Human Societies and Cultures
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Course Introduction
This course explores the complexity and diversity of human societies and cultures across the globe, examining how cultural norms, values, beliefs, and practices shape individual and collective identities. Through the study of anthropological theories and methodologies, students analyze social institutions such as family, religion, politics, and economics, and their impact on human behavior. The course encourages critical thinking about cultural relativism, globalization, and the processes of cultural change, while highlighting both historical and contemporary issues that influence intercultural interactions.
Recommended Textbook
Mirror for Humanity A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology 7th Edition by Conrad Phillip
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Page 2
Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following plays a role in determining skin color?
A)The Hb<sup>S</sup> allele
B)Ultraviolet radiation
C)Sickle-cell anemia
D)Lactose intolerance
E)Lactose tolerance
Answer: B
Q2) Biological anthropologists study all of the following except A)ancient languages.
B)human biological plasticity.
C)primates.
D)hominid evolution.
E)human genetics.
Answer: A
Q3) The term enculturation refers to the process through which children learn culture.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 2: Culture
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Sample Questions
Q1) Researchers have observed Japanese macaques making and using "termiting" sticks in the wild.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) Which of the following traits is unique to humans?
A)Social life
B)Tool use
C)Meat eating
D)Food sharing
E)Kinship
Answer: E
Q3) The process by which children learn culture is known as A)acculturation.
B)cultural transmission.
C)enculturation.
D)ethnoabsorption.
E)diffusion.
Answer: C
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Doing Anthropology
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Sample Questions
Q1) During the first few weeks in the field, the anthropologist will
A)be completely useless, as he or she is in culture shock.
B)spend time recovering from jet lag.
C)only hand out gifts to the children of the culture.
D)notice some of the most basic aspects of cultural diversity that eventually fade from consciousness.
E)read background history on the culture.
Answer: D
Q2) Which of the following is not a characteristic field technique used by ethnographers?
A)The genealogical method
B)Participant observation
C)Conversation
D)Telephone questionnaires
E)Interview schedules
Answer: D
Q3) The key cultural consultant provides the etic view of a culture.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Language and Communication
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Sample
Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements best describes the use of language by apes?
A)Only humans are capable of learning and using language.
B)Apes use American Sign Language in the wild.
C)Apes cannot be taught to use American Sign Language.
D)Only chimpanzees can learn American Sign Language.
E)Apes can learn American Sign Language and have shown the capacity for cultural transmission, productivity, and displacement, although there is still a gap between human and other ape language capabilities.
Q2) Berlin and Kay's (1969/1992) cross-linguistic study of color terminology revealed that
A)basic color terms tended to evolve in a particular order.
B)color terminology was least developed in areas with a history of using dyes and artificial coloring.
C)all languages included sixteen basic color terms.
D)the languages of cultivators in Papua New Guinea and foragers in Australia had more basic color terms than did European and Asian languages.
E)there are only two basic color terms, black and white.
Q3) What are the key structures of language? Why is it important to know and understand these features?
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Chapter 5: Making a Living
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Sample Questions
Q1) What kind of social unit is common among foragers?
A)Tribe
B)Chiefdom
C)Segmentary lineage
D)State
E)Band
Q2) Unlike foraging and cultivation, which existed throughout the world before the Industrial Revolution, pastoralism was confined to North America.
A)True
B)False
Q3) An obligatory interaction between groups or organisms that is beneficial to each is known as
A)cultivation.
B)swiddening.
C)fallowing.
D)symbiosis.
E)transhumance.
Q4) With transhumance, the entire group moves with the animals throughout the year.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 6: Political Systems
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Sample Questions
Q1) How do anthropologists distinguish between a chiefdom and a state? Is this a useful distinction? Is it always easy to make such a distinction?
Q2) In order for a class system to be open, it must facilitate
A)apartheid.
B)anomie.
C)alienation.
D)petty capitalism.
E)vertical mobility.
Q3) In what kind of society is differential access to resources based on social stratification?
A)Chiefdom
B)Band
C)Clan
D)Tribe
E)State
Q4) What are the major implications of food production? How does reliance on food production affect the social, economic, and political organization of societies?
Q5) What are the differences between open- and closed-class systems?
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Chapter 7: Families, Kinship, and Marriage
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Sample Questions
Q1) What term refers to a gift made by the husband and his kin to the bride and her kin?
A)Bride theft
B)Elopement
C)Dowry
D)Bridewealth
E)Cross-cousin marriage
Q2) Your family of procreation is the one in which you were born.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Taboos against incest prevent it from ever occurring in human societies.
A)True
B)False
Q4) In unilineal descent, one's ancestry is traced through either the male or the female line (not both).
A)True
B)False
Q5) What are some of the general patterns found in the family organization of foragers?
Q6) What are the six things that Leach argued marriage can accomplish?
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Chapter 8: Gender
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Sample Questions
Q1) In general, societies with the patrilineal-patrilocal complex are characterized by all of the following except
A)scarce resources.
B)inheritance of land and prestige through female lines.
C)a strongly developed public-domestic dichotomy.
D)male control of prestige goods.
E)increased intervillage warfare.
Q2) Women's status tends to be high in matrilineal-matrilocal societies.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Homosexual practices among the Etoro demonstrate that homosexuality is more pronounced in matrifocal societies.
A)True
B)False
Q4) In general, the status of women
A)rises as dependence on food production intensifies.
B)is higher in societies in which males do most of the work in food production.
C)is higher among agriculturalists than it is among foragers.
D)is higher in matrilineal societies than it is in patrilineal societies.
E)is higher in Yanomami society than it is among the Betsileo of Madagascar.
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Religion
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Musée du Quai Branly is unique because
A)it was founded during the Roman Empire.
B)it provides context for how the artifacts were used in their original culture.
C)it was inspired by the founder of anthropology, Anthony F.C.Wallace.
D)it is the only museum that holds fossils of the earliest hominins.
E)it holds the largest collection of Van Gogh paintings.
Q2) How do you explain the universality of religion?
Q3) Which of the following statements about religions is not true?
A)Specific religious beliefs and practices vary cross-culturally.
B)Religion can be an instrument of societal change, even revolution.
C)Religion serves only to maintain social solidarity; it does not create or maintain social divisions.
D)Religion is a cultural universal.
E)State religions are presided over by full-time specialists.
Q4) Witchcraft accusations are often aimed at
A)powerful politicians.
B)individuals who are widely respected in a community.
C)socially marginal people.
D)upstanding citizens.
E)prominent religious leaders.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Ethnicity and Race
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the dominant intervention philosophy today?
A)Neoclassicism
B)Neoimperialism
C)Neosocialism
D)Neocommunism
E)Neoliberalism
Q2) Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in England rather than in France?
Q3) The term indigenous peoples is used to refer to
A)people who live in autonomous, independent nation-states.
B)peasants who are of the same ethnicity as the ruling elite.
C)the original inhabitants of particular territories.
D)any population living in a nation-state on the periphery of the world system.
E)people who have immigrated to a new country.
Q4) Modern colonialism began
A)following World War II.
B)with the fall of Rome.
C)during the European "Age of Discovery."
D)as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution.
E)at the end of the Seven Years' War.
Q5) How did Marx and Weber's views on stratification differ?
Page 12
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Chapter 11: Applying Anthropology
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Sample Questions
Q1) People may occupy many different social statuses during their lives, or even during the course of a day.What term refers to a person's ability to emphasize different identities in different social contexts?
A)Ethnic identity
B)Racial substitution
C)Situational negotiation of identity
D)Discourse analysis
E)Rotating core personality traits
Q2) What term does Barth use to refer to a society that combines ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization, and economic interdependence of groups?
A)Colony
B)Broad-spectrum subsistence
C)Plural society
D)Imagined community
E)Assimilation
Q3) Racial categories in Japan are more rigid than those in Brazil.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is hypodescent? Does it exist in every human society?
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Chapter 12: The World System and Colonialism
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Q1) An illness is a scientifically identified health threat caused by a bacterium, virus, fungus, parasite, or other pathogen.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What is an illness?
A)A nonexistent ailment (only "diseases" are real)
B)An artificial product of biomedicine
C)A scientifically identified health threat
D)A purely linguistic problem
E)A health problem as it is experienced by the affected individual
Q3) Which of the following should not be one of the goals of an applied anthropological approach to urban programs?
A)Work with the community to ensure that the change is implemented correctly
B)Identify key social groups in the urban context
C)Translate the needs and desires of the community to funding agencies
D)Create a single universal policy to be applied to all urban communities
E)Elicit wishes from the target community
Q4) Discuss the reasons why many anthropologists have turned from academic to applied work.
Q5) Discuss ways in which anthropology is relevant to business.
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Anthropologys Role in a Globalizing World
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Q1) What is the difference between postmodernity and postmodernism? How has postmodernity affected the focus of anthropological study?
Q2) What is the term for our contemporary world in flux, with people on the move, in which established groups, boundaries, identities, contrasts, and standards are reaching out and breaking down?
A)Postmodernity
B)Indigenization
C)Diaspora
D)Hegemony
E)Globalization
Q3) Westernization has most often been described as a form of what kind of cultural change?
A)Exodus
B)Postmodernism
C)Acculturation
D)Enculturation
E)Migration
Q4) Explain the difference between acculturation and indigenization, citing examples of each.
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