Anthropology Quiz-6

It is accurate to say that humans are animals, because, like all other animals, humans must breathe air, drink water, eat food, protect ourselves from predators, accidents and disease, urinate and defecate, find sexual partners, reproduce, and eventually die.

• True

• False

Humans are 'animals with culture' because

• Only humans have culture, nonhuman animal behavior is 100% instinctive (genetically hard wired)

• Only humans have carried the cultural modification of primate life to its most elaborate and diverse extremes in a vast array of different settings

In the textbook, the scope of cultural anthropology is defined to include

• What’s inside people’s heads/minds – their ideas, beliefs, attitudes, notions, worldviews, assumptions, knowledge, perspectives, and values

• What people do – their behavior, actions, traditions, customs, how they conduct and carry out their daily lives and long term affairs

• What people make – the artifacts and objects they produce, the earthworks and buildings they build, the way they alter the landscape, etc.

• The consequences of human beliefs and behavior for the individual, the group, and the environment, including both positive and negative consequences

• All of the above

Archeologists have the same goals as cultural anthropologists, but they must use very different methods since their research subjects are ________.

• Dead

• Far away

• Uncooperative

• Suspicious

_______ anthropologist study human evolution and modern human biological variation and adaption

• Linguistic

• Cultural

• Physical/biological

• Applied

________ anthropologists turn their research interests and methodological expertise to the study of real-world problems, trying to come up with solutions that are feasible, sustainable, and just

• Physical/biological

• Cultural

• Linguistic

• Applied

Medical anthropology, nutritional anthropology, reproductive anthropology, and human behavioral ecology are all examples of anthropological research areas that use the _______________.

• Symbolic synthetic stragegy

• Biocultural approach

• Applied/conditional theory

• Critical race theory

• Likert scale system

Material culture refers to the objects that people use, make, modify, or produce such as Northwest Coast Indian masks, IBM punch cards, and tall sailing ships.  Which branch of anthropology most heavily relies on material culture to figure out a group’s beliefs and behaviors?

• Cultural anthro

• Biological anthro

• Archeology

• Linguistic anthro

• Medical anthro

Every person's behavior is shaped by their own cultural and idiosyncratic beliefs as well as by

• Other people

• By access to resources

• By laws and traditions

• By threats of punishment or promises of rewards

• All of the above

Every “normal” human is born with the genetically-based ability to learn to understand and speak one or more languages, but the language(s) a person actually ends up learning and using depends on his/her specific cultural environment

• True

• False

Donald Brown’s book Human Universals lists a number of universal human characteristics that are the same in all human groups.  The following are true of the Universal People (UP) except:

• The UP use the same facial expressions to show basic emotions such as happiness, anger, and fear

• The UP always have religion and language and art

• The UP mourn loved ones who have died

• The UP always think that farting is hysterically funny

• The UP think about and plan for the future

The example of eating a Thanksgiving dinner in the U.S. consisting of roast turkey, stuffing/dressing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, provides an excellent way to show that culture is

• Learned

• Shared

• Patterned

• Somewhat arbitrary

• All of the above

Because culture is socially constructed and learned rather than biologically inherited,

• It can be transmitted from any one person to any other person, not just from parent to child

• Anyone from any biological background can be raised in any cultural environment and learn that culture

• Cultural beliefs can be changed as new information and perspectives are learned throughout an individual’s lifetime

• Maladaptive cultural beliefs can be replaced with more adaptive ones at any time

• All of the above

Cultural anthropologists differ from other scientists such as sociologists and psychologists because they

• Study people from all around the world

• Use written surveys as their primary research tool

• Focus their work on people living in the US

• Study only people living in remote, exotic regions of the world

• Use translators rather than learn the local language of their research site

Even though humans use culture to adapt to their environments, natural selection and other evolutionary forces such as mutation and random genetic drift continue to operate on humans, and humans continue to evolve biologically.

• True

• False

There are very few public pay telephones in the US any more

• Cultural belief

• Social structure

It is not acceptable to eat spaghettic with ones hands

• Cultural belief

• Social structure

in germany, dining out at a resaurant is supposed to be a leisurely, slow-paced, all-evening long event

• Cultural belief

• Social structure

It is illegal to drive on the left side of the road in the US

• Cultural belief

• Social structure

In mali, there are always other adults around to watch as you interact with your spouse and children

• Cultural belief

• Social structure

Only a childs parents should discipline the child when he is misbehaving

• Cultural belief

• Social structure

The main research tool of the cultural anthropologists is

________  a research methodology based on comparing information gathered by other anthropologists from a number of different societies

________  a research methodology that can include listening and observing, taking part in activities, conducting individual or groups interviews using open-ended research questions, going on trips with people, helping people with their work, etc.

________  just hanging out with people, talking to them, eavesdropping on nearby conversations, watching people as they carry out their daily activities

________  the name for the standard practice of spending two or more years during graduate school conducting research among the people you are studying

________  written descriptions of human cultural beliefs and practices, such as Margaret Mead’s Coming of age in Samoa, or Lee Cronk’s From Mukogodo To Maasai: Ethnicity And Cultural Change In Kenya

anthropological informants may give the researcher inaccurate information because

• They find it amusing to fool the clueless visitor to their lives

• Their actual behavior doesn’t match the cultural ideal of what they are supposed to do

• They don’t really have a very good idea of how often they do something or how much time they spend on a particular activity

• They don’t consider it any of the outsider’s business and may be suspicious of the researcher’s motives

• All of the above

If humans set up cultural systems that contradict their underlying biological nature, there will be negative consequences ranging from stress to illness and death.  Which of the following are examples of human cultural systems that have negative consequences for human health?

• Children sleeping by themselves in cribs (rather than with mother)

• The use of infant formula( instead of breastfeeding)

• Smoking

• Drinking

• All of the above

Many people in the U.S. think that infant formula is a perfectly adequate and equally healthy substitute for a baby’s own mother’s breast milk.  In fact, close to ________ children in the U.S. die each year because they were not exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life, as recommended by all health experts.

• 0

• 10

• 100

• 1000

• A million

When anthropologists try to understand a particular feature of culture by looking at what universal human problem it solves for people (and how it does so), they are using which type of theoretical approach?

• Structural-functionalism

• Historical particularism

• Symbolic anthro

• Post-modernism

When anthropologists try to understand a particular feature of culture by looking at exactly how and why a particular system developed the way it did in a particular time and place, they are using which type of theoretical approach?

• Structural-functionalsim

• Historical particularism

• Symbolic anthro

• Post-modernism

Claude Lévi-Strauss (human brains like to think in opposites) and Mary Douglas (things not easily classified are powerful) are associated with which type of theoretical approach in anthropology?

• Strucutural- functionalism

• Historical particulism

• Post modernism

• Symbolic anthro

Arno van Voorst used what example as an analogy for why the people living in a particular time and place, and behaving in a particular way, may have no idea about how their social structure came into being, or why they do things the way they do, other than “tradition.”

• People’s memories are not to be trusted, and no two people will remember events in the same way

• Once a collection of animals are gathered together in a zoo, it is no longer apparent where they came from

• Once a building is erected, the cranes and scaffolding used to build it are removed

• In many circumstances, all the historical records have been destroyed by flood or fire

• All of the above

Victor Turner and Mary Douglas’s concept of things betwixt and between notes that objects, creatures, and ideas that are not easily classified into one category or another in a binary (dichotomous) system, may be accorded great power.  All of the following are examples of betwixt and between things except

• The sun and the moon

• Dawn and dusk

• Flying fish and bats

• Pigs and camels

• Tidal mud flats

All human groups who live on tropical islands, or all those who live at high altitude, or all those who live in deserts, will share some aspects of culture, including knowledge about the environment, because they

• All have the same level of technological sophistication

• Live in similar biomes

• Have similar religious beliefs

• All speak the same language

• None of the above

Many different groups of people around the world, such as the Kurds, do not feel any special connection to the nation-state they live in because

• They are recent immigrants, with loyalties to their home country

• Their nation state has only been in existence for a short time

• Their nation-state is an artificial creation, designated by others

• Some members of their tribe or ethnic group were arbitrarily placed into another country when boundaries were drawn

• All of the above

Tribal membership or ethnicity is likely to be the most important feature of identity for people who live on or near their ancestral lands, among other people who share the same tribal or ethnic identity, religious beliefs, language, etc., such as the Hopi of Arizona or the Dani of highland New Guinea.

• True

• False

Members of which two U.S. states have strong state level culture, as indicated by their willingness to talk about seceding from the United States.

• Montana and georgia

• Delaware and new mexico

• Texas and alaska

• North and south dakota

In the United States, “white folks” currently form the majority of the population overall.  They are viewed as the standard, the mode, the unmarked category.  This explains, in part, why the aisle in the food store that contains foods typical of Mexican, Indian, or Chinese cuisines may be labeled ________ foods.

Today, the category of African American is usually understood to refer to the descendants of people brought to the New World as slaves from the coastal regions of western Africa, with some admixture from European and Native American populations.  Under such a definition, is Barack Obama an African American?

• Yes

• No

Anthropologists recognize that many people who have never studied anthropology think that culture is the same thing as ethnic identity.  Anthropologists would

• Agree, saying that the two concepts mean the same thing

• Disagree, arguing that a persons culture includes many other aspects of identity besides ethnicity

Anthropologists would say: “All hair care products are ethnic, all foods are ethnic, and all clothing is ethnic.  All God’s children got ethnicity.”

• True

• False

The members of every culture tend to view their own way of life as being “natural” and the best way to do things.  This is known as  __________________________.

• Cultural relativism

• The sapir-whorf hypothesis

• Evolution by natural selection

• Ethnocentrism

• Arachnophobia

Most anthropologists describe some degree of ethnocentrism as being natural and understandable: “Of course we view our way of life as the best, the only right way to live.”  Ishmael, the gorilla from Daniel Quinn’s novel, would disagree, saying that for most of human existence, all people lived as nonethnocentric ________________.

• Takers

• Leavers

• Exchangers

• Fisherman

• Baboons

Cultural relativism is part of a perspective that says the point of studying other cultures and other peoples is to understand them – their assumptions, their knowledge, their values, their goals – not to judge them based on your own beliefs and perspectives.

• True

• False

In order to be a good cultural anthropologist, one must agree that

• All cultures are equal

• All values are acceptable

• Whatever other people do, however they behave, is hunky dory becasue thats simply their way of life

• One shouldnt pass judgment on other peoples culture

• None of the above

The first step in adopting the standpoint of cultural relativism is to realize that not everyone shares the same beliefs, assumptions, and knowledge about the world and that not everyone values the same things, or has the same goals.  What is the second step?

• Learning not to judge other people

• Changing you own beliefs and practices

• Realizing that most of the time, peoples behavior makes sense when viewed from their perspective

• Realizing that many people act in irrational and nonsensical ways

• All of the above