Social Anthropology Practice Exam
Course Introduction
Social Anthropology is the comparative study of human societies and cultures, examining how people around the world live, organize their communities, and make sense of their experiences. This course explores diverse social structures, beliefs, practices, and value systems, emphasizing cultural relativism and fieldwork methodologies. Students will engage with foundational anthropological theories and ethnographic case studies to analyze concepts such as kinship, religion, gender, economic systems, and globalization. Through critical analysis, Social Anthropology fosters a deeper understanding of cultural diversity, the dynamics of social change, and the complexities of contemporary global issues.
Recommended Textbook
Cultural Anthropology A Toolkit for a Global Age 2nd Edition by Kenneth J. Guest
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Chapter 1: Anthropology in a Global Age
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Sample Questions
Q1) Explain why anthropologists study nonhuman primates like apes and monkeys. Answer: In order to understand which aspects of human physiology and behavior are uniquely human and which attributes are legacies of our primate heritage, it is necessary to study our closest living relatives. The study of nonhuman primates gives us clues about our human behavior and the shared behavior of all primates. Careful observation of primates in their natural habitats and captivity has offered significant insights into sexuality, parenting, male and female differences, cooperation, intergroup conflict, and aggression. These insights can also help us understand what the behavior of human ancestors may have been like.
Q2) Material remains help prehistoric archaeologists reconstruct:
A) human behavior.
B) written records.
C) garbage dumps.
D) burial sites.
Answer: A
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Chapter 2: Culture
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Q1) Which student of Boas explored the unique patterns and integration of cultural traits and entire cultures?
A) Margaret Mead
B) Bronislaw Malinowski
C) E. E. Evans-Pritchard
D) Ruth Benedict
E) E. Evans-Pritchard
Answer: D
Q2) Current estimates suggest that children in the United States view almost 40,000 commercials a year. All of this is accomplished by advertising, which helps us learn how to:
A) be successful as consumers.
B) best manage our personal finances.
C) have more friends.
D) manage our material desires.
Answer: A
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4
Chapter 3: Fieldwork and Ethnography
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Sample Questions
Q1) Anthropologists conducting fieldwork may experience a particular kind of disorientation from the "strangeness" they discover. What is this often attributable to?
A) ethnographic dissonance
B) culture shock
C) critical self-examination
D) fieldwork block
Answer: B
Q2) How does the problem of organ trafficking from the poor in Brazil, as documented by Scheper-Hughes's work, mirror the plight of poor people in different countries where she has not worked?
A) The poor are a vulnerable population to whom anything can be done.
B) The poor are a reliable source of organs.
C) The poor have many children, and are thus a rich resource.
D) The poor do not draw the attention of the local authorities.
Answer: A
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Chapter 4: Language
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Q1) What types of evidence have anthropologists drawn on to approximate when humans first began to use language? Using examples, analyze how genetic and archaeological information has been used to determine when the human capacity for speech evolved. How did language enhance the ability of humans to survive and adapt to inhospitable environments?
Q2) Which term is used to describe the extinction of languages that have very few speakers?
A) linguistic shift
B) gentrification of language
C) language loss
D) linguistic death
Q3) According to your textbook, preserving endangered languages is an important goal of linguistic anthropologists. Discuss the potentially ambiguous role that information technology and the digital divide may play in language preservation. Using examples from the text, assess the potential benefits that may accrue as members of less-prominent languages gain access to community technology and cross over the "digital divide." Consider how the tendency of prominent languages to crowd out speakers of lesser-spoken languages may be accelerated with increased cultural contact and exposure to global languages. How is the digital divide related to issues of language extinction?
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Chapter 5: Human Origins
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Q1) Explain the process of fossilization. Include some of the critical factors necessary for fossilization of an organism to be successful. Why are fossils rare?
Q2) Gene flow is the:
A) production of new genes.
B) random loss of genes in a population.
C) process that signals differential reproduction success.
D) movement of genes between populations.
Q3) When a small part of a population with a unique phenotypical characteristic migrates to a new location and begins to reproduce separately as a new, distinct group, what is this process called?
A) gene flow
B) founder effect
C) gene migration
D) genetic mutation
Q4) Stratigraphy is a technique of relative dating, and it depends on ________.
A) assumptions that what is deeper is older
B) the extent of site disturbance
C) geographic location of specimens
D) specimen condition
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Chapter 6: Race and Racism
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Sample Questions
Q1) Three hundred years of forced transport of millions of Africans to North and South America resulted in ________.
A) fascism
B) slavery
C) a new race
D) white supremacy
Q2) In the period between 1933 and 1936, the Nazi regime implemented laws that defined who was and was not Jewish according to ancestry. Any person with three or four Jewish grandparents was considered a "full-blooded" Jew; those with fewer (but more than zero) were considered "half-breeds" or "mongrels." This approach to dividing and categorizing people relies on the assumption that:
A) phenotype determines race.
B) race is a cultural reality, but not a biological one.
C) Judaism is a religion, not a race.
D) race is a biological reality.
Q3) To what extent is Brazil a racial democracy?
Q4) Compare and contrast the concepts of genotype and phenotype. How do you think these concepts help us understand race, and why?
Q5) Explain what is meant by the concept of "white privilege."
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Chapter 7: Ethnicity and Nationalism
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Q1) What term originally referred to a distinct group of people with a shared place of origin, but is now most commonly used to refer to a country?
A) state
B) realm
C) nation
D) nation-state
Q2) What metaphor has been used to describe the process of immigrant assimilation into U.S. dominant culture?
A) nationalism
B) tossed salad
C) melting pot
D) whitening
Q3) A particular ethnic group may attempt to assert its domination over a nation-state and to affirm its values, ambitions, and common destiny. What is this an expression of?
A) ethnic cleansing
B) patriotism
C) situational negotiation of identity
D) nationalism
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Chapter 8: Gender
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Q1) The behaviors encouraged in sports-where boys are rewarded for competitiveness and girls are often encouraged to play nicely-reflect what aspect of a larger cultural framework?
A) the construction and maintenance of gender roles in a society
B) the manner in which gender roles reverse during adolescence and later become normalized
C) the way in which sexual dimorphism is a natural part of our society
D) the importance of sport in the American cultural imagination
Q2) Define the concept of intersex, and explain how physicians' attitudes toward children born intersex have changed in recent decades in parallel with changes in attitudes toward sexuality.
Q3) For many women around the world, life is a seemingly unending process of childbirth, child rearing, and hard domestic labor, while men often enjoy free time and more opportunities to socialize. What is this a result of?
A) enforced gender stereotypes
B) normal gender roles
C) gender stratification
D) enforced performance
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Chapter 9: Sexuality
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Q1) Recently, the government of China began a crackdown on the practice of hiring strippers to perform at funerals in rural parts of the country, a practice that many see as normal, but to others might seem odd or even bizarre. What effect might such a prohibition have?
A) It allows the government to regulate sexual behavior norms.
B) It helps regulate commerce in rural populations.
C) It can foster negative attitudes toward stripping as a profession.
D) It enforces traditional funeral practices.
Q2) Compare and contrast the perspective on human sexuality offered by evolutionary biologists and cultural constructionists. What factors do evolutionary biologists study to learn more about human sexuality? How does this compare to the factors an anthropologist with a cultural constructionist perspective might investigate? Which approach do you find most valuable?
Q3) What strategies did European colonizers use to control the sexual practices of people under their rule? Discuss the role of colonialism in how ideas about sexuality were altered in colonial domains such as Nigeria and Suriname. How does attention to intersectionality in this case help to illuminate the connection between power and sexuality?
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11
Chapter 10: Kinship, Family, and Marriage
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Q1) Dowries are an integral part of the marriage process in many countries, whether explicit or implicit. If deemed insufficient, the result might lead to what?
A) arranged marriage
B) bride burning
C) selection of a different bride
D) marriage to the bride's older sister
Q2) One of the major shifts in marriage patterns, both in the United States and in many other countries, is the ability of same-sex partners to marry. Those who marry and also choose to have children will undoubtedly gain from what other recent change?
A) better legal protections for women
B) improved health care for children
C) reproductive technologies
D) fewer transnational adoptions
Q3) The textbook opens by discussing the TV show Transparent, in which Maura comes out to her children and ex-partner as transgender. What two key anthropological questions about kinship and the family does this show highlight? Be sure to mention and explain at least one key term in your answer.
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Chapter 11: Class and Inequality
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Q1) Which of the following consists of wages earned from work, plus dividends and interest on investments along with rents and royalties?
A) investments
B) wealth
C) income
D) profits
Q2) What is significant about Hutterite society in contrast to present-day social structures?
A) It is an example of a successful effort to establish an egalitarian system of economic and social relations within highly stratified societies.
B) It is an example of a failed effort to establish an egalitarian system of economic and social relations within highly stratified societies.
C) It is an example of a successful effort to establish a highly religious society.
D) It is an example of a successful effort to establish an authoritarian system of economic and social relations within highly stratified societies.
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Chapter 12: The Global Economy
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Q1) Critics of modernization suggest that underdevelopment is the result of postcolonialism, and that poor countries today cannot participate in the global economy because it is structured to extract and transfer what to developed nations?
A) money
B) people
C) resources
D) energy
Q2) Immanuel Wallerstein's modern world systems analysis sees nations and regions as divided into different groups in terms of economic dominance. These include core, semiperiphery, and periphery groups. What is one defining characteristic of the periphery group?
A) tax shelter opportunities
B) cheap labor
C) industrial development
D) military development
Q3) Explain the controversies associated with neoliberal policies. What is the reasoning behind structural adjustment policies? Use two examples from Jamaica to discuss problems associated with structural adjustment.
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14
Chapter 13: Migration
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Q1) What are some of the forms of social capital that migrants may acquire?
A) social prestige among their homeland population for having escaped the burdens of their country
B) a very specific kind of social standing that comes from successfully leaving their home country and returning home after living away
C) assets and skills such as language, education, or social networks that complement financial resources
D) an ability to actively participate in political, religious, social, and economic spheres across national borders
Q2) Which of the following was the only immigrant group to be legally excluded on the basis of national origin in the United States?
A) Chinese
B) Mexicans
C) Palestinians
D) Russians
E) Ethiopians
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Chapter 14: Politics and Power
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Q1) In the United States, we often celebrate the Fourth of July with colorful fireworks, parades, and various festivities. Fourth of July celebrations in the United States help to reinforce feelings of ________.
A) animosity
B) nationalism
C) power
D) military fervor
Q2) Adolf Hitler was able to create a powerful unified state in Germany by blaming minorities for the country's problems and promoting the idea of certain German people as different and superior. This made the idea of persecuting minorities and expanding German dominance over Europe seem like a reasonable course of action. What do we call this feeling of belonging and superiority?
A) social cohesion
B) militarization
C) nationalism
D) racism
Q3) The debate continues over whether human beings are naturally peaceful or violent. Discuss the possible foundations of human violence and the evidence presented, and evaluate the author's conclusion.
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Chapter 15: Religion
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Sample Questions
Q1) The text describes the Muslim saint shrine of Husain Tekri and how people of many different faiths come to the shrine for healing rituals. The people traveling to the shrine are:
A) seeking conversion.
B) making a pilgrimage.
C) experiencing communitas.
D) experiencing liminality.
Q2) Anthropological research illustrates that people make a religious tradition come alive in their own context through local expressions and adaptations. Which of the following is an example of this?
A) Eid al-Fitr is an important holiday celebrated in different ways by Muslims around the world.
B) Christians around the world read and study the Bible.
C) All religions engage in ritual activities that reinforce collective beliefs.
D) A person sacrifices his or her life for the sake of his or her religion.
Q3) What did anthropologist George Gmelch note about baseball as an activity?
A) It was rife with Christian worship.
B) It was rife with skeptics.
C) It was rife with magic.
D) It was rife with religious tenets.
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Chapter 16: Health, Illness, and the Body
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Q1) From the anthropological perspective, an individual patient's experience of sickness is considered to be what?
A) universally defined
B) defined by a doctor
C) a matter of personal interpretation
D) culturally defined
Q2) Increased migration has increased the popularity of Tibetan medicine in recent decades. How is this form of medicine viewed today by non-Tibetans?
A) as holistic and embracing Tibetan ecological worldviews
B) as a way to cure the human microbiome
C) as a rejection of ethnomedicine
D) as a way to develop sound entrepreneurial practices in health care
Q3) Anthropologists believe that culture plays an underlying role in ways that health is perceived, experienced, and treated. Using the example of the Maya of Yucatán, identify two specific aspects of the birth process and explain how these reflect local cultural values and community conditions.
Q4) 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.
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Chapter 17: Art and Media
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Q1) Which population made up the majority of the 40 million people who read National Geographic at its peak?
A) anthropologists and their students
B) people over the age of forty-five
C) students at elite high schools
D) the middle class
Q2) Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel argued that humans' determination of beauty is determined by:
A) culture
B) nature
C) popularity
D) their age and sex
Q3) Evaluate this statement: "As people become frustrated with the lack of intimacy provided by electronic technologies, this form of communication will become less important in coming decades." Is it true or false? Use examples from the text to support your conclusion.
Q4) Consider the global trade of West African "wood" and "mud" artwork. Are these objects "authentic"? Refer to examples from Steiner and Stoller's ethnographies in your answer.
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