Sociocultural Anthropology Test Preparation
Course Introduction
Sociocultural Anthropology explores the diverse ways in which people around the world live, think, and interact within their societies. This course examines the cultural, social, and symbolic practices that shape human communities, focusing on key anthropological concepts such as kinship, religion, politics, economics, and identity. Through the study of ethnographic case studies and cross-cultural comparisons, students gain insights into how individuals and groups construct meaning, adapt to change, negotiate power, and navigate global and local challenges. The course encourages critical reflection on cultural assumptions, social inequalities, and ethical issues in anthropological research.
Recommended Textbook
Culture Counts A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology 2nd Edition by Serena Nanda
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14 Chapters
772 Verified Questions
772 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology and Why Should I Care
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56 Verified Questions
56 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/32250
Sample Questions
Q1) The Nacirema are found in:
A)Africa.
B)South America.
C)North America.
D)Asia.
E)Europe.
Answer: C
Q2) In the United States,most people see humanity as composed of biological "races." However,most of the traits we use to assign people to a race are:
A)blood types.
B)skeletal types.
C)hair colors.
D)facial traits.
E)geographic locations.
Answer: D
Q3) Applied anthropologists work in cultural anthropology and biological anthropology only.
A)True
B)False Answer: False
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Chapter 2: Culture Counts
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55 Verified Questions
55 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Postmodernism is an approach that focuses specifically on:
A)the relationship between environment and society.
B)the negotiation of norms and values within a society.
C)the relationship between mind and body.
D)the evolution of technology and society.
E)how culture has changed over time.
Answer: B
Q2) Anthropologists who focused on the study of child-rearing and who were most influential from the 1920s to 1950s were called __________ theorists.
Answer: culture and personality
Q3) All of the following statements about the lengthy period of human immaturity are correct except:
A)it allows time for an enormous amount of learning to occur.
B)it demands that human cultures provide stable environments for their young.
C)it allows mature individuals in a society to function as teachers and no longer be in a role as learners.
D)it requires human cultures to protect their young for long periods of time.
E)it leaves few specific human behaviors directly under genetic control.
Answer: C
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Doing Cultural Anthropology
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55 Verified Questions
55 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Informed consent involves all of the following except:
A)anthropologists must be involved in a dynamic discussion with participants in order to explain the significance of informed consent.
B)individuals should understand the risks and benefits inherent in the research.
C)participants must sign a contract with the anthropologist indicating that they approve of the research study.
D)participants must understand how the research data is likely to affect them.
E)individuals must be free to decide if they want to participate.
Answer: C
Q2) Which of the following best describes anthropologist Greg Simon's account of fieldwork in Bukittinggi,Indonesia?
A)It was like going home,as he was very accepted and involved in life there.
B)It was a disturbing experience at first,but it ended as extremely positive.
C)It was successful and he looks forward to many more field experiences as he continues to work there.
D)It was a very successful experience and filled with very positive emotions.
E)It was an uncomfortable experience filled with very deep and disturbing emotions.
Answer: E
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Chapter 4: Communication
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55 Verified Questions
55 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements is correct?
A)Scholars believe that all humans throughout the evolutionary line were capable of human language.
B)Scholars do not believe that humans 2,000 years ago could use language as well as we can.
C)Scholars believe that language emerged during the Age of Exploration.
D)Scholars do not believe that human language developed prior to the emergence of our genus.
E)Scholars do not believe that human language existed prior to our species.
Q2) Animal call systems have as many as _______ sounds.
A)45
B)60
C)20
D)100
E)80
Q3) Western technical languages are more sophisticated than indigenous languages because they serve a larger population of people.
A)True
B)False
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Page 6
Chapter 5: Making a Living
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55 Verified Questions
55 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) How did industrialized agriculture change America's rural culture over the last 100 years?
Q2) Compare and contrast the five basic types of subsistence strategies.Describe a human society currently practicing the subsistence strategy.
Q3) Which of the following statement best describe the Yarahmadzai subsistence strategy?
A)They herd camels,cattle,goats,and sheep,and they depend on the global market for trade.
B)They herd only camels and live exclusively on camel products.
C)They herd cattle and camels,but their primary source of food is wheat.
D)They herd various types of animals,but their main source of protein is milk.
E)They herd various types of animals,but their main source of protein is camel meat.
Q4) Agriculturalists are more vulnerable to environmental changes than are horticulturalists.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Subsistence and politics go hand in hand.Discuss the ways that politics affect our food options and health strategies.
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Chapter 6: Economics
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55 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) All of the following are cultural and moral assumptions that are associated with market exchange except:
A)"I will take a loss in some cases just to prove that I can exchange fairly."
B)"I anticipate a certain amount of deceit and unfairness."
C)"If you take advantage of me repeatedly,you will be punished."
D)"I will usually be treated fairly by people I do not know."
E)"I will exchange freely and with no restrictions."
Q2) Which of the following forms of exchange is found primarily outside of social relations and in situations of impersonal and unfriendly transactions?
A)balanced reciprocity
B)capitalism
C)negative reciprocity
D)generalized reciprocity
E)market exchange
Q3) Potlatching is a considered a form of redistribution.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Economic systems are found universally within human societies.What are the fundamental economic issues that all societies must face?
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Chapter 7: Marriage, Family, and Kinship
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56 Verified Questions
56 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Non-unilineal descent groups are also called:
A)cognatic.
B)matrilineal.
C)patrilineal.
D)double descent.
E)compository.
Q2) Compare and contrast each of the marriage compensations that are found in contemporary human societies.How are these changing today in a globalized economy?
Q3) Ambilineal descent is a type of cognatic descent.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Among the Toda of South India,there tends to be:
A)fraternal polyandry.
B)maternal polyandry.
C)fraternal polygyny.
D)maternal polygyny.
E)monogamy.
Q5) Marriage is a cultural construction.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 8: Sex and Gender
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55 Verified Questions
55 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Female circumcision is practiced on approximately 100 million women worldwide.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Why do the Sambia practice homosexuality?
A)They believe that men cannot remain good hunters unless they are fertilized with the youthful energy of young boys.
B)They believe that young boys are not naturally fertile and cannot attain puberty without semen from others.
C)They believe that from birth boys should apprentice with other men and learn sexual relations from men,not women.
D)They believe that homosexuality instills a sense of creativity and self-fulfillment in their young boys.
E)They do not practice homosexuality;in fact,they are highly opposed to it.
Q3) What is the cultural construction of gender?
Q4) What was the most direct impact of European expansion on women's roles in indigenous societies?
Q5) Are the Tuareg a matrilineal,patrilineal,or nonunilateral society? How does this affect the status of women?
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Chapter 9: Political Organization
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55 Verified Questions
55 Flashcards
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Sample
Questions
Q1) Nation-states are often described as "imagined communities." What does this mean? How is this adaptive to the survival of the nation-state itself?
Q2) What does it mean to say that tribes are "acephalous"?
A)They have structured political organization.
B)They have no centralized government.
C)They do not have informal social control mechanisms.
D)They have paramount chiefs.
E)They practice warfare.
Q3) The relative access individuals and groups have to basic material resources,wealth,power,and prestige is known as:
A)social differentiation.
B)stratification.
C)social complexity.
D)egalitarianism.
E)political organization.
Q4) Define political organization.
Q5) An attempt to overthrow the existing political structure and replace it is called a(n)__________.
Q6) Name three informal mechanisms of social control.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Stratification: Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Caste
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55 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Max Weber argued that people's behavior could best be explained:
A)in economic terms.
B)in class terms.
C)in terms of prestige.
D)in terms of power.
E)in economic terms and in terms of prestige
Q2) Compare and contrast race and class.How do these concepts serve to separate and also aggregate individuals? Give examples.
Q3) Why is downward mobility "hidden" in the U.S.media?
A)It does not exist in contemporary U.S.society.
B)It is too sensationalistic.
C)It does not conform to the "American Dream."
D)It is not the experience of the majority of people.
E)It does not affect the middle classes.
Q4) How has the Indian caste system been affected by globalization?
Q5) Race and class do not intersect in the United States.
A)True
B)False
Q6) What is a "life chance"?
Q7) Name the five groups that make up the Indian caste system.
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Chapter 11: Religion
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Sample Questions
Q1) What distinguishes a shaman from a priest?
A)Priests,but not shamans,have the ability to work magic in religious rituals and cause ritual items to change their substance.
B)Shamans are part-time practitioners who mediate the worlds of the natural and supernatural.Priests are formally elected or appointed as full-time religious officers.
C)Priests have training and undergo an apprenticeship in order to serve a group of people.Shamans are untrained because they are thought to have a natural affinity to the supernatural.
D)Shamans are found in state societies and priests are found in foraging and egalitarian societies.
E)There are no differences between shamans and priests.Priests are classified as a type of shaman.
Q2) What is the primary purpose of a rite of intensification?
A)an enhanced feeling of social unity
B)a transition from one state to another
C)an act of rebellion and revolution
D)a form of institutionalization
E)the birth of a new religious order
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Page 13
Chapter 12: Power, Conquest, and a World System
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is pillage?
A)It is a process of literally taking everything profitable from another through the threat of violence.
B)It is the wholesale destruction of property and status through warfare.
C)It is a process of building an infrastructure so that the colonizing nation can create economic opportunities for exploitation of natives.
D)It is a perspective on colonialism that European powers had a "white man's burden" of helping natives.
E)It is a kinship term that refers to the creation of fictive ties of relationships between colonizer and slave.
Q2) The Tirailleurs Senegalais were originally constituted by which colonial power?
A)Italy
B)France
C)Germany
D)Senegal
E)Netherlands
Q3) What is the historical relationship between anthropology and colonialism?
Q4) Why did the VOC ultimately fail?
Q5) How did colonial education systems function to strengthen the colony?
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Chapter 13: Globalization and Change
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements about pollution is not correct?
A)Poorer nations tend to lack urban services to control pollution.
B)Wealthy nations tend to use energy sources that create higher levels of pollution.
C)Poorer nations tend to use vehicles that are not equipped with pollution-control technology.
D)Urban areas in poorer nations are far more polluted than those in wealthy nations.
E)Wood-burning stoves in poorer nations put out a great deal of pollution.
Q2) What does Thomas Friedman mean by the concept of a "flat" world?
A)He argues that the world increasingly has social and economic opportunities available to everyone.
B)He argues that it is a one-dimensional world in which the wealthy nations will always have the advantage.
C)He argues that the poor nations will soon "flatten" the wealthy ones and have their own turn as wealthy.
D)He means that we have reached our high point in innovation and discovery and now we must learn to manage ourselves better.
E)None of these statements is correct.
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Page 15
Chapter 14: Anthropology Makes a Difference
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Sample Questions
Q1) Public anthropology can best be defined as the study of local peoples and local voices.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Compare and contrast child workers in Olinda,Brazil and youth sex workers in New York City.How are they different and alike?
Q3) All of the following are common qualities of child sex workers that Richard Curtis found in New York City except:
A)They are mainly runaways.
B)They have minimal education.
C)They cannot find legitimate employment.
D)They are addicted to drugs or dealing drugs.
E)They have been physically abused.
Q4) Approximately how many dagongmei are there in China?
A)50,000
B)150,000
C)1 million
D)10 million
E)70 million
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