Chapter 2

Question 1

Culture can be adaptive or maladaptive. It is maladaptive when

Answer 1

cultural traits, patterns, and inventions threaten the group’s continued survival and reproduction and thus its very existence.

Question 2

Which of the following is a cultural generality?

Answer 2

the nuclear family

Question 3

What are cultural particularities?

Answer 3

traits unique to a given culture, not shared with others

Question 4

The tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and to use one’s own standards and values in judging others is called

Answer 4

ethnocentrism.

Question 5

In anthropology, cultural relativism is not a moral position but a methodological one. It states that

Answer 5

to understand another culture fully, we must try to understand how the people in that culture see things.

Question 6

Human rights are seen as inalienable. This means that

Answer 6

nations cannot abridge or terminate them.

Question 7

What is the term for the kind of cultural change that results when two or more cultures have consistent firsthand contact?

Answer 7

acculturation

Question 8

Which of the following is an example of independent invention, the process by which people in different societies have innovated and changed in similar but independent ways?

Answer 8

agriculture

Question 9

Cultures are integrated, patterned systems in which a change in one part often leads to changes in other parts.

Answer 9

true

Question 10

Although humans do employ tools much more than any other animal does, tool use also turns up among several nonhuman species, including birds, beavers, sea otters, and apes.

Answer 10

true

Question 11

Regarding human capacity for culture, anthropologists agree that

Answer 11

although individuals differ in their emotional and intellectual capacities, all human populations have equivalent capacities for culture.

Question 12

Cultural particularities are unique to certain cultures, while cultural generalities are common to several (but not all) cultures.

Answer 12

true

Question 13

Cultural relativists believe that a culture should be judged only according to the standards and traditions of that culture and not according to the standards of other cultural traditions.

Answer 13

true

Question 14

Diffusion plays an important role in spreading cultural traits around the world.

Answer 14

true

Question 15

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined culture as ideas based on cultural learning and symbols. For anthropologist Leslie White, culture originated when our ancestors acquired the ability to use symbols. What is a symbol?

Answer 15

something verbal or nonverbal within a particular language or culture that comes to stand for something else, with no necessary or natural connection to the thing for which it stands

Question 16

In many countries, use of the English language reflects a colonial history and is thus a consequence of forced diffusion.

Answer 16

true

Question 17

Independent invention occurs when two or more cultures independently come up with similar solutions to a common problem.

Answer 17

true

Question 18

Acculturation is the process by which people lose the culture they learned as children.

Answer 18

false

Question 19

People must eat, but culture teaches us what, when, and how to do so. This is an example of how

Answer 19

culture takes the natural biological urges we share with other animals and teaches us how to express them in particular ways.

Question 20

Something, verbal or nonverbal, that stands for something else is known as a

Answer 20

symbol