Course Introduction
Cultural
Anthropology Practice Questions
Cultural Anthropology explores the diversity of human cultures, beliefs, practices, and social organizations across the globe. The course examines key concepts such as kinship, religion, language, economic systems, and the ways people create meaning within their societies. Students will learn about ethnographic methods used by anthropologists to study cultures, analyze cultural change in the context of globalization, and critically engage with issues such as identity, power, and inequality. By considering both historical foundations and contemporary debates, the course offers students tools to better understand both other societies and their own.
Recommended Textbook
Cultural Anthropology 1st Edition by Kenneth J. Guest
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17 Chapters
1120 Verified Questions
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Anthropology in a Global Age
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Sample Questions
Q1) The author states that pollution, population growth, climate change, and overfishing are serious issues, and nature may not be able to adapt to:
A) human activity.
B) glacial activity.
C) global warming.
D) intensification.
E) offshore drilling.
Answer: A
Q2) What do prehistoric archaeologists use to reconstruct human behavior?
A) material remains
B) written records
C) oral accounts
D) ceremonial reconstruction
E) genetic analysis
Answer: A
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Page 3
Chapter 2: Culture
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Sample Questions
Q1) Homogenization is just one of the effects of globalization on cultures around the world. Define homogenization and give at least three examples of it. Are there aspects from other cultures that you now incorporate into your own culture? If so, please provide at least two examples. Do you think that globalization will indeed cause the homogenization of world cultures in the future? Why or why not?
Answer: Students should provide a sufficient definition of homogenization and describe three concrete examples of it. They should be able to discuss new cultural elements that they incorporate into their lives, such as foreign foods, music, media, religious practices, or recreational activities. Students should sufficiently argue that globalization will or will not cause homogenization, providing clear substantiation for the argument.
Q2) Which of the following statements is true?
A) Humans genetically inherit culture via natural biological processes.
B) The process of learning culture is unique to humans.
C) Culture can only be learned through the teaching of cultural institutions.
D) Humans learn culture throughout their lives.
E) Humans only learn culture during the period from late infancy through adolescence. Answer: D
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Fieldwork and Ethnography
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Sample Questions
Q1) It is essential that ethnographers map communities because this:
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.
E) facilitates learning the local language.
Answer: D
Q2) In giving her perspectives on the process of doing fieldwork in a Brazilian shantytown, Nancy Scheper-Hughes' account of Alto do Cruzeiro is an example of:
A) polyvocality.
B) reflexive ethnography.
C) informed anthropology.
D) authoritative writing.
E) processual anthropology.
Answer: B
Q3) Define zeros and explain their significance for ethnographers.
Answer: Zeros are the elements of a story or picture that are not told or seen; they are key details omitted from the conversation. This omission offers insight into which topics are too sensitive to discuss publicly.
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Language
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Sample Questions
Q1) While anthropologists have gone to lengths to show that languages are linguistically equal, languages often exist in a hierarchical manner within a given place. Compare how language and power intersect by discussing how nonprestige languages may be marginalized, such as in the case of Spanish speakers in the United States. How are boundaries between language policed, and what happens when speakers "code switch" in different cultural contexts? What did Jane Hill discover when she investigated how white Americans speak words in Mock Spanish?
Q2) In his study of store clerks in New York City, William Labov discovered that increased pronunciation of the letter "r" in words like car, floor, and fourth:
A) shows that the English language has more than twenty known dialects.
B) depended on how adept employees were at code switching.
C) was related to the prestige of the store and higher prices.
D) was closely tied to how these words were pronounced in Boston.
E) had no relationship to the prestige of the store.
Q3) 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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6
Chapter 5: Human Origins
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Sample Questions
Q1) The popular belief among many evangelical Protestant Christians that argues God created the Earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago is called:
A) natural selection.
B) creationism.
C) evolution.
D) "out of Africa" theory.
E) Deep Time.
Q2) Describe the influence of biblical teachings on the origins of life. Using examples to make your points, explain how evolutionary theory and religion became a lightning rod for the battle over the teaching of evolution in the education arena.
Q3) The genetic code is carried by:
A) RNA.
B) proteins.
C) DNA.
D) mutagens.
E) variation.
Q4) Describe the relationship between solar radiation, vitamin D, and skin color as examples of adaptation and natural selection.
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Chapter 6: Race and Racism
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Sample Questions
Q1) In many countries, members of the dominant ethnic or racial group tend to favor other members of their own group, give them the benefit of any doubt, and take what other members say more seriously. Minorities are often discounted as less important or even hostile for insisting on being treated fairly. In the United States, this is called:
A) white privilege.
B) nepotism.
C) insiders.
D) cronyism.
E) patronage.
Q2) What rule assigns the children of racially "mixed" unions to the subordinate group?
A) miscegenation
B) hypodescent
C) racialization
D) drop down
E) eugenics
Q3) Compare and contrast the concepts "genotype" and "phenotype."
Q4) Explain how the idea of "white" or "whiteness" changed over time in the United States.
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8
Chapter 7: Ethnicity and Nationalism
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Sample Questions
Q1) What term is used to describe a political entity located within a geographic boundary whose population shares a sense of culture, ancestry, and destiny?
A) nation
B) nation-state
C) nationality
D) society
E) state
Q2) According to the text, what ended five hundred years of peace between Bosnian Muslims, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Christian Serbs in the former Yugoslavia?
A) ethnic and cultural policies imposed by state leaders
B) religious beliefs
C) ethnic rivalries
D) colonial interference
E) Russian influence
Q3) Explain why England is called the "ninety-minute nation" and why it is so important to people who identify as English.
Q4) Compare how and why ethnic-making projects in Rwanda and Bosnia have given rise to conflict.
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Chapter 8: Gender
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Sample Questions
Q1) Through the Zar Cult of Sudan, women:
A) joined forces to protest violence against women and children.
B) claimed that spirits moved them when working in factories.
C) resisted subordination by speaking out while in a trance state.
D) gained political power by pursuing higher education and literacy.
E) took up arms to fight alongside men during a bloody civil war.
Q2) During the El Salvador civil war (1977-1992), the group Co-Madres emerged as a political force that initially formed as a group of:
A) political activists protesting the rape of women.
B) mothers and relatives who demanded information about the missing.
C) teachers who demanded a peaceful resolution to the war.
D) nuns who worked for peace within the Catholic Church.
E) spiritualists who provided medical care to the injured on both sides of the conflict.
Q3) The learned behaviors perceived as masculine or feminine are called:
A) sexual dimorphism.
B) alternate sexualities.
C) cultural constructions.
D) universal beliefs.
E) gender stratification.
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Sexuality
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Q1) Discuss the influence of international campaigns for gay and lesbian rights on local practices using the case study of Nigeria as an example. Compare and contrast the masu harka and 'yan daudu sexual beliefs and practices with ideas about Western homosexuality. How does globalization affect ideas about sexual norms?
Q2) According to the text, the idea that masturbation was a form of self-abuse is most characteristic of which period?
A) the 1960s
B) the Renaissance
C) the Industrial Revolution
D) the Victorian era
E) the 1980s
Q3) Scientists have found that human sexuality:
A) fits into several simplistic categories.
B) is marked by diversity, flexibility, and fluidity.
C) fits into only two categories: normal and deviant.
D) always remains the same over an individual's lifetime.
E) is impossible to quantify.
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Chapter 10: Kinship, Family, and Marriage
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Q1) The most effective strategy humans have developed to form stable, reliable, separate, and deeply connected groups that can last over time and through generations is termed:
A) heredity.
B) family.
C) marriage.
D) descent.
E) kinship.
Q2) Looking cross-culturally, anthropologists argue that:
A) there is clearly a single universal definition of marriage.
B) definitions of marriage vary across cultures and over time.
C) definitions of marriage vary across cultures but are stable over time.
D) definitions of marriage have been made universal by globalization.
E) marriage and family are unchanged by modern technology and globalization.
Q3) The two types of descent groups distinguished by anthropologists are clans and: A) lineages.
B) descents.
C) heredities.
D) cognatics.
E) cousins.
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Chapter 11: Class and Inequality
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Q1) Pierre Bourdieu argued that in addition to a family's economic circumstances, two additional key factors affect an individual's social mobility within society. What are these two additional key factors and how do they differ from each other? What are some examples that best illustrate these two key factors? How can these two factors limit one's social mobility? How can these two factors improve one's social mobility? How do you think these two factors affect your own social mobility in society? Are there individuals in societies who are not affected in any way by either of these factors? Please provide at least one example to support your argument.
Q2) Anthropologists such as Setha Low have demonstrated that class is largely invisible in the United States due to which of the following actions carried out by portions of the population?
A) individual association
B) neighborhood fusion
C) community building
D) media seclusion
E) voluntary isolation
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13
Chapter 12: The Global Economy
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Q1) Underdevelopment is best defined as:
A) a term used to suggest that poor countries are poor as a result of their relationship to an unbalanced global economic system.
B) a theory that predicts that former colonies would progress along the same lines as the industrialized nations.
C) a strategy by which wealthy nations would spur global economic growth by alleviating poverty by investing in former colonies.
D) a critique that argued that despite the end of colonialism, the underlying economic relations in the global economy had not changed.
E) a continued pattern of unequal economic relations despite the formal end of colonial political and military control.
Q2) Among other changes that occur with the transition to intensive agriculture:
A) population sizes tend to decrease.
B) peasants' surpluses are transferred to the dominant elite.
C) a more egalitarian lifestyle emerges.
D) populations became less sedentary.
E) trade tends to occur at the local level rather than at the long-distance level.
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Page 14
Chapter 13: Migration
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Q1) All of the following are effects of remittances sent back to countries of origin, EXCEPT:
A) increased social status in local communities for labor immigrants.
B) financial resources for roads, schools, and water systems.
C) economic support for basic needs like food, shelter, and education.
D) increased consumer spending in communities that receive immigrants.
E) infrastructure projects such as senior centers, churches, temples, and mosques.
Q2) People who stay actively connected with social, economic, political, and religious spheres across national borders are called ________ migrants.
A) second-generation
B) guest worker
C) transnational
D) internal
E) undocumented
Q3) According to the textbook, Muslim street vendors in New York City have long-standing ties that cross the Atlantic Ocean. Discuss how these merchants are an example of transnational entrepreneurial migrants. What is the importance of social networks in their experience?
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Chapter 14: Politics and Power
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Sample Questions
Q1) The author notes that the image of the state as fixed, cohesive, and coherent is an illusion, and in fact, states are constantly being:
A) constructed.
B) destroyed.
C) maligned.
D) reimagined.
E) separated.
Q2) Groups of indigenous people like the Maasai, who live outside the direct control of the government of Tanzania and have had to form their own nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other political organizations to fight against the state's efforts to act as though they did not exist, are today known as:
A) tribes.
B) states.
C) groups.
D) chiefdoms.
E) bands.
Q3) Describe the concept of hegemony, what does it does, and how it works. Provide an example.
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Chapter 15: Religion
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Q1) Which of the following theories contends that religious practices have likely developed in response to very practical problems as people sought to adapt to the natural environment?
A) Marvin Harris
B) Karl Marx
C) Max Weber
D) Emile Durkheim
E) Victor Turner
Q2) Which of the following religious practitioners obtain their powers through special training or experience, passing through a journey or test of spirit such as illness, isolation, physical pain, or an emotional ordeal?
A) rabbis
B) priests
C) medicine men
D) pastors
E) shamans
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Page 17
Chapter 16: Health and Illness
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Q1) Traditional healers known as amchi provide health care in:
A) the eastern highlands of New Guinea.
B) the Ladakh region of northern India.
C) southern China and California.
D) rural Haiti.
E) Yucatán, Mexico.
Q2) ________ is a discrete, natural entity that can be clinically identified and treated by a health professional.
A) Illness
B) Disease
C) Culture
D) Psychosomatic illness
E) Susto
Q3) Where did Paul Farmer conduct his fieldwork?
A) Merced, California
B) Papua, New Guinea
C) Yucatán, Mexico
D) New York City
E) Haiti
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Page 18
Chapter 17: Art and Media
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT a type of representation that visual anthropologists study?
A) theatrical performances
B) museum displays
C) mass media
D) television
E) rock music
Q2) The important aspects of any art market that ethnographers strive to understand are:
A) production, consumption, and distribution.
B) the effects of immigration and globalization.
C) gender and racial hierarchies.
D) Internet marketing campaigns.
E) advertisements on television.
Q3) The participants in the Black Light Project with whom Aimee Cox worked were:
A) homeless.
B) handicapped.
C) avatars.
D) socialites.
E) poets.
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