Course Introduction
Cultural Anthropology
Textbook Exam Questions
Cultural Anthropology explores the diverse ways in which human societies organize life, construct meaning, and interact with their environments. This course examines the fundamental concepts, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives used in the study of culture, including kinship, religion, language, gender, economics, politics, and social change. Through cross-cultural comparisons and ethnographic case studies, students gain an understanding of both the universality and variability of cultural practices, and develop analytical tools to critically engage with issues of identity, power, and globalization in the contemporary world.
Recommended Textbook
Anthropology Appreciating Human Diversity 15th Edition by Phillip Kottak
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Page 2
Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology
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Q1) In general, Americans tend to maintain a greater physical distance from others they interact with on a day-to-day basis, especially when compared to Brazilians or Italians, who need less personal space. However, the story of American students' attitudes toward hugging in "Give Me a Hug" reminds us that
A) any nation usually contains diverse and even conflicting cultural values, and these cultural values are not static.
B) the key reason for the poor track-record of U.S. diplomacy begins with failures in the American school system.
C) some aspects of culture are more biologically determined than others.
D) cultural values regarding bodily touch and personal space are very difficult to change from one generation to another.
E) homosexuality is becoming more prevalent, and more accepted, among teenagers.
Answer: A
Q2) Culture is not itself biological but rests on certain features of human biology.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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3
Chapter 2: Culture
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Q1) Indigenous cultures are at the mercy of the forces of globalization, as they can do nothing to stop threats to their cultural identity, autonomy, and livelihood.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) What process is most responsible for the existence of international culture?
A) ethnocentrism
B) cultural relativism
C) dendritic acculturation
D) gene flow
E) cultural diffusion, whether direct, indirect, or by force
Answer: E
Q3) Hunting is a distinctive human activity not shared with the apes.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 3: Applying Anthropology
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Q1) What is a disease?
A) a health problem as it is experienced by the one affected
B) an artificial product of biomedicine
C) a consequence of a foraging lifestyle
D) an unnatural state of health
E) a scientifically identified health threat
Answer: E
Q2) What is an illness?
A) a nonexistent ailment (only diseases are real)
B) an artificial product of biomedicine
C) a scientifically described health threat
D) a purely linguistic problem
E) a condition of poor health perceived by an individual
Answer: E
Q3) Sociolinguists and cultural anthropologists studying Puerto Rican communities in the Midwestern United States found that Puerto Rican parents valued education more than non-Hispanics.
A)True
B)False Answer: True
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Chapter 4: Doing Archaeology and Biological Anthropology
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Q1) The most reliable evidence in studying the past is that which is visible to the naked eye. Anything microscopic is too small to be considered reliable.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The American Anthropological Association's Code of Ethics is applicable only to research being conducted in the United States.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Archaeological anthropologists excavate sites to gain a better understanding of the regional patterning of the molecular record.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Anthropometry is the study of human culture using satellite imagery.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Palynology is the study of ancient animals through fossil remains.
A)True B)False
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Chapter 5: Evolution and Genetics
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Q1) Directional selection works to reduce genetic variation by removing maladaptive traits from the gene pool.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Natural selection operates directly on the genotype of an organism.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Give an example of how punctuated equilibrium would work.
Q4) What do gene flow and interbreeding act against?
A) migration
B) speciation
C) natural selection
D) mutations
E) balanced polymorphisms
Q5) For natural selection to work on a particular population
A) their members must have a sufficiently long enough life span.
B) the environment must remain constant.
C) there must be a strong will to survive among the members of the population.
D) there must be variety within that population.
E) there must be genotypic diversity but phenotypic homogeneity.
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Human Variation and Adaptation
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Q1) Which of the following statements about attempts to assign humans to discrete racial categories purportedly based on common ancestry is true?
A) They are applied to endogamous breeding populations.
B) They are based on genotypic rather than phenotypic characteristics.
C) They are based on global racial categories that vary little from one society to another.
D) They are a recent phenomenon brought on by globalization.
E) They are culturally arbitrary, even though most people assume they are based in biology.
Q2) Populations in equatorial Africa and Papua New Guinea are phenotypically similar. They are both dark skinned, with similar hair and facial features. How would a typical racial model explain these similarities? How would evolutionary biology's explanation differ? Which model does a better job of explaining such data?
Q3) Biologists have rejected the idea of three great races (white, black, and yellow) largely because it fails to account for Native Americans.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Why do differences in skin pigmentation exist around the world?
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8
Chapter 7: The Primates
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Q1) Which of the following primate traits are believed to have been selected for life in trees?
A) fewer offspring and bipedalism
B) meat eating and aggression
C) larger females and gentle males
D) fingernails (instead of claws) and soft fingertips
E) stereoscopic vision and an opposable thumb
Q2) Phylogenetically, who are our closest relatives? What evidence is used to support this relationship?
Q3) Ancient anthropoids began to have fewer offspring that required longer and more attentive care. What did this select for?
A) pair bonding, which resembles the nuclear family, among 90 percent of present-day anthropoids
B) a greater capacity for brachiation
C) a greater reliance on nuts and tubers
D) increased reliance on life in trees, which protected the young from predators
E) increased social complexity
Q4) What are the general trends in hominoid evolution during the Miocene? What derived hominoid traits appeared during this time?
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Chapter 8: Early Hominins
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Q1) What are the major difficulties that arise in trying to interpret the hominin fossil record? How do these difficulties lead to conflicting interpretations of human evolution?
Q2) What was the major hominin group that lived from about 4 to 1 m.y.a.?
A) Homo sapiens
B) Homo erectus
C) Ramapithecus
D) Australopithecus
E) Dryopithecus
Q3) Discuss the significance of Australopithecus sediba. Why do paleoanthropologists debate its place in human evolution? What is unique about this fossil?
Q4) A 2001 fossil find called Orrorin tugenensis, dated 6 million years of age,
A) appears to have been a chimp-sized creature that climbed easily and walked on two legs when on the ground.
B) lacks any possible evidence that it was bipedal.
C) is the undisputed "missing link."
D) was found in South America, suggesting that the transition into bipedalism may have happened there.
E) is older than the famous Toumai find.
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Chapter 9: Archaic Homo
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Q1) Which of the following statements describes a key difference between Oldowan and Acheulean tools?
A) Oldowan tools show an increase in size and a focus in being used for hunting.
B) Acheulean tools, such as the hand ax, represent a predetermined shape based on a template in the mind of the toolmaker, suggesting a cognitive leap between earlier hominins and H. erectus.
C) Oldowan tools are based on the production of blades, associated with an increasing range of ways hominins exploited their biological and cultural environments.
D) Acheulean tools show representations of the human form on nonfunctional surfaces.
E) Acheulean tools constitute a move away from wood toward more plastic media like clay.
Q2) Several different kinds of hominin lived in Africa before and after the advent of Homo.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What are the main morphological differences between Neandertals and anatomically modern humans? How have these differences been interpreted?
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Chapter 10: The Origin and Spread of Modern Humans
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Q1) All of the following are true about the peopling of the Americas EXCEPT that
A) the Clovis people were not the first settlers of the Americas.
B) the first migration(s) of people into the Americas may date back 18,000 years.
C) analysis of DNA suggests that the Americas were settled by more than one haplogroup-a lineage marked by one or more specific genetic mutations.
D) researchers calculate that it would have taken from 600 to 1,000 years for the first Americans and their descendants to travel by land from the southern part of the Canadian ice-free corridor to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America-a distance of more than 8,680 miles.
E) The first migration of people into the Americas reached the continent's southwestern coasts from the Pacific islands.
Q2) With the end of the Würm glacial period, human groups shifted their subsistence strategies to a broader spectrum of species that they exploited.
A)True
B)False
Q3) How has molecular genetics affected our recent understanding of human evolution?
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Chapter 11: The First Farmers
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Q1) When did sedentary life develop in the Middle East?
A) before farming and herding
B) after farming, but before herding
C) after herding, but before farming
D) after farming and herding
E) at the same time that farming and herding developed
Q2) What are the similarities and differences in the transition from foraging to food production in the Middle East and Mesoamerica?
Q3) What has been the relationship between geography and climate and the spread of food production? Provide examples.
Q4) Rice was domesticated in southern China.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Unlike the centers of domestication in the Old World, very few animals were ever domesticated in the New World.
A)True
B)False
Q6) What are the advantages and disadvantages of a subsistence economy based on farming?
Page 13
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Chapter 12: The First Cities and States
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Q1) Which of the following statements about Çatal Hüyük is NOT true?
A) Food was stored and processed collectively, with a priestly elite managing these activities.
B) The dwellings at the site were entered through the roof.
C) The ritual life there was centered on animals, danger, and death.
D) The dead were buried beneath the house floors.
E) It never became a full-fledged city with centralized organization.
Q2) Ranked societies lack social differences.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What were the precursors to primary states?
A) archaic states
B) tribes
C) chiefdoms
D) bands
E) city-states
Q4) Environmental degradation often contributes to the collapse of states.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 13: Method and Theory in Cultural Anthropology
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Q1) Radcliffe-Brown advocated that social anthropology be a synchronic rather than a diachronic science; that is, a study
A) of culture in motion (synchronic) rather than as a static entity (diachronic).
B) that compares cultural traits within the same society and not across societies.
C) of societies across time (synchronic) rather than across space (diachronic).
D) of societies as they exist today (synchronic, one at a time) rather than across time (diachronic).
E) of societies as made up of individuals, not as a sum greater than its parts.
Q2) In today's world in which people, images, and information move as never before, people simultaneously experience the local and the global. Explain what this means and consider its implications for methods in cultural anthropology.
Q3) Given the realities of the contemporary world, anthropologists need to apply methods that protect their analyses from biases caused by external forces.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is the genealogical method, and why did it develop in anthropology?
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Chapter 14: Language and Communication
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Q1) According to some estimates, the world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half in the past 500 years, and half of the remaining languages are predicted to disappear during this century. Why does this matter? Isn't this just a natural result of globalization, something we should actually celebrate, because it makes communication among diverse groups much easier?
Q2) Discuss factors that increase linguistic diversity among speakers of the same language.
Q3) A sociolinguist studies
A) the interaction of history and sociology.
B) cross-cultural comparisons of phonemic distinctions.
C) the universal grammar of language.
D) linguistic competence.
E) speech in its social context.
Q4) Creole languages are commonly found in regions where different linguistic groups come into contact with one another.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Compare and contrast the evolution of language and biological evolution. What role may mutations play in the origins of human language, if any?
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Chapter 15: Ethnicity and Race
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Q1) In Japan, the burakumin represent an isolated breeding population that is genetically distinct from the rest of the country.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Race, like ethnicity in general, is
A) a cultural category rather than a biological reality.
B) a biological reality as much as a cultural one.
C) used by social scientists to classify humans based on genes and shared blood. D) poorly understood by geneticists and is therefore considered a cultural category. E) a meaningless concept to people living day to day.
Q3) The term nation is used to refer to an ethnic group that shares a religion, language, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Why are forms of mass media such as print and television important to the existence of what Benedict Anderson calls an imagined community? How are new communication technologies supporting or changing what Anderson may mean by this term?
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Chapter 16: Making a Living
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Q1) Which of the following is a characteristic of most foraging societies?
A) social stratification
B) sedentism
C) egalitarianism
D) irrigation
E) large populations
Q2) How is a rent fund different from a subsistence fund? Cite examples to clarify your argument.
Q3) Which of the following statements about peasants is NOT true?
A) They all live in state-organized societies.
B) They owe rent to landlords.
C) They practice small-scale agriculture without modern technology such as chemical fertilizers and tractors.
D) They owe rent to the government.
E) They are not part of the world market.
Q4) The high level of intensification and long-term dependability of horticulture paved the way for the emergence of large urban settlements and the first states.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 17: Political Systems
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Q1) In an ethnographic field study of political systems in northern Mozambique, Nicholas Kottak found that avoiding shame can be an effective control against breaking social norms. This example of how shame can be a powerful social sanction
A) is unique among ethnographic cases illustrating the variety of sociopolitical systems that exist in the world today.
B) is often a key component of the formal processes of social control.
C) is evidence that shame is a cultural universal.
D) is an indication that women tend to suffer from the consequences of shame more than men do.
E) joins the work of many other anthropologists that cite the importance of informal processes of social control, including gossip and stigma.
Q2) With the rise of states, kinship's role in society continued to grow and dominate daily activities.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Modern hunter-gatherers should not be seen as representative of Stone Age peoples, all of whom were also foragers. Why?
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Chapter 18: Gender
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Q1) Reasons why there are so many single-parent families headed by women include male migration, divorce, abandonment, and the idea that women are responsible for the children.
A)True
B)False
Q2) When compared to other kinds of societies, all the following are true about foragers EXCEPT that
A) the public and private spheres are least separate.
B) hierarchy is least marked.
C) aggression and competition are most discouraged.
D) sexual promiscuity is most common and routinely punished.
E) the rights, activities, and spheres of influence of men and women overlap the most.
Q3) The traditional gender roles of the Betsileo of Madagascar illustrate the idea that intensive cultivation does not necessarily entail sharper gender stratification.
A)True
B)False
Q4) How are sexuality, sex, and gender related to each other? What are the differences among these three analytical concepts?
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Chapter 19: Families, Kinship, and Descent
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Q1) This chapter offers a brief overview of kinship-related demographic changes in the United States and Canada. How have kinship arrangements changed? How do these changes relate to other cultural changes? Do you find any of the current trends surprising? If so, why?
Q2) Which of the following statements about bifurcate merging kinship terminologies is NOT true?
A) They generally are found in societies with unilineal descent.
B) They use the same term to describe F and FB and the same term for M and MZ.
C) They generally are found in societies with unilocal residence patterns.
D) They often are found in association with the kinship distinction between parallel and cross-cousins.
E) They use the same term to describe MB and FB.
Q3) Members of a clan are descended from a common apical ancestor.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Outside North America, Western Europe, and the European-derived cultures of Latin America, neolocal residence isn't all that common.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 20: Marriage
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Q1) In the caste system of India, failure to adhere to class endogamy rules traditionally resulted in a ritually impure marriage.
A)True
B)False
Q2) A Nuer woman married to a woman can be the pater of a child she did not father. Native American berdaches, biological men who represent a third gender, sometimes assume the role of a wife when married to a man with whom they share the products of their labor. Cross-cultural examples such as these illustrate
A) that the concepts of gender and marriage are more socially constructed in some societies than others.
B) how, if they were to be made legal, same-sex marriages could easily benefit from the same legal rights different-sex marriages already enjoy.
C) the rare social phenomenon of polyandry.
D) how same-sex marriages make good economic sense.
E) how Edmund Leach was wrong to suggest that all societies define marriage similarly.
Q3) Does the practice of paying a dowry necessarily imply gender inequality?
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Chapter 21: Religion
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Q1) By participating in a ritual, participants signal that they accept the common social and ethical order prescribed by their religion.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The Handsome Lake revitalization movement urged its followers to reaffirm the traditions of the Iroquois.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The Hindu principle of ahimsa functions to ensure that cattle's milk production is maximized.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Animism, polytheism, and monotheism are the
A) three kinds of religion that exist in the world today.
B) stages of ritual, according to Victor Turner.
C) stages, according to Edward Tylor, through which religion evolved.
D) stages through which all present-day religions have passed.
E) names for the three psychological needs that all individuals have, thus explaining the universality of religion.
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Chapter 22: Arts, Media, and Sports
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Q1) Traditionally, art and religion occupy mutually exclusive realms in society.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Anthropologist W. Arens (1981) argued that the reason football is such a peculiarly U.S. pastime is that Americans enjoy particularly violent sports.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of the following does NOT influence artistic expression?
A) patronage and sponsorship
B) advice and criticism from judges and experts
C) etic categories of utilitarian and nonutilitarian elements of society
D) public opinion
E) the desire of artists to express themselves
Q4) This chapter describes how sports and the media reflect culture, and offers among its illustrations a cross-cultural comparison that explores why some countries but not others enjoy international success. Describe the two contrasting cases. Are any of the conclusions surprising? Why or why not?
Q5) Discuss why it is so difficult to come up with a universally applicable definition for art.
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Chapter 23: The World System and Colonialism
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Q1) What best characterizes the intervention philosophy of the British empire?
A) manifest destiny
B) white man's burden
C) this land is our land
D) fifty-four forty or fight
E) in his majesty's domain
Q2) One consequence of the ongoing globalization of work and migration is that skilled Western workers must now compete against well-educated workers in such low-wage countries as India, where an experienced software programmer earns one-fifth the average salary of a comparable U.S. worker.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Belgian colonial administrators were careful to use culturally significant differences to distinguish between the Hutus and Tutsis.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Ethnographic research in postsocialist societies is thriving. What are some of the common problems typical of these societies? Why would an ethnographic approach be advantageous to addressing these problems?
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Chapter 24: Anthropologys Role in a Globalizing World
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Q1) Unlike "indigenous peoples," what term, which highlights the prominence that the exclusion of strangers has assumed in day-to-day politics worldwide, has been claimed by majority groups in Europe?
A) indigenous people
B) autochthon
C) mestizo
D) euroindio
E) freedom fighter
Q2) Although anthropologists may be interested in contemporary global issues such as climate change, their perspective is necessarily limited to the local scale of their fieldwork.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The term indigenous people gained legitimacy within international law with the creation in 1982 of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is a text, and how does its reading relate to the role of the individual in popular culture?
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