Human Societies and Cultures
Question Bank
Course Introduction
This course offers an in-depth exploration of human societies and cultures, examining the diverse ways in which people organize their lives, beliefs, and social structures across the globe. Students will investigate key anthropological concepts such as kinship, religion, language, economics, and politics, gaining insight into the similarities and differences that shape communal life. Through comparative analysis and case studies, the course fosters an understanding of cultural diversity, social norms, tradition, and the processes of cultural change, equipping students with the tools to analyze how humans adapt and thrive in varying environmental and social contexts.
Recommended Textbook
Cultural Anthropology Appreciating Cultural Diversity 15th Edition by Conrad Kottak
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963 Verified Questions
963 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology
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Sample Questions
Q1) Theories must be proved correct before they can be accepted.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) Psychologists tend to study only people living in the non-Western world, so anthropology has very little to offer this field.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) What is anthropology?
A) the art of ethnography
B) the study of long-term physiological adaptation
C) the study of the stages of social evolution
D) the humanistic investigation of myths in nonindustrial societies
E) the exploration of human diversity in time and space
Answer: E
Q4) Biological anthropologists study only human bones.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 2: Culture
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Sample Questions
Q1) While cultural abilities have a biological basis, they do not have an evolutionary basis.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) Which of the following statements about enculturation is NOT true?
A) It occurs through a process of conscious and unconscious learning.
B) It results in internalization of a cultural tradition.
C) It may involve direct teaching.
D) It is the exchange of cultural features that results when two or more groups come into consistent firsthand contact.
E) It is the process by which culture is learned and transmitted across generations.
Answer: D
Q3) Culture helps us define the world in which we live, to express feelings and ideas, and to guide our behavior and perceptions.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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4
Chapter 3: Method and Theory in Cultural Anthropology
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Sample Questions
Q1) In survey research, what term is used to refer to the attributes that vary among the members of a population?
A) unknowns
B) questionnaires
C) interviews
D) variables
E) random samples
Answer: D
Q2) Longitudinal research is the long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or other unit, usually based on repeated visits.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) Survey research is usually conducted through intensive personal contact with the study subjects.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 4: Applying Anthropology
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Sample Questions
Q1) Development projects should aim to accomplish all of the following EXCEPT
A) promoting change, but not overinnovation.
B) preserving local systems while working to make them better.
C) respecting local traditions.
D) drawing models of development from indigenous practices.
E) developing strategies with little input from the local communities.
Q2) Academic and applied anthropology have a symbiotic relationship, as theory aids practice and application fuels theory.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Applied anthropology is
A) the purely academic dimension of anthropology.
B) the term used for all anthropological research programs.
C) the use of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary problems.
D) rarely possible, as anthropological studies are not practical in the "real world."
E) is not guided by anthropological theory.
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6
Chapter 5: Language and Communication
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is pidgin?
A) A partial language that results from primitive tribes' attempts to learn the language of a modern industrialized state.
B) A mixed language that develops to ease communication between members of different cultures in contact, usually in situations of trade or colonial domination.
C) A rhythmic sublanguage present in any human language as the result of a universally shared mutation.
D) A set of languages believed to be most like the original human language, spoken by a small population of Indian Ocean islanders.
E) Metalanguage developed by computer programmers that has yielded valuable insights into the workings of the human brain.
Q2) All human nonverbal communication is instinctive, not influenced by cultural factors.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is linguistic relativity? Illustrate how it applies to languages and to dialects of English.
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Chapter 6: Ethnicity and Race
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Q1) Racial categories in Japan are more rigid than racial categories in Brazil.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which of the following is a major difference between Brazilian and U.S. racial taxonomies?
A) Brazilians do not recognize racial differences.
B) U.S. categories are purer than Brazilian categories.
C) There are no important differences between the two taxonomies.
D) In the United States, social race is determined at birth and does not change, but in Brazil race is flexible, and more of an achieved status.
E) Brazilian racial categories are based on genotype, whereas U.S. categories are based on phenotype.
Q3) A key element of multiculturalism is its respect for ethnic diversity.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Institutional discrimination happens when institutions rather than individuals are the targets of discrimination.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 7: Making a Living
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Sample Questions
Q1) Unlike in industrial societies, where economic alienation is common, in nonindustrial societies,
A) alienation is pervasive.
B) alienation is suffered only among the poorer classes.
C) social relations are embedded in all relations except the economic ones.
D) the relations of production, distribution, and consumption are social relations with economic aspects.
E) alienation is an ascribed status.
Q2) Which of the following kinds of exchange is characteristic among the members of a family?
A) generalized reciprocity
B) balanced reciprocity
C) negative reciprocity
D) redistribution
E) none of these exchanges
Q3) With balanced reciprocity, the giver expects something in return equal to what was given.
A)True
B)False
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Page 9
Chapter 8: Political Systems
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Q1) The Qashqai and Basseri peoples are examples of nomadic foragers who live in modern-day Iran.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Most band and tribal societies in the world today are completely cut off from the rest of the world.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Foraging economies are usually associated with which type of sociopolitical organization?
A) band
B) tribal
C) state
D) chiefdom
E) primate
Q4) In tribal societies, the village head leads by example and through persuasion; he lacks the ability to force people to do things.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 9: Gender
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Q1) In the United States, attitudes regarding the role of women in the workplace have varied according to economic needs.
A)True
B)False
Q2) How are sexuality, sex, and gender related to each other? What are the differences among these three analytical concepts?
Q3) Based on research in the 1960s, which of the following statements about Etoro conceptions of heterosexual intercourse is NOT true?
A) It was thought to sap a man's vitality.
B) Women who wanted too much heterosexual intercourse were viewed as witches.
C) Such sex was permitted only a hundred days a year.
D) It was permitted to take place only in the couple's residence.
E) It was seen as a necessary sacrifice that would eventually lead to a man's death.
Q4) With the baby boom and the increase in industrialization, women have contributed more and more to the workplace while receiving pay equal to that of their male coworkers.
A)True
B)False
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Page 11
Chapter 10: Families, Kinship, and Descent
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Q1) There are rights, duties, and obligations associated with kinship and descent. Many societies have both families and descent groups. Give an illustration of how obligations to one may conflict with obligations to the other. How does your example relate to your experience managing rights, duties, and obligations in your own family?
Q2) What are the two basic social units of foraging societies?
A) the band and the clan
B) the lineage and the nuclear family
C) the extended family and the clan
D) the nuclear family and the band
E) the band and the extended family
Q3) What postmarital residence rule is most often found in societies with lineal kinship terminologies?
A) ambilocal
B) neolocal
C) patrilocal
D) matrilocal
E) bilocal
Q4) In what kinds of situations would you expect to find ambilineal descent? Unilineal descent? Why?
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Chapter 11: Marriage
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Q1) What are some of the differences between endogamy and exogamy, and how absolute is the distinction implied by these terms? Use examples to illustrate your argument.
Q2) Polygynous marriages often serve important economic and political functions, with the number of wives a man has serving as an indicator of his wealth, prestige, and status.
A)True
B)False
Q3) In the United States, the rise in female employment, especially in professional careers, when coupled with ________, has dramatically increased household incomes in the upper classes. This pattern has been one factor sharpening the contrast in household income between the richest and poorest populations of Americans.
A) homogamy
B) serial monogamy
C) endogamy
D) sororal polygyny
E) exogamy
Q4) How would you explain the universality of the incest taboo? You may draw on one or more of the explanations offered previously.
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Chapter 12: Religion
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Sample Questions
Q1) What term refers to the manipulation of the supernatural to accomplish specific goals?
A) animism
B) magic
C) religion
D) a rite of passage
E) pantheism
Q2) What kind of religion is based on the idea that each human has a double, which is active during sleep?
A) animatism
B) totemism
C) animism
D) mana
E) polytheism
Q3) Antimodernism describes a rejection of the modern in favor of what is perceived as an earlier, purer, better way of life.
A)True
B)False
Q4) How do you explain the universality of religion?
Q5) Discuss two cases of religion's role in social change.
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Arts, Media, and Sports
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Q1) During his work among the Tiv, Bohannan found that critics played a key role in the creative process for the production of works of art.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Expressive culture refers to the components of a culture that are expressed publicly, as opposed to the private aspects of culture that are hidden from anthropologists.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Actors, musicians, and dancers
A) are not artists, since they perform but do not create art.
B) function as parasitic consumers of the creative works of artists.
C) distort and dilute the artistic mastery of other artists.
D) function as intermediaries who translate the works and ideas of other artists.
E) are marginal members of artistic communities around the world.
Q4) In states, all artwork can be clearly attributed to a specific artist.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Where is art found? Is art found in the same contexts in all kinds of societies?
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Chapter 14: The World System and Colonialism
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Q1) 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
Q2) Who are indigenous peoples?
A) people who live in autonomous, independent nation-states
B) peasants who are of the same ethnicity as the ruling elite
C) descendants of tribespeople who live on as culturally distinct, colonized peoples, many of whom aspire to autonomy
D) any population living in a nation-state on the periphery of the world system
E) people who have emigrated to a new country
Q3) What was the Industrial Revolution, and how did it differ from previous life in villages, towns, and cities? Why is this topic relevant to an anthropologist?
Q4) Hundreds of ethnic groups and so-called tribes are colonial constructs. What does this mean-does it suggest that they are only imaginary and therefore of no consequence? Provide illustrations with your answers.
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Chapter 15: Anthropologys Role in a Globalizing World
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Q1) The Handsome Lake religion
A) led the Iroquois Indians to reject European farming techniques and therefore avoid ethnocide.
B) was compatible with the Iroquois' stress on female over male labor.
C) led the Iroquois to adopt communal longhouses.
D) was a revitalization movement that helped the Iroquois survive in a drastically modified environment.
E) involved the adoption of matrilineal descent groups that protected the Iroquois from cultural extinction.
Q2) Ethnoecology is any society's set of environmental practices and perceptions-that is, its cultural model of the environment and its relation to people and society.
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
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