have observed that tribal leaders build and maintain power through which of the following?
A) personal achievements
B) being elected to political institutions
C) strong enforcement of religious beliefs
D) learning to live within the control of a centralized state
Q2) In her article, "Warfare Is Only An Invention-Not A Biological Necessity," how did Margaret Mead support her argument that war is a cultural invention?
A) She presented ethnographic examples of groups who do not go to war to settle disputes.
B) She tested the human instinct for violence.
C) She compared the genomes of human and non-human primates.
D) She looked for patterns of reconciliation among bonobos, macaques, and chimpanzees.
Q3) What is agency? Give two examples of people or groups that have exerted their agency.
Q4) Give an example of how a group has used a framing process.
Q5) Compare and contrast the concepts of the band, the tribe, and the chiefdom. What are the advantages of each?
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Chapter 13: Religion
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Q1) Catholic religious services often have the priest intoning the liturgy in Latin, and this helps to preserve the continuity of both the religion and the service. In Durkheim's view, what might this be considered a form of?
A) ritual
B) liminality
C) rejection of the profane
D) anomie
Q2) What do anthropologists call a part-time religious practitioner with special abilities to connect individuals with supernatural powers or beings?
A) medicine man
B) priest
C) magician
D) shaman
Q3) Anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-1983) considered religious pilgrimage to be a unique form of religious ritual. What is a religious pilgrimage? What are three specific examples of religious pilgrimage and what do they entail? What stages of process do the pilgrimage examples you provided entail? What purposes does religious pilgrimage serve for the individual and his or her community?
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15
Chapter 14: Health, Illness, and the Body
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Q1) How do anthropologists define biomedicine?
A) the intersection of multiple cultural approaches to healing
B) a practice that seeks to apply the principles of the natural sciences
C) the documentation and description of the local use of natural substances in healing remedies and practices
D) the comparative study of local systems of health and healing
Q2) What do scientists now think the purpose of the human microbiome might be?
A) It is a breeding ground for disease.
B) It helps reduce the instance of certain genetically developed characteristics.
C) It is a personal ecosystem that helps combat disease.
D) It is an artifact from our ancient Homo sapiens ancestors that serves no real purpose.
Q3) What are two underlying beliefs that shape the traditional Chinese Medicine approach to health care? Give two examples of treatments that it uses. What do these types of treatment attempt to achieve?
Q4) Describe three ways that the care provided by Tibetan Buddhist healers has changed during the past thirty years due to the processes of globalization and Westernization.
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Chapter 15: Art and Media
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Q1) The presentation of local art on the global scale may provide not only a means of economic activity but also a venue to do what?
A) assert local cultural identity in the face of rapid change
B) lead to local art being considered a new form of high art
C) have an impact on social dynamics within the producers' communities
D) help the local cultures become connected to the Internet
Q2) Why is Morrinho important to anthropologists?
A) It exposes the intersections of class, poverty, power, and kinship through a miniature city.
B) It reveals the fascination Brazilians have for models.
C) It displays the ways that foreign powers have infiltrated Brazil's art world.
D) It acts as a channel for the local population to expose corruption.
Q3) Anthropologists Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins's study of the National Geographic is an example of the application of what kind of anthropology?
A) literature review
B) physical anthropology
C) ethnography
D) visual anthropology
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