Chapter 1

Question 1

Q: What is dualism?

Answer 1

A: The philosophical view that reality consists or two equal and irreducible forces

Question 2

Q: What is binary opposition?

Answer 2

A: A pair of opposites used as an organizing principle (e.g., body-soul; ying-yang; male-female)

Question 3

Q: What is idealism?

Answer 3

A: The philosophical view that pure, incorruptible ideas- or the mind that produces such ideas- constitute the essence of human nature.

Question 4

Q: What is materialism?

Answer 4

A: The philosophical view that one simple force (or a few simple forces) causes (or determines) complex events.

Question 5

Q: What is essence?

Answer 5

A: An unchanging core of features unique to things of the same kind, making them what they are.

Question 6

Q: What is culture?

Answer 6

A: Sets of learned behaviors and ideas that humans acquire as members of society.

Question 7

Q: What is anthropology?

Answer 7

A: The integrated study of human nature, human society, and human history.

Question 8

Q: What is anthropological perspective?

Answer 8

A: An approach to the human condition that is holistic, comparative, and evolutionary.

Question 9

Q: What does comparative mean?

Answer 9

A: A characteristic of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologists to consider similarities and differences in a wide range of human societies before generalizing about human nature, human society, or human history.

Question 10

Q: What is biological evolution?

Answer 10

A: Change (through mutation) in the genetic makeup (the DNA/RNA) of a population that is passed on through the generations.

Question 11

Q: What is cultural evolution?

Answer 11

A: Evolution of the beliefs and behaviors incorporated into human development through the experiences of teaching and learning.

Question 12

Q: What is evolutionary?

Answer 12

A: A characteristic of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologists to place their observations about human nature, human society, or human history in a flexible framework that takes into consideration change over time.

Question 13

Q: What is biological (or physical) anthropology?

Answer 13

A: The specialty of anthropology that looks at humans as biological organisms and tries to discover what characteristics make humans different from and/or similar to other living things.

Question 14

Q: What is primatology?

Answer 14

A: The study of non-human primates, the closest living relatives of human beings.

Question 15

Q: What is paleoanthropology?

Answer 15

A: The study of the fossilized remains of human beings’ earliest ancestors.

Question 16

Q: What is archaeology?

Answer 16

A: The specialty of anthropology interested in what human beings can learn from material remains left behind by earlier human societies.

Question 17

Q: What is linguistic anthropology?

Answer 17

A: The specialty of anthropology concerned with the study of human languages.

Question 18

Q: Cultural anthropology?

Answer 18

A: The specialty of anthropology that studies how variation in beliefs and behaviors is shaped by culture and learned by different members of human groups.

Question 19

Q: What are informants?

Answer 19

A: People in a particular culture who work with anthropologists and provide them with insights about local ways of life.

Question 20

Q: What is ethnography?

Answer 20

A: An anthropologist’s recorded description of a particular group of the people’s way of life.

Question 21

Q: What is ethnology?

Answer 21

A: The comparative study of two or more cultures.

Question 22

Q: What is applied anthropology?

Answer 22

A: The use of information gathered from other anthropological specialties to solve practical problems within and between cultures

Question 23

Q: What is medical anthropology?

Answer 23

A: An area of anthropological inquiry that focuses on issues of well-being, health, illness, and disease as they are situated in their wider cultural contexts.

Question 24

Q: What are biocultural organisms?

Answer 24

A: Organisms whose defining features are co-determined by biological and cultural factors.

Question 25

Q: What is a symbol?

Answer 25

A: Something that stands for something else

Question 26

Q: What is material culture?

Answer 26

A: Objects created or shaped by human beings and given meaning by cultural practices.

Question 27

Q: What is habitus?

Answer 27

A: Everyday, routine social activity rooted in habitual behavior.

Question 28

Q: What is cultural pattern?

Answer 28

A: A behavior or idea that members of a specific society repeatedly pass on to one another, across generations, and that is thus recognizable to all members of that society.

Question 29

Q: What is co-evolution?

Answer 29

A: The relationship between biological processes and symbolic cultural processes in which each makes up an important part of the environment to which the other must adapt.

Question 30

Q: What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 30

A: The opinion that one’s own way of life is the most natural, correct, or fully human way of life.

Question 31

Q: What is a metanarrative?

Answer 31

A: A grand scale story or theme that members of a given culture recognize and that often drives ideas and actions within that culture.

Question 32

Q: What is cultural relativism?

Answer 32

A: Approaching the cultures of other peoples with a sympathy such that applying your own beliefs, values, and practices does not become the basis of understanding.

Question 33

Q: What is human agency?

Answer 33

A: Human beings’ ability to exercise at least some control over their lives.