Culture and Society Exam Questions
Course Introduction
This course explores the intricate relationship between culture and society, examining how cultural beliefs, practices, and values shape social life and influence behaviors, institutions, and identities. Students will analyze key concepts such as norms, symbols, language, and power dynamics, while investigating the roles of class, race, gender, and globalization in cultural interactions. Through diverse case studies and theoretical frameworks, the course encourages critical reflection on the ways culture both unites and divides societies, fostering an understanding of cultural diversity and social change in a global context.
Recommended Textbook
Cultural Anthropology 1st Edition by Kenneth J. Guest
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17 Chapters
1120 Verified Questions
1120 Flashcards
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Anthropology in a Global Age
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65 Verified Questions
65 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The study of fossils and ancient DNA to trace changes in human ancestors over time involves which specialization of anthropology?
A) prehistoric archaeology
B) forensic anthropology
C) paleoanthropology
D) historic archaeology
E) biogenetics
Answer: C
Q2) People are biological creatures as well as rational human beings. In order to gain a complete understanding of any aspect of human behavior, the field of anthropology adopts what strategy?
A) four-field approach
B) cultural evolution
C) sociobiology
D) ethnobiology
E) syncretism
Answer: A
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Page 3
Chapter 2: Culture
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65 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements is false?
A) Culture is changed, contested, and negotiated.
B) Culture commonly emerges out of the blue and remains fixed over time.
C) Consumer culture was created as part of twentieth-century global capitalism.
D) There are deep interconnections between culture and power.
E) Culture is both learned and taught.
Answer: B
Q2) Which of the following is defined as the belief that one's own culture or way of life is normal, natural, or even superior to other cultures?
A) altruism
B) unilateralism
C) relativism
D) egocentrism
E) ethnocentrism
Answer: E
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Chapter 3: Fieldwork and Ethnography
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60 Verified Questions
60 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Franz Boas (1858-1942) is credited with developing which of the following anthropological perspectives?
A) unilineal evolution
B) ethnocentrism
C) cultural relativism
D) comparative ethnology
E) participant observation
Answer: C
Q2) Anthropologists make great efforts to protect informants' anonymity:
A) in publications, although it is acceptable to use subjects' real names in research notes.
B) for communities, but not when discussing lives of community members.
C) when working in their own societies, but this is not necessary if working abroad.
D) when referring to individuals in research notes and publications.
E) when writing about sensitive topics within a community.
Answer: D
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Chapter 4: Language
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Sample Questions
Q1) American women are far more likely than men to distinguish between colors like teal and turquoise, or magenta and purple. This is an example of:
A) a biological difference between men and women.
B) a focal vocabulary that exists within American culture.
C) a paralanguage that differentiates female culture from the dominant male culture.
D) descriptive linguistics.
E) linguistic productivity and displacement.
Q2) Code switching is defined as:
A) a nonstandard variation of a language that is particular to a specific region.
B) the study of the development of language over time, including its changes and variations.
C) alternating back and forth between more than one linguistic variant depending on the context.
D) the idea that variation in languages appears gradually over distance between places. E) the study of the intersection between language and systems of power such as race, class, and age.
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Chapter 5: Human Origins
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Sample Questions
Q1) The evolution of bipedal locomotion has NOT been associated with what environment?
A) African savannah
B) African woodlands
C) lake edges in Africa
D) temperate forests of Europe
E) Asian rain forests
Q2) Explain how the principle of natural selection has been a contributor to evolutionary theory. Discuss examples where this has occurred in a population.
Q3) 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.
Q4) Any dating technique that gives a specific date for a fossil is called:
A) absolute.
B) stratigraphic.
C) relative.
D) radiometric.
E) ecometric.
Q5) Contrast the two theories on the ultimate fate of the Neandertals.
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Chapter 6: Race and Racism
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Sample Questions
Q1) Explain the concept of "racialization" and how it applies to Middle Eastern people in the United States.
Q2) A set of popular ideas about race that allows the discriminatory behaviors of individuals and institutions to seem reasonable, rational, and normal is referred to as:
A) colonialism.
B) fascism.
C) nativism.
D) racialization.
E) racial ideology.
Q3) In order to make discriminatory ideas and behavior seem reasonable and normal, societies invoke popular ideas about racial differences that are known as: A) racial ideology.
B) racialization.
C) nativism.
D) fascism.
E) colonialism.
Q4) Explain how the race system developed in Malaysia.
Q5) Explain what is meant by the concept of "white privilege."
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Chapter 7: Ethnicity and Nationalism
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Sample Questions
Q1) The text notes that the stories of the Mayflower, the first Thanksgiving, the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, and the settling of the West are retold to emphasize a shared destiny as well as the values of freedom, exploration, and individualism. These illustrate the concept of a(n):
A) folk tale.
B) history.
C) "just so" story.
D) legend.
E) origin myth.
Q2) 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
Q3) Define ethnic cleansing and genocide and give an example of each to illustrate your answer.
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Chapter 8: Gender
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Sample Questions
Q1) Evaluate the merits of the "man the hunter, woman the gatherer" debate. What are two of the specific cultural debates used to support the notion that there is a biological basis for the behaviors reported in this model? Provide two examples from the text that do not support the biological argument in favor of a gendered division of labor in foraging societies. Conclude by discussing the accuracy of the evolutionary model for understanding the idealized model of the sexual division of labor.
Q2) The "man the hunter, woman the gatherer" debate is based on the idea that:
A) women and men used to hunt together, but men did more of this as animals became more aggressive.
B) in foraging societies, men bring in more food through hunting than women do through gathering.
C) women are genetically programmed for agricultural production.
D) women typically hunt as children but stop once they become mothers.
E) during the evolutionary process, male aggression became imprinted in human DNA.
Q3) Discuss ways that women's participation in the migratory process, including their role in "the global care chain," reflects both gender role stereotypes and economic inequalities in the twenty-first century.
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Page 10
Chapter 9: Sexuality
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Sample Questions
Q1) People whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth may identify as:
A) hypersexual.
B) bisexual.
C) homosexual.
D) mixed gender.
E) transgender.
Q2) In White Wedding: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture (2008), sociologist Chrys Ingraham asserts that brides are not born, but rather made. Identify some examples of the enculturation process. Discuss the implications of the romanticized ideal of weddings. How do these ideals differ from the reality of the "white wedding" as they intersect with gender, class, and racial inequalities?
Q3) Geneticists have been able to successfully identify:
A) a "gay" and a "straight" gene.
B) clusters of "gay" and "straight genes," but not the interactions of those genes.
C) the "gay" gene but not the "straight" gene.
D) The "straight" gene but not the "gay gene."
E) no gene or cluster of genes that determines sexuality.
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11
Chapter 10: Kinship, Family, and Marriage
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Sample Questions
Q1) The marriage practice in which one woman is married to two or more men is considered:
A) polyandry
B) monogamy
C) polymandry
D) polygyny
E) monyandry
Q2) ________is a gift exchange practice that helps stabilize a marriage by establishing a vested interest for both the groom's and bride's extended families in the success of the marriage.
A) Bridewealth
B) Dowry
C) Bridal shower
D) Reciprocity
E) Groom purchase
Q3) Anthropologists argue that kinship is one of several ways in which individuals form groups. Name three other ways in which humans form groups and provide some concrete examples of each. Does kinship influence how these other groups are formed? Why or why not?
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Page 12
Chapter 11: Class and Inequality
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Sample Questions
Q1) Archaeological evidence suggests that hierarchy, violence, and aggression: A) have been key to the evolutionary success of humankind. B) emerged relatively recently in human history. C) were central to the evolutionary success of early humans. D) have always been most prominent in nonindustrialized hunter-gatherer societies. E) are the natural state of human culture.
Q2) Despite overall increased levels of income and wealth in the United States during the past four decades, poverty continues to be a societal issue. According to your textbook, what are two key theories that developed in the social sciences to identify the roots of poverty in the United States? How do these two theories differ and what elements might they share in common? What is meant by poverty as pathology versus poverty as a structural economic problem? Which theory do you find most convincing for identifying the root causes of poverty in the United States, and why? Do you think additional theories are needed to more fully address the underlying causes of poverty in the country and globally? What do you think is the appropriate role of the government in addressing the roots of poverty? What do you think is the appropriate role of the individual in overcoming poverty? Do you think poverty can be eradicated in the future? Why or why not?
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Chapter 12: The Global Economy
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Sample Questions
Q1) In the nineteenth century, European nations met at the Berlin Conference to decide how to divide up the lands, resources, and populations of:
A) North and South America.
B) the Caribbean.
C) China and Japan.
D) the Middle East.
E) the continent of Africa.
Q2) The author does NOT discuss ________ as an example of ecological crisis.
A) monsoons and flooding in Bangladesh
B) heat waves and droughts in the United States
C) a rise in temperatures across the globe
D) food shortages despite farm mechanization
E) an increase in the number of underground aquifers in Asia
Q3) The "Triangle Trade" discussed in the text linked:
A) Asia, Europe, and Africa.
B) Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
C) Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
D) Europe and Africa.
E) Europe and Asia.
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Page 14
Chapter 13: Migration
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Sample Questions
Q1) Anthropologist Bruce Whitehouse's research with Malian migrants to Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo suggests that they:
A) are mostly Christian.
B) mostly work in factories.
C) are reshaping globalization from the top down.
D) rarely return back to their home community of Togotala.
E) are treated like outsiders, segregated by religion and language.
Q2) Economic resources that are transferred from migrants to their families or institutions in their country of origin are called:
A) brain drain.
B) social capital.
C) transaction costs.
D) duty-free goods.
E) remittances.
Q3) Significant numbers of female migrants, both documented and undocumented, work as domestic workers in the United States. Discuss the vulnerabilities they face in the workplace and how they are integral to economies at home and abroad, such as the role played by remittances. Explain how women who work in domestic labor subsidize middle- and upper-class lifestyles in the United States.
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Page 15
Chapter 14: Politics and Power
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Sample Questions
Q1) In a brief essay, compare and contrast the concept of power, in general, with state power, and give an example of each.
Q2) 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.
Q3) The creation of shared meanings and definitions that motivate and justify collective action by social movements is called its: A) cause célèbre.
B) framing process.
C) rationalization.
D) social rationale.
E) vindication.
Q4) Describe what it means to say that the state, soldiers, and warfare are all constructed.
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Page 16
Chapter 15: Religion
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Sample Questions
Q1) French sociologist ________ viewed religion as ultimately something practiced with others and thus a social practice rather than a private or individual one.
A) Emile Durkheim
B) Max Weber
C) Karl Marx
D) Clifford Geertz
E) E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Q2) The role of the Catholic Church in the Zapatista Movement in the Chiapas region of southern Mexico illustrates a relationship in Mexico between religion and:
A) language.
B) family.
C) ritual.
D) poverty.
E) revolution.
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Page 17
Chapter 16: Health and Illness
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Sample Questions
Q1) The case of Lia Lee is significant for medical anthropologists because:
A) her parents were able to make a seamless transition from Eastern to Western medical systems.
B) Western medicine provided a cure for an illness that herbs and soothing baths did not.
C) of the tensions of medical pluralism, as the family's beliefs did not mesh with the physicians'.
D) it was a case of successful ethnomedicine, as physicians accepted herbalists' advice. E) the child died when she was given an overdose of antibiotics in the hospital.
Q2) Anthropologist ________ is associated with the concept of illness narrative.
A) Paul Farmer
B) Nancy Scheper-Hughes
C) Robbie Davis Floyd
D) Arthur Kleinman
E) Margaret Mead
Q3) What is biomedicine, and how do the practitioners view and treat diseases? Discuss two criticisms that anthropologists have about the European biases in the model relative to ethnocentric views about non-Western populations.
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Page 18
Chapter 17: Art and Media
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Sample Questions
Q1) Tom Boellstorff described Second Life as a community because:
A) participants have developed a unique culture and set of beliefs.
B) the community has clearly stated ultimate goals.
C) participants were able to tell him how the community began and would end.
D) most participants spent considerable amounts of time together when they were not online.
E) all of the participants speak English as their first language.
Q2) Early anthropologists played an important role in the acquisition of so-called ________ art that came from Oceania, Africa, and Latin America.
A) high
B) Western
C) primitive
D) ethnographic
E) aesthetic
Q3) Consider the global trade of West African "wood" and "mud" artwork. Are these objects "authentic"?
Q4) Define the term "kinetic orality" and describe the circular relationship Kyra Gaunt documented between the games black girls play and commercial hip-hop culture, especially as it pertains to the construction of gender.
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